Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, December 1, 2006
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 01, 2006
Yucca coalition presses Reid on 'abusing' powers
Project supporters challenge senator to schedule votes
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a coalition that supports the Yucca Mountain repository applied pressure on Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday, saying that he is "abusing" his new powers as Senate majority leader by pledging to block votes on the project planned in Southern Nevada.
Reid, who will lead the Senate when it reconvenes in January, was challenged to allow debate and votes on "fix Yucca Mountain" bills that could pass even though he adamantly opposes them.
By refusing to schedule votes, the Nevadan is putting parochial interests before the needs of the nation to relocate radioactive spent fuel away from communities, and the desires of fellow Democrats who have nuclear waste piling up in their states, the repository advocates said.
"When (Reid) is leading the majority, he has to act in the best interests of the majority, and the best interests of the majority is to move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain," said LeRoy Koppendrayer, chairman of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.
"Would he vote for it himself? I doubt it, but he should let his members vote," Koppendrayer, coalition chairman, said at a news conference.
"To even prohibit it from coming to the floor to be addressed to me is a misuse and an abuse of the position," said Charles Pray, a former Maine legislator who now is that state's nuclear adviser.
"Please, Senator Reid, stand aside," declared Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International, a nuclear transport company.
Edlow said Reid is "conflicted" between roles as Nevada senator and as majority leader and should "remove himself from this debate to let others make the decisions."
The coalition consists of public service commissions, nuclear utilities and business interests in 26 states where radioactive spent fuel is stored. It focuses on how the government is managing more than $14 billion that utility ratepayers have contributed into a repository construction fund.
Reid said Thursday the coalition was "whistling in the wind" if it thought he would step aside or relax his efforts against Yucca Mountain.
"This is not a Nevada parochial issue," he contended. "People all over the country don't like nuclear waste. There is not an environmental group around that supports (Yucca Mountain)."
"Yes, the responsibilities I have are broader now, I have more to do than before, but Nevada comes first," Reid said. "I am not going to abuse my power."
Reid has contended that a proposal he and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have made to have the government manage nuclear waste at reactor sites would be a safer alternative than shipping it to Nevada, where elected leaders argue the Yucca site is flawed and unsafe.
That plan, which he has said he will continue to promote in the new Congress, has picked up little support since it was introduced last year.
Reid also has backed a bill by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to authorize interim nuclear waste sites in as many as 31 states, but that idea has been roundly criticized by governors and the Department of Energy as unwieldy.
The last time the Senate voted on Yucca Mountain was July 9, 2002, when the repository was approved 60-39. Thirty of the senators serving then have since retired or lost office.
Political scientist Barbara Sinclair said congressional leaders occasionally confront questions of "where to draw the line" between state and national priorities.
"What the national interest is tends to some extent to be in the eye of the beholder, but mostly the general notion is that of course leaders are going to use their positions to help their own states," said Sinclair, who teaches at UCLA.
Considering public opposition to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, "it would be crazy" for Reid to be seen as loosening his hold, Sinclair said.
Reid is up for re-election in 2010. "Unless he plans on retiring, this is a no-brainer," because Reid's races generally have been close and he has little wiggle room electorally to compromise, said Richard Semiatin, a political science professor at American University.
But Pray said Reid risks being accused of abusing his leadership if his decisions on nuclear waste cause problems for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, which are leading states in terms of nuclear waste being stored in cooling pools and on-site dry casks.
"If (Illinois Senators Richard) Durbin and (Barack) Obama want to vote to protect Nevada as perceived by Senator Reid, that is a decision they will have to make," Pray said.
With Democrats just having captured the Senate on Election Day and Reid in line to become majority leader, the Nevadan said on Nov. 8 that bills to help Yucca Mountain would never see the Senate floor.
Two bills that would allow the Department of Energy to make progress at the repository site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, were proposed in the Congress that is coming to an end this month. It is not yet clear what will be reintroduced in the next session.
Another Domenici bill would allow DOE to begin storing nuclear waste on above-ground concrete pads at the Yucca site in 2010, which is at least seven years sooner than the Bush administration has envisioned.
A separate "fix Yucca" bill proposed by the administration would authorize a series of changes in law to enable DOE to obtain permits, land ownership and the necessary financing to build the repository.
Interest groups and industry organizations that deal with nuclear waste are refocusing their Yucca Mountain strategies on a reconstituted Congress.
While the public utility coalition appears to be adopting a combative stance, reaction among other nuclear interests has varied.
The Edison Electric Institute earlier this week signaled a willingness to work with Reid.
"Harry Reid and the Democrats have to be part of the solution," institute President Tom Kuhn said at a news conference Tuesday.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the largest nuclear lobbying organization, has been low key so far, offering no glimpses as to how it plans to operate in the new Congress.
Spokeswoman Trish Conrad said NEI does not share the view that Reid would be abusing power by marshaling his leadership against the repository.
"I am told we have not held that opinion nor do we have plans to do so in the future," Conrad said.
As for calling on Reid to step aside on repository bills, "we are not aware of any precedent of this kind," Conrad said.
---------------------------
KLAS-TV
December 01, 2006
The I-Team Talks With Senator Reid in Searchlight
George Knapp
Investigative Reporter
Nevada U.S. Senator Harry Reid will become the majority leader of the U.S. Senate when the new Congress convenes in January. It is the highest political position ever attained by a Nevadan.
Reid will have his hands full with national issues but knows he needs to take care of business here at home as well. In his first interview since returning to Nevada, Reid invited the I-Team's George Knapp to his home in Searchlight to talk about the future.
You can learn plenty about a person by walking around in their home.
Sen Harry Reid said, "Here, I'll show you the bathroom. This is my prized possession, a signed poster of the Grateful Dead." Harry Reid, a deadhead? Can it be true?
For security reasons, the I-Team cannot show the outside of Reid's home in the small mining town of Searchlight, but we got quite a tour of the inside -- the collection of Searchlight butterflies, the late Denny Dent's two-fisted art attack version of Martin Luther King Dent, likenesses of young Harry from high school days, and an amazing discovery from his high school yearbook where Reid was voted most humorous.
Sen. Harry Reid said, "Here it is, most humorous, right next to the most attractive."
It's doubtful Republican leaders find much to laugh about in Reid's ascension to the heights of political power. He has vowed to put Washington on a much more even keel, to hold hearings into such controversies as warrantless surveillance and the use of torture, and hope that the president keeps his promise to strive for bipartisan accord. The time for ideological purity, he says, is over.
"We have to govern the way we did for a couple hundred years, not on the basis of ideology, but to get things done. Think, it's been ten years since we've had a raise in the minimum wage. That's scary. Forty-seven million Americans don't have health insurance. We have someone trying to destroy social security," Reid said.
Thursday morning, Reid took a call at home from Bill Clinton. As we had coffee at the Searchlight Nugget, he got a call from New York Senator Charles Schumer.
It's a heady time for Harry Reid, but he knows that he's now a lightning rod for Republicans and if he hopes to be reelected in four years, he needs to get things done for Nevada, to bring home the bacon without making it look like pork. One of those priorities is the Nevada Test Site.
Reid says he will be in a much stronger position to get compensation for hundreds of Test Site workers now dying of cancer and other diseases. And while he is not able to kill the Yucca Mountain Project outright, he says he can at least keep it from be fast-tracked. He wants to try and secure water resources including a bigger share of Colorado River water, and get money to help Southern Nevada's infrastructure keep up with our relentless growth.
His public lands bills have already brought tens of millions of dollars to the state for parks and preservation. He knows there are tough battles ahead on the national stage, and that if he wants to stay there, he needs to listen to the little folks back home.
Sen. Harry Reid said, "I am who I am and will do the best I can. It's a new title, but I'm still the same person."
Reid will be sworn in as majority leader on January 4th.
---------------------------
Longview Daily News
November 28, 2006
Reid putting politics before public interest on Yucca Mountain
The midterm elections may have dealt a fatal blow to plans for the nation's first nuclear waste repository near Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a long-time foe of the project, becomes the new majority leader in the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress. The Associated Press reported Friday that Reid convened a conference call with home-state reporters not long after the Nov. 7 election to declare plans for the repository "dead right now."
That's no idle posturing on Reid's part. As majority leader, he will determine what legislation reaches the Senate floor. Reid will be in a position to block annual appropriations bills, cutting off funding for construction.
Could the project lay dormant for however many years the Nevada senator is majority leader, waiting for a more favorable political climate? Possibly, given the billions of dollars and more than two decades of planning already invested in the Yucca site. And, too, the government has no Plan B for keeping its promise to take possession of the some 50,000 tons of nuclear waste now stored at commercial utilities in 31 states, including more than 4,700 tons at the idled Trojan power plant in Rainier.
Still, further delay would prove very costly for American taxpayers, who already owe $243 million in damages for the government's failure to meet the original 1998 deadline for accepting shipments of radioactive waste from the nuclear plants. This nearly quarter of a billion dollars owed commercial utilities is just a fraction of the potential public liability, which has been estimated at about $60 billion.
The earliest possible completion date for the repository now is 2017. Even with the project's completion on that date, which now looks unlikely, taxpayers would continue to pay damages for the next decade.
The government broke a contractual agreement to take possession of this waste in 1998 -- after commercial utilities held up their end of the bargain by collecting more than $20 billion from ratepayers to help fund construction of the waste facility. The lawsuits won't stop coming because the government lacked the competence to meet its contractual obligations, and they certainly won't stop because Sen. Reid assumes a leadership position that allows him to further delay or kill this project.
The senator is putting his political interest ahead of the public interest -- at taxpayers' expense.
---------------------------
Racine Journal Times
December 01, 2006
Committees scheduled to meet next week
Legislative Committee Hearings
3 p.m. Special Committee on Nuclear Power. Boulder City, Nev. Representative Phil Montgomery, Chair.
3-5 p.m. Tour of the Nevada Solar One Concentrating Solar Power Facility. Tuesday,
7 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tour of the Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository, Nye County, Nev. Members of the public wishing to attend the Yucca Mountain tour with the committee must make their own travel arrangements to Nevada and complete the federal Department of Energy's Access Information form necessary to access the Nevada Test site. A copy of this form and other information on the tour is posted at the committee's web site at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lc/3_COMMITTEES/Special%
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 30, 2006
Yucca director downplays project timeline
He says nuclear waste repository unlikely to open before 2020
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- While the Department of Energy has set a target month of March 2017 for Yucca Mountain to begin receiving nuclear waste, the project director said Wednesday it "most probably" won't be opened until at least three years later.
Anticipated lawsuits by Nevada or others challenging a license for the Yucca site will account for the delays, Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said in a presentation to a nuclear studies panel of the National Academies of Science.
"Bottom line is while that (2017) is a best achievable schedule, the most probable schedule is probably in the neighborhood of ... plus three and a half years," Sproat said.
Sproat's prediction did not take into account the possibility of even further delays from budget cuts and other obstacles that newly empowered Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leading critic of the nuclear dump, has said he will put in the Energy Department's path when Democrats take over Congress in January.
Talking with reporters after his presentation, Sproat said he has not calculated and would not guess how the new makeup of Capitol Hill may affect the program, including chances to pass a bill that the Energy Department has said is crucial to keep Yucca Mountain moving forward.
"I just don't know," Sproat said. "It is not my area of speculation how to get legislation through the Hill."
Elsewhere, the department took a step on another front Wednesday when it issued specifications for new multi-purpose canisters in which nuclear waste would be loaded at reactors, transported across the country and stored at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Nuclear industry vendors were invited to fabricate designs based on the specifications for 17.6-foot-long alloy containers that would weigh 54 tons when loaded with radioactive spent fuel. The containers would be 5.5 feet in diameter.
The Energy Department plans to buy 7,300 of the "transportation, aging and disposal" containers. Department official Christopher Kouts declined to estimate total costs, saying that could affect negotiations with vendors.
Sproat's appearance before the nuclear studies board marked the first public showing by a Yucca Mountain manager since the Nov. 7 elections that propelled Democrats into control of the House and Senate.
Speaking to the academy panel, a congressional official said House support for Yucca Mountain generally crosses party lines and is not expected to diminish much.
But in the Senate, Reid will become majority leader with stronger powers to influence the nuclear waste debate, said Kevin Cook, Republican clerk on the House energy and water development subcommittee.
"The reality is Nevada holds a stronger hand now because of Senator Reid's position," Cook said.
The day after the elections, Reid said as majority leader he would not allow bills on the Senate floor that would speed Yucca Mountain development or clear away obstacles.
The Bush administration has proposed a "fix Yucca bill" that would authorize a land withdrawal, revamp the project's financing and broaden DOE powers to claim the necessary permits and manage transportation and toxic waste at the site in order to move the project forward. Sproat testified to the Senate in August there was "zero" chance for DOE to meet deadlines if the "fix Yucca" bill does not pass.
Reid also said he would seek deeper spending cuts in the Yucca program. Congress has approved budgets of between $450 million and $500 million for the project in recent years, which Reid said "are not acceptable to me."
Future spending "will be cut back significantly, that will be for sure," he said.
A congressional official familiar with the budget process said Reid's insistence of deeper cuts may prove persuasive. "If DOE is saying 2017 at the earliest, and Senator Reid is saying never, people are going to ask questions whether it (Yucca Mountain) is still worth spending $500 million a year on," said the official who asked not to be identified.
---------------------------
Investor's Business Daily
November 30, 2006
Hell No, We Won't Glow!
Energy Policy: In declaring the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain dead, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may also have killed a clean source of domestic energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
Yucca Mountain may be the only piece of real estate in Nevada that Reid, his family and campaign contributors haven't profited from. But on his Senate Web site, that's not the reason he gives for his determined opposition to the site intended to house the nation's nuclear waste.
On the site, Reid says Yucca Mountain is "never going to open" because "it threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and people across the United States" through its existence and from the transportation of spent fuel from nuclear power plants to the facility.
Reid pledged after the Nov. 7 election that no bill that helps Yucca Mountain get built would reach the Senate floor and that current funding would also dry up. He wasted no time convening a conference call with home-state reporters declaring Yucca Mountain "dead right now."
Steven Milloy of junkscience.com reports that radiation levels at the Roger Williams statue, between the Rotunda and the Senate Chamber — Reid and his colleagues must pass the statue frequently — shows levels about 65 times what the Environmental Protection Agency plans to allow at Yucca Mountain.
The Yucca storage facility is supposed to hold 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for thousands of years in a single secure site. Spent nuclear fuel rods are now temporarily stored at more than 120 above-ground facilities in 39 states; 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of these existing sites. Each is a terrorist's dream target. But "Not In My Back Yard" Reid thinks that's just fine the way it is.
Yucca Mountain is in Nye County, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It's quite possibly the safest, most geologically stable and most studied place on Earth. It abuts Nellis Air Force base and the Nevada Test Site, where more than 900 nuclear weapons have been detonated.
Yucca opponents have hysterically described the transportation of nuclear waste to Yucca as "mobile Cherno-byls," ignoring that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved casks in which the waste will be transported are virtually indestructible.
Tests carried out at the Sandia National Laboratories have included smashing an 18-wheeler carrying a transport cask into a 700-ton brick wall at a speed of 81 mph, dropping a cask from 2,000 feet onto hard ground and ramming a cask with a 120-ton locomotive traveling at 80 mph.
As for shipping concerns, nuclear waste already is on the roads, rails and barges. Out of 2,700 shipments of waste fuel in the last 30 years over 1.6 million miles, eight accidents (four highway and four rail) have occurred. Not one resulted in a fatality or harmful release of radiation.
How does a power source that reduces the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution threaten our health and safety? In 2004, nuclear power plants eliminated CO2 emissions equivalent to 94% of U.S. auto emissions from 138 million vehicles.
Were it not for nuclear power, which produced 19.4% of our electricity last year, the air we breathe would have contained 3.43 million more tons of sulfur dioxide, an additional 1.11 million tons of nitrogen oxide and 696 million more tons of carbon dioxide.
By 2030, U.S. energy demand is expected to increase by a third, demand that will not be met by tilting at windmills or harvesting switch grass. And unless we can safely store spent fuel rods at Yucca Mountain, neither will it be met by the nuclear power industry.
We can worry about imaginary threats of nuclear energy or the real dangers of fossil fuel pollution. An energy plan that does not involve continued and even increased use of nuclear power is no plan at all. And even if we closed all nuclear plants tomorrow, the waste problem would remain.
We need nuclear power. We need Yucca Mountain. Let's split atoms, not hairs.
---------------------------
UPI
November 30, 2006
Analysis: U.S. far from nuclear waste home
By Ben Lando
UPI Energy Correspondent
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- A longtime researcher at the proposed U.S. nuclear waste repository in Nevada says regulators should get a chance to decide whether it's fit to hold the country's nuclear energy and weapons byproduct.
Opponents, meanwhile, say the troubled project will always be a risk to public safety and see an opportune time to kill it.
Michael Voegele has spent nearly three decades as a researcher and geologist at the Yucca Mountain Project. He spits out scientific statistics as easy as he drives the U.S. Energy Department vehicle up and down the rocky trails of the mountain.
At the crest, he points out surrounding mountain ranges, fault lines and ancient volcanoes. Inside the north entrance of the five-mile-long tunnel connecting to what could be cavernous homes to at least 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, Voegele identifies rock formations and explains why it will protect the surrounding area if anything goes wrong inside.
"I'm telling you, you can look at this as hard as you want and there's nothing better than Yucca Mountain," he said, adding "if Yucca is licensed."
Most of Voegele's experience working on nuclear waste issues has been at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas and long a contender among many possible final resting places of the 2,000 tons of highly radioactive waste the 103 U.S. nuclear reactors create each year.
"The Yucca Mountain site was the best performing site we were looking at," Voegele said.
The National Academy of Sciences recommended in the 1950s that nuclear waste should be buried deep, away from both disturbances above ground and water below that could turn a leak to a catastrophe.
The search was on and more than 30 sites around the country were identified as potential geologic repositories. That was whittled down further until in the 1980s, Congress put its weight behind Yucca Mountain. In 2002, it was officially declared the repository.
But that was prior to any licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- which has yet to occur.
Opposition to the site is strong both in Nevada and around the country. The state's senior U.S. Senator, Harry Reid, will become majority leader when the new Congress is sworn in and he vows to block Yucca.
He's been able to slash its budget enough that the Energy Department's most optimistic opening date is in 2017, nearly 20 years after it was supposed to open.
Opponents have filed lawsuits -- including the state and anti-nuclear groups -- and capitalized on scientist mistakes and allegations of corner-cutting.
While the department prepares its NRC application, it awaits a ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is sure to spark more lawsuits.
The project is "far, far, far from a done deal," said Michelle Boyd, legislative director for Public Citizen, which is one of many groups that successfully challenged the EPA's health and safety standards for the site.
She said a geologic repository will be necessary to house nuclear waste, but Yucca isn't it.
"We should be setting standards and finding a site that meets those standards," Boyd said.
The nuclear industry says taking the waste off their property is crucial if new nuclear plants are to be built. Alternately, creating secure onsite storage, either temporary or permanently, is a plan backed by some Yucca foes.
"With Sen. Reid as Majority Leader, it would be a great time to just kill this project," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. He, like many opponents, say the Energy Department and the nuclear industry have disregarded or lobbied to change safety guidelines in order to make Yucca work.
Of the many issues still to be decided is how to transport the nuclear waste from current or decommissioned nuclear reactors and military sites around the country to Yucca Mountain. Railway is most likely, although no route has been chosen.
Aside from the science of whether Yucca Mountain will be a safe repository, Voegele and detractors of the project dispute many unknowns: whether an earthquake along the fault lines in the area will ever occur; if the volcanic activity in the area will erupt; or whether the limited rainfall the area receives each year will seep through the rocks, pick up the toxic burial, and drip down into the area drinking water.
Voegele, now a contractor with the Energy Department, says opponents should clear the way for the NRC application and let regulators decide if the site meets the standard for such a repository, holding the country's nuclear waste indefinitely.
--(Comments to energy@upi.com)
---------------------------
AScribe
November 30, 2006
Berkeley Lab Earth Sciences Leader Gudmundur 'Bo' Bodvarsson Dies
BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 30 (AScribe Newswire) -- Gudmundur "Bo" Bodvarsson, a hydrogeologist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) since 1980, and director of the Laboratory's Earth Sciences Division since 2001, passed away on November 29, 2006, at Kaiser Oakland Hospital. He was 54.
"We are all saddened by the untimely loss of Bo Bodvarsson," said Berkeley Lab Director Steven Chu. "His energy, enthusiasm and commitment to the Earth Sciences Division and to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at large were a wonderful example for the entire Berkeley Lab family. He was a pioneer in many aspects of the management of the division, from the promotion of a safety culture to the strengthening of the intellectual depth and reach of Earth Sciences. On a personal note, I especially admired his honest and straightforward way of dealing with all people and how he was carrying out his vision for the Division."
Said Ernest Majer, a long-time Berkeley Lab colleague and deputy director of the Earth Sciences Division, "Having known Bo for nearly 30 years I am deeply saddened by his passing and aware of the tremendous loss at a professional as well personal level. There was not a person I know who was a stronger advocate for his people and who fought harder for what he believed. He almost single-handedly elevated the quality of the science and work within the Earth Sciences Division. His vitality, insight and personality will be sorely missed."
Bodvarsson was born on November 11, 1952, in Ljosafoss, Iceland, a town of about 100 people. He came to this country in 1972 to attend Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he earned his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics in 1974 - graduating Summa Cum Laude. He earned a Master's degree in civil engineering at North Carolina State University in 1976 and his Ph.D. in hydrogeology in 1981 from UC Berkeley.
Bodvarsson joined the Berkeley Lab staff in 1980 while he was still a graduate research assistant at Cal. Prior to that, he'd worked as a research engineer at the Icelandic Building Research Institute.
Said Paul Witherspoon, a retired scientist who brought Bodvarsson to Berkeley Lab and was his mentor, "Bo was a gifted individual and one of the hardest working graduate students I ever had at Berkeley. He carried this approach with him in pursuing his career at the Lab and developed into a disciplined scientist. No problem in his field was too tough to handle. The growth and success of ESD stands as a tribute to his remarkable abilities."
As a scientist, Bodvarsson made his mark by leading the development of a 3-D site-scale model of Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the proposed site of a permanent underground repository for high-level radioactive waste. This model was used to characterize hydrogeologic conditions inside the mountain under a wide range of different scenarios.
Bodvarsson and his research group also helped develop a hydrological model of Yucca Mountain that worked on a much finer scale than the original site model. This hydrological model was used to accurately calculate seepage into waste emplacement tunnels under various hydrogeologic conditions.
Said long-time Berkeley Lab colleague, Sally Benson, "Bo was an outstanding leader of the Yucca Mountain Project. His passion, drive and scientific leadership made his team of hydrologists, geochemists and geophysicists star performers. That had to be one of the most challenging earth sciences problems to work on in the world, and no one did it better than Bo and the team he led."
Bodvarsson is survived by two sons, Daniel Bodvarsson, 28, who lives in North Carolina, and Erik Ma, 7, who lives in Berkeley. Information on funeral arrangements and/or memorial services will be forthcoming.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our Website at www.lbl.gov/ .
--CONTACT: Lynn Yarris, science writer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 510-486-5375
--NOTE: An html version of this release with a downloadable high-res image of Bo Bodvarsson is available at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/ESD-Bodvarsson-obit.html
---------------------------
New Times
November 30, 2006
The Devil and the details
On the nearby Pecho Coast, American nuclear energy effectively died but if the neo-cons eye a renaissance, it must begin at Diablo Canyon
By Patrick M. Klemz
Twelve years before the accident at Three Mile Island, world-renowned nature photographer Ansel Adams penned a chilling statement.
"Diablo Canyon was prophetically named," Adams wrote in the Feb. 1967 edition of the Sierra Club Bulletin. "It grew as a contentious issue ... to sow doubt and dissension."
The immortality of his words belied the simple context of their use at the time Adams was referring to a disagreement within the Sierra Club of whether to endorse the plant's current location and save the Nipomo Dunes from utility development.
Even among environmentalists of the era, atomic energy hardly proved a robust bone of contention. Stacked up next to smoke-bellowing antiquities like Morro Bay or dystopian installations like Moss Landing, a well-placed nuclear plant symbolized progressive energy policy. By the time the first Diablo Canyon reactor became operational in 1984, that perspective had completely eroded.
"Trust seems to be what shifted," explained historian John Wills, author of Conservation Fallout. "In the 1970s, there was a realization, for the first time, of nuclear projects moving into people's backyards."
Escalating skepticism throughout the decade lunged west after an outburst of protests at the Seaside nuclear plant in New Hampshire hit the front page of every major newspaper from Boston to San Francisco. Late in 1977, at nearby Rancho el Chorro, several California direct-action organizations formed the Abalone Alliance modeled after New England's anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance and threw a gauntlet into the white sands of Avila Beach. On remote seaside ranching land, accessible only through eight miles of perilously winding canyon, Pacific Gas and Electric was building the world's most advanced nuclear facility.
Pennsylvania's narrow strafe with atomic calamity in 1979 emulsified conservationists growing increasingly jaded toward the nuclear industry's promises. Membership in the Abalone Alliance swelled. Forty thousand activists converged on San Luis Obispo later that year, launching a string of rallies and demonstrations that eventually led to the boisterous arrest of nearly 2,000 nonviolent protestors in 1981.
"It was pretty wonderful that the issue was getting recognition nationwide," said local activist Liz Apfelberg, arrested along with her husband and son during a 1981 blockade. "We really felt more hope as more people showed up."
Challenges in the judicial arena proved less successful, but nevertheless progressed long after the dissolution of the Abalone Alliance.
Despite the Alliance's efforts, Diablo Canyon's full 2,200-megawatt payload surged into the California power grid on Aug. 26, 1985. Because of the Alliance's efforts paired with news of an unimaginable Ukrainian disaster later that winter Diablo was the last nuclear plant commissioned in the United States.
'Nuclear renaissance'
In an Oct. 22 interview on the C-SPAN program Newsmakers, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dave Klein offered concrete federal recognition to a secret circulating around Washington since January: Nuclear power is officially back on the table. Prior to 2006, the issue remained merely a dim hope among energy hardliners like Republican Sen. Pete Domencini of New Mexico.
Calling 2006 the dawn of a "nuclear renaissance," industry leaders spent all summer pointing to revisiting atomic power as a palpable solution to peak oil and other global energy terrors. Unlike other large-scale alternative energy proposals, a detailed protocol for the installation of fission reactors already existed.
The buzz seemed to indicate that licensing applications for new facilities inside the United States as many as 29 may receive serious consideration for the first time since Three Mile Island spooked the issue into submission. Klein didn't disagree.
"I do believe that we will see license applications in 2007 and we are looking we have expressions of intent from a lot of the utilities indicating up as I said, up to about 29 new nuclear plants," Klein said. "So I believe that there will be a renaissance in the United States."
Last fall, Constellation Energy discussed the possible construction of a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant on the Chesapeake Bay. Some analysts scoffed, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission didn't, and a veritable deluge of licensing proposals followed.
The still-subtle debate even reached the Central Valley in August when the Fresno Utility Commission looked far outside the box for solutions to the agency's myriad of fiscal woes. Commission chairman John Hutson proposed studying the feasibility of placing a 400- or 600-megawatt reactor next to a wastewater treatment facility west of town. If pursued, the new plant would employ treated graywater to cool the small reactor, effectively trading sewage for revenue from PG&E and other utility companies.
The revelation arrived at about the same time a crippling heat wave threatened rolling blackouts across California. Based on the industry standard of 1,000 people per megawatt of production a figure recently challenged as an overreach the plant would ideally solve two major bugaboos in the San Joaquin Valley. Hutson estimated that utility rates for Fresnans would drop to 2 cents per kilowatt, down from the 17-cent rate for PG&E juice.
"We have some of the highest poverty rates in the nation here in the Valley. It's Appalachia west," Hutson said. "The project would spark growth while providing an independent energy solution."
However, before municipalities, utilities, and power interests start drafting plans, one major issue requires attention: What do you do with fuel after the reactor milks it dry?
Carter's ass or a hole in the ground
Members of the nuclear community often blame the Carter administration for present shortfalls in uranium recycling technology. Early in his presidency, Carter banned reprocessing in the United States due to the fear that it contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Reagan, of course, relegalized it, but not before the winds of public opinion showed a strong shift away from nuclear energy.
Today, many advocates for atomic power seek to again explore breeder reactors which recycle degraded Uranium-238 into weapons-grade Plutonium-239 as an alternative to entombment at a national repository. Scientists can then separate out the more volatile breeder product into recycled uranium "yellow-cake." The industry often points to France as an operational model.
According to physicist Arjun Makhijani, conventional wisdom within the scientific community places breeder technology far from the scope of economic plausibility. In addition to requiring large subsidies to get reprocessing facilities off the ground, yellow-cake is, plainly and simply, far more expensive than fresh-mined uranium.
"It's a failed technology," claimed Makhijani, who pointed out that the French government closed its flagship reprocessing program due to horrible inefficiency. "It would require 2,000 breeder reactors operating for 50 years to produce the fuel needed in America.
"It's basically impossible."
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the chief lobby representing commercial nuclear power, often presents scientific literature stumping for uranium recycling. Still, a group spokesman failed to produce a physicist willing to go on the record in support of the controversial technology as of press time.
"Despite the talk surrounding breeder reactors, there's not a lot of meat to the bone," Nuclear Watch director Jay Coughlan commented. "The emperor has no clothes."
Advocates of reprocessing replied that the rising price of uranium combined with reactor evolution abroad that allows plants to bypass the costly preparation phases in fuel recycling is making the process more economically viable.
"In Scandinavia, they have amazing new reactor technology," the Fresno Utility Commission's Hutson said. "The cell phone in your hand is more advanced than the communications equipment on Apollo 11. Our technology is just atrophied in this area."
Whether reprocessing constitutes a promising new chapter in the energy policy saga or just another hydrogen fuel cell, the reactor network necessary to make recycling possible on a large scale doesn't exist yet. So, instead, the immediate future of nuclear power stands mired in the scorched home sands of the military industrial complex.
One hundred miles outside of Las Vegas, the Department of Energy has drained more than $9 billion to build a tunnel, a lab, and a pile of controversy. A process that's proven as thorny as the facility's botanical namesake, the construction of the Yucca Mountain national repository is already years overdue with no apparent end to the delays. A healthy regiment of Southern Nevadans perpetually raises objections and is less than enthused with the concept of their backyard being transformed into a salvage pile for the gnarliest of industrial byproduct.
"This is the wrong site," asserted Jon Sommers, aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "The science is neither sound nor complete.
"This facility will never be built."
Due to neo-conservative control in Washington, plans at Yucca earned expedition throughout the 109th Congress. As a measure of short-term relief, New Mexico's Domencini authored a bill this fall that would finance the construction of a dry cask storage facility in the desert basin while the Department of Energy excavates its atomic catacombs 1,000 feet below the mountain.
"We must get Yucca Mountain back on track. We need Yucca Mountain," Domencini commented during a Nov. 13 speech before the American Nuclear Society. "In September, I introduced a bill addressing Yucca Mountain that I hope will stand as the foundation for a debate in the next Congress."
Of that, there seems little doubt. However, even if on-site dry cask storage somehow manages to evade stalling litigation, Yucca Mountain isn't exactly a magic bullet solution to growing fuel stockpiles. At Diablo Canyon always the quintessential example spent fuel could linger in the Central Coast past mid-century. Since the DOE formulated its waiting lists based on the date reactors went operational, Diablo Canyon literally occupies the last spot in the queue.
Then, there's the proclamation from certain Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Reid, that they will never suffer a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain.
To prepare for the long wait or worse PG&E secured the licensing to build a complex of heavy-duty dry storage casks in 2002. Set to occupy a nearby hillside, the cask facility commenced construction earlier this year. The utility planned to begin emptying a nearly brimming storage pool by the end of the decade.
Then, someone sued.
The two faces of terrorism
Straight out of the age of the Abalone Alliance, Mothers for Peace an anti-war, anti-nuclear group founded during the Vietnam Era joined forces with the Sierra Club and former SLO county supervisor Peg Pinard against the Diablo storage project. Claiming that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission circumvented environmental analysis delving into the possible outfall from a terrorist attack on the facility, the plaintiffs challenged the validity of permits to construct the dry cask bunker, and won.
In June, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found the NRC deficient in certain aspects of its pre-licensing analysis. Calling the ruling a procedural caveat in the federal regulatory bureaucracy, PG&E promptly forged onward with its plans to construct the facility. Mothers for Peace, who firmly interpreted the Ninth's decision as an active injunction, called upon the NRC and PG&E to take the judicial requirements to heart.
The group primarily objected to what it views as flagrant safety shortfalls in the project and a lack of public input in the licensing process.
"We're talking about 130 casks all in a row," Mothers for Peace's Jill ZaMek said. "They could construct a berm or spread the casks out, but they decided to keep building. They don't have the legal license to do it."
Diablo Canyon's Gerald Strickland, project manager for the dry cask bunker, described studies conducted by the utility that deflated concerns that a hijacked plane could spring a radioactive leak. He also defended PG&E's decision to cluster the casks.
"By having them together within a facility, it's easier to protect them," Strickland said. "When you license a facility for storage, you're required to protect it the same as the plant itself."
Instead of revising its plans, the utility appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. On Nov. 21, the justices granted a 13-day extension to the Dec. 2 deadline for briefs filed in the case. In addition to the NRC and PG&E, the most powerful nuclear lobby in Washington NEI is expected to file an amicus brief on behalf of the industry as a whole.
PG&E alpha lawyer Gene Schearr backed the assertions of the NRC that the regulatory body carried out more-than-adequate terrorism analysis. The utility also holds firm that public involvement during the licensing process fulfilled all National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) disclosure requirements that do not jeopardize national security in the post-9/11 climate.
"The NRC has an extensive process of review," Schearr said. "They have received a lot of feedback on the matter. The challenges constitute obstruction tactics under the guise of an environmental statute."
Predictions of legal proliferation took little time to materialize.
The Ninth recently winnowed through a lawsuit by the Bay Area Tri-Valley CARES to find a grievance worthy of legal objection. In a case remarkably similar to the Diablo ruling, the court determined that the Department of Energy also failed to fully analyze the impact of a terrorist attack on the new biological weapons lab of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Nuke-watchers monitoring the facility claimed it holds up to 1,540 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium enough for 150 fission bombs in addition to large amounts of enriched uranium and tritium (the spooky stuff that gives the fusion bomb its oomph). Soon, UC scientists at Livermore will add biowarfare matter to the compound's deadly inventory.
At the behest of Homeland Security, the DOE designed the proposed laboratory to push the boundaries of America's defense against pandemic-spreading agents in the hands of terrorists. Activists responded with complaints that adding a bio lab only made the aging complex more attractive to terrorists. The concept: a terrorist strike against a facility built and operated to combat the effects of a terrorist strike.
"In terms of terrorism, Livermore is vulnerable," Tri-Valley CARES director Marylia Kelley said. "It's already quite an attractive target."
"This is the best-protected bio lab in the country," LLNL spokesman Steve Wampler retorted. "This facility has always been at the forefront of detection and defense."
Chiefly, however, the Livermore activists became embittered toward an institution that Diablo Canyon protestors knew all too well: question-and-unanswers sessions conducted by federal regulators.
"This is the age of terrorism, and we're always enveloped in these threats," Nuclear Watch's Coughlan said. "The regulatory branch is talking out of both sides of its mouth."
Delving into the secrecy policy
For the purposes of this report, both the NRC and DOE refused to comment on the peace-group lawsuits or the matters involved.
"We're in the process of evaluating [the Ninth decision]," NRC regional administrator Bruce Mallett told locals at a mid-summer safety review in San Luis Obispo.
The regulatory body's statement hasn't changed a word, but the commission continues to offer assurances. Still, PG&E spent the time and money to appeal the ruling. Utility lawyer Schearr and his team cited an "immense practical importance of the issue to PG&E, to the entire nuclear industry, and indeed to all industries regulated by federal agencies subject to NEPA."
So sans an active injunction and if the ruling only mandates an easily conducted additional study what's the holdup? Additionally, since the Ninth's ruling never actually stopped the construction of the dry storage casks, why risk a clarification of that issue by the Supreme Court? The perceived gap in rationality behind PG&E's actions sparked speculation among the peace groups.
"The reason everybody [applies] their theories is because it doesn't make sense," said Mothers for Peace attorney Diane Curran.
Despite heavy language used in the appeal documents, PG&E's attorney referred to the lawsuit as "less than a landmark case." He agreed that elements of the NEPA public disclosure requirements constituted the main tear in perspective between the utility and the activists.
"The NRC determined additional reviews under NEPA would endanger national security," Schearr said. "The agency's NEPA reviews are surplus ... what they've done is actually quite well documented."
Members of Mothers for Peace and Tri-Valley CARES, who are watching this potentially precedent-setting lawsuit as carefully as they are their own attributed the utility's hesitance to conduct the study to the underlying fear that subsequent public review would spark newfound awareness. If the court forced the NRC to publicly state the environmental impact of a successful terrorist attack, the frightening reality could endanger the nuclear renaissance, they assert. Activists hastened to predict the resurrection of the Abalone Alliance.
"NEPA is the one area where they have to involve the public," Curran said. "They don't want the truth to come out. It's almost an inevitable conclusion."
"Since the Abalone Alliance, we've seen the decay of the doomsday image to the point where it's almost a fait accompli," historian Wills added. "There could be protests again."
PG&E's Strickland disagreed that the situation bears the potential for a major disaster.
"If there were an attack, it wouldn't be like a plant meltdown. There is nothing around the casks to volatize [the fuel], no mechanism to spread it across a large area," the engineer said. "The anti-nuclear folks know this."
For 20 years, Diablo Canyon's sparkling performance and safety record has stockpiled street cred for the industry. But the quarrelsome issue of what to do with spent materials impacts a safe plant as much as it does a perilous one. For the first time since the lawsuit began last year, PG&E officials admitted that licensing entanglements could threaten plant operations since the storage pool is practically full.
In one of its few actual statements, the NRC illustrated concerns that NEPA studies could provide terrorists with an attack blueprint. Both peace organizations said that they would accept a classified security appendix.
"We're not asking the government to publish the full review," responded Kelley of Tri-Valley CARES. "We're asking if a terrorist got access to dangerous material and if that material leaked out, what would the impact be?"
Whichever side one takes, the Mothers for Peace lawsuit jeopardizes the modus operandi of multiple regulatory bodies when dealing with terrorism: the "trust us, we know what we're doing" mantra.
For good or ill, everything hinges on the Supreme Court decision.
SMUD happens
The move to the Supreme Court also comes at a dubious time for PG&E.
The utility stirred up quite a bit of discord during this election season by launching an $11-million campaign to prevent the annexation of Yolo County into the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). PG&E told voters that the value of its infrastructure in the community weighed in at $520 million, and, therefore, Yolo and Sacramento County ratepayers would experience a hefty increase to bankroll the startup costs. Whether or not that assessment proves accurate an independent report suggested otherwise PG&E declared a value of only $64 million for tax purposes.
PG&E stood behind its assessment even after the independent review appraised the infrastructure much lower.
Yolo County voters split over the issue and the PG&E-sponsored campaign managed to convince a majority of Sacramento voters. Certain politicians cried a hearty foul, and now the corporation faces an official inquiry. Anti-nuke activists stepped forward to call greater monitoring of the utility's affairs a matter of moral imperative.
"Their campaign was all about intimidation, lies, and fear," Woodland councilman Art Pimentel said. "I don't know why, as a state, we allow them to get away with so much."
The grid itself provides much motivation to support the energy company. During the August heat wave, Diablo Canyon's production alone made the difference between an alert status and the first rolling blackouts since Enron played marionette with the deregulated market.
"Solar and wind can't replace this as base load power," plant spokesman Jeff Lewis said, looking up at the hillside above the plant. "People don't realize that."
Above, an inconceivable amount of electricity passed through a Byzantine network of industrial conduits, filling the air with buzzes and snaps before hopping a steel tether on its long journey to the hungry Central Valley. An angry swell broke chaotically on the rocky shoreline below and a torrid wind battered the sun-deprived valley. The long drive back to Avila promised the steady scorn of thousands of cryptic-looking live oaks almost as unsettling as the approaching nuclear quandary.
Diablo Canyon was indeed prophetically named. Staff Writer Patrick M. Klemz can be reached at pklemz@newtimesslo.com.
---------------------------
Tri-City Herald
November 30, 2006
Hanford considered for recycling project
By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer
The Tri-City Development Council will study whether Hanford might play a role in recycling fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors, a very early step toward a possible return to production at the nuclear reservation.
The study will include a look at whether Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility could be restarted to do testing for the recycling program.
The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that Hanford is one of 11 sites across the nation that will be considered for the project. The first step is a study of the sites with $16 million in grants plus $4 million held in reserve.
DOE plans to decide the individual amounts and award the grants in early 2007, then give groups 90 days to prepare their studies.
At Hanford, TRIDEC will take the lead in preparing a broad look at land, buildings and other services and facilities for the proposed fuel recycling program. The Columbia Basin Consulting Group, which has pushed for a restart of FFTF with Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver, will work with TRIDEC, preparing a siting study on using the research reactor and related buildings for testing.
Both were competing for the grants, and "they brought complementary expertise to the table," said DOE spokesman Craig Stevens.
"As our economy grows, so will the need for a reliable, emissions-free energy generation," Dennis Spurgeon, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in a statement. "Nuclear energy can help meet that need and GNEP can do it in a way that maximizes the benefit of nuclear fuel while minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation."
DOE will consider a joint or separate sites for a Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center and the Advanced Burner Reactor to demonstrate fuel recycling on a commercial scale.
The fuel treatment center would take used nuclear fuel from commercial reactors and separate usable uranium and other radioactive isotopes to be used in the demonstration Advanced Burner Reactor.
That reactor would produce power and consume long-lived isotopes that would otherwise have to be disposed of at the nation's repository for high-level nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nev. It could reduce the amount of waste by 80 percent.
While spent nuclear fuel is recycled all over the world, the plan proposed by DOE would keep plutonium, uranium, americium and other radioactive isotopes together to make it difficult to handle and less attractive to terrorists, Stevens said.
TRIDEC's proposal for the siting study calls for looking at largely unused nuclear facilities related to the FFTF, including the 28,000 square-foot Maintenance and Storage Facility and the 250,000-square-foot Fuels and Materials Examination Facility.
The nearby Energy Northwest site with the Columbia Generating Station is included in the proposal. Energy Northwest has significant capabilities in power transmission and water and is a certified Nuclear Regulatory Commission site.
The land between FFTF and Energy Northwest could be proposed as a site for any new facilities, such as an 800-megawatt Advanced Burner Reactor. Buildings with nuclear handling equipment and shielding in the 300 Area just north of Richland also could be considered for the project.
TRIDEC would lead a consortium that includes not only the Columbia Basin Consulting Group of Richland, but also Washington Group International, Areva and Battelle.
Columbia Basin Consulting Group is proposing using FFTF for testing, then transitioning the reactor to the production of isotopes for medical and industrial use. It likely could not be substituted for the proposed Advanced Burner Reactor.
TRIDEC and the consulting group are committed to working together for the good of the Tri-Cities and the nation, despite initially filing competing proposals for the siting grant, according to TRIDEC and Oliver.
"TRIDEC prepared a true community proposal with the local support needed to win approval by the Department of Energy -- and it's a success," Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said in a statement. "This is terrific news for the Tri-Cities."
A critical element of the study will be a comprehensive outreach program to the public in the Tri-Cities and the state to discuss advances in technology and the opportunity to meet critical needs of the nation and the world, according to TRIDEC.
The siting study will address technical issues and community choice to meet DOE requirements, said TRIDEC president Carl Adrian.
Locating the recycling facility at Hanford is likely to be a major political issue in the 2008 elections in Oregon and Washington, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.
The project would create new high-level liquid radioactive waste at Hanford to be added to the 53 million gallons of untreated liquid waste already there and could lead to thousands of truckloads of spent nuclear fuel traveling through Portland or Spokane to reach the site, he said.
With Yucca Mountain mired in controversy and opposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the new Senate majority leader, fuel trucked to Hanford might never leave, Pollet said.
Restarting FFTF raises safety issues, he said. Liquid sodium used to cool the reactor already has been drained as part of a planned shutdown.
Besides Hanford, the other study sites are: Atomic City, Idaho; Idaho National Laboratory; Barnwell, S.C.; Savannah River National Laboratory, S.C.; Hobbs, N.M.; Roswell, N.M.; Morris, Ill.; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tenn.; Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ky.; and Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ohio.
---------------------------
Carlsbad Current Argus
November 30, 2006
Energy alliance among DOE grant recipients
By Kyle Marksteiner
CARLSBAD — The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance is one of 11 entities selected to receive up to a total of $16 million in grants to conduct detailed siting studies for integrated spent fuel recycling facilities under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative, according to a press release from the Department of Energy.
The DOE will award the grants early next year after negotiations with the entities are com-pleted. GNEP is part of President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative, which calls for develop-ment of reprocessing technologies as part of a long-term effort to expand the use of nuclear power.
The alliance, a limited liability company formed from the two counties and the cities of Carls-bad and Hobbs, has a partnership with Washington Group International and Areva. The alliance has suggested a spot almost exactly between Hobbs and Carlsbad as a potential location.
Of the 11 sites selected, six are currently owned and operated by the DOE. Another New Mex-ico site, sponsored by EnergySolutions LLC, was selected near Roswell. The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance site is not a DOE location. Participants all requested different amounts of money in their application, and the DOE will now be deciding how much to allocate.
DOE sites will not require as much money, and Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest estimated that the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance will receive between $2 and $3 million dollars for its site study.
Forrest said he was not surprised that 11 sites were picked. Initial information had indicated that four or five sites would be selected.
"They kind of made it clear a couple months ago," he said. "The funding on all these sites wasn't that expensive. They decided to give everyone a fair chance."
Fourteen applications were submitted, according to the DOE, and 12 were selected to receive a comprehensive merit review. Two of the 12 recently decided to work together.
"As our economy grows, so will the need for reliable, emissions-free energy generation. Nu-clear energy can help meet that need and GNEP can do it in a way that maximizes the benefit of nuclear fuel while minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation," said DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon in a prepared statement. "That is why we are pleased that so many communities across the country are interested in hosting the initial facilities necessary to support this exciting project."
The grantees, according to the DOE, will perform detailed siting studies related to hosting a consolidated fuel treatment center and/or an advanced burner reactor.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R- N.M., currently chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee with funding jurisdiction over DOE programs. Domenici, according to his office, included $20 million for the site studies in the FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill — the remaining funds after the $16 million is spent will be held in reserve to potentially fund sup-plemental activities.
"I have long believed that nuclear energy must be a major part of the long term solution to our nation's energy needs," Domenici said in a press release Wednesday. "As we proceed with a nuclear energy strategy, we must include careful consideration of how to address waste. GNEP will provide us with a mid-term solution which will give us a way to reuse the energy not con-sumed in spent fuel and reduce the toxicity of the material that needs permanent disposal in Yucca Mountain."
Domenici said he was pleased that two New Mexico sites were included, noting that the state is a leader in energy production.
"Placing a facility in New Mexico would make a lot of sense and is a natural partner for our fa-cilities in the state," he said.
According to the DOE, information generated from the detailed siting studies of non-DOE sites is expected to address matters including site and nearby land uses, demographics, ecological communities, historical and cultural resources, geology, weather, and permitting requirements. Information requirements for DOE sites are more limited due to the availability of previous stud-ies. The information may also be used in the environmental impact statements that will evaluate each proposed GNEP site. At the conclusion of the EIS, according to the DOE, the Energy De-partment will make decisions about whether to move forward with the facilities, and where to locate them.
The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance's business partners, Washington Group and Areva, will begin the process of making sure that the selected land is suitable, said state Rep. John Heaton, D-Carlsbad.
A lot of what will happen next, even locally, depends on the will of U.S. Congress. Control of both congressional houses will be turned over to the Democratic Party next year, so the funding and direction of GNEP may change over time.
"A lot will have to do with the attitude of the new Congress," Forrest said. "I think the good news is that there will be about ten people running for president and each one of them will have to have an energy plan. And GNEP is the right solution."
Upcoming phases in the project include expressions of interest filed by private companies.
"But right now we're still in the ball game, and that's good news as far as I'm concerned," Forrest said. "Its one of the many processes we're going through toward the final decision."
"I'm excited about the fact that we're included," Heaton said. "I think we have an excellent site and tremendous possibilities for this project. One of the great needs is for us to adopt alternative energy solutions, and nuclear power will ultimately have to fill the gap of our energy needs."
Heaton said members of both political parties understand the need for alternative energies.
"I don't know how elaborate GNEP will ultimately be," he said. "But the basic premise is cer-tainly something worth persuing."
Gov. Bill Richardson, in an interview in October, said he was in favor of looking into spent fuel recycling facilities in New Mexico, if certain conditions, including substantial state oversight and some specific limitations and regulations, are met.
"I'm willing to listen to the particulars," he said.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D- N.M., called GNEP an "interesting proposal" in an October interview.
"I do think we need a little more analysis on this," he said. "This administration (Bush) just sort of came up with GNEP without any input from Congress. They're trying to move too quickly. The truth is this is a 20 or 30 year project and this administration goes out of office in two years. They are going to have to have a buy-in."
Bingaman called for more hearings to discuss and explain GNEP.
"There's some skepticism among experts about whether or not the technology is sufficiently developed," he said. "Reprocessing is a new technology that's not really been proven."
RAIL: The sites participating in the DOE study are: Hobbs, sponsored by the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance; Atomic City, Ind., sponsored by EnergySolutions LLC; Barnwell, S.C., sponsored by EnergySolutions LLC; Hanford, Wash., sponsored by Tri-City Industrial Development; Idaho National Laboratory, sponsored by Regional Development Alliance, Inc.; Morris, Ill., sponsored by General Electric; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tenn., sponsored by Community Reuse; Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ky., sponsored by Paducah Uranium Plant Asset Utilization Inc.; Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Okla., sponsored by Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence LLC; Roswell, sponsored by EnergySolutions LLC; and Savannah River National Laboratory, sponsored by the Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield coun-ties.
RAIL: An advanced nuclear fuel-recycling center contains facilities where usable uranium and transuranics are separated from spent light water reactor fuel for use in producing new fuel that can be reused in a power reactor. An advanced recycling reactor is a fast reactor that would dem-onstrate the ability to reuse and consume materials recovered from spent nuclear fuel. Both facili-ties could be located at the same site.
---------------------------
KOB-TV
November 30, 2006
New Mexico sites win grants to study nuclear fuel recycling
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The US Energy Department has chosen Hobbs, Roswell and nine other sites around the country to receive as much as $16 million in grants to study whether they should house a nuclear fuel recycling facility.
Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance in Hobbs and Energy Solutions in Roswell will do detailed studies related to possibly hosting the Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center and-or the Advanced Burner Reactor.
One facility would separate usable uranium from spent reactor fuel to produce new fuel to be used in a power reactor.
The other would be a fast reactor to reuse and consume materials recovered from spent nuclear fuel. The fuel would otherwise have to be disposed of in a geologic repository such as the one proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
---------------------------
Dallas Morning News
November 30, 2006
Letters:
Dems cleaning up ...
Re: "Reid plans to fend off Nevada nuclear dump – He can't kill project outright, but he vows to yank funding," Saturday news story.
Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, using his new power as Senate majority leader, has vowed to stop the progress of the nation's nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in his home state of Nevada. Thanks to Mr. Reid, the nation's 50,000 tons of nuclear waste can remain in temporary, aboveground storage, where it is less of a threat to the environment and safe from terrorists who might use it to construct a dirty bomb. Thank God the Democrats are back in power.
Mac Smith
Dallas
---------------------------
Common Dreams
November 30, 2006
Coalition Urges Rejection of Big Rock Nuke Site Park
Numerous Michigan Natural Resource Treasures Without Nuclear Waste Would be Better Choices for Limited Trust Fund Dollars
WASHINGTON - November 30 - A coalition of environmental groups today urged the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund Board to reject a plan to purchase the former Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant site near Charlevoix.
The continued storage of high-level atomic waste at the site, its legacy of radioactive contamination, and the availability of numerous high-quality natural lands competing for limited Trust Fund dollars should be factors when the Board votes on the proposal Wednesday, Dec. 6.
"There are more than 160 applicants for trust fund dollars, many for spectacular lands including sand dunes, wetlands, riverfront and lakefront property and forests — none of which have nuclear waste issues," said Hugh McDiarmid Jr., spokesman for the Michigan Environmental Council. "We ask the board members not to shortchange these applicants to invest in a site that will have dangerous radioactive waste for the foreseeable future, and that has a dubious environmental legacy of contamination."
The 351-acre tract would cost the state $3 million this year and an additional $16.3 million in future years. It surrounds a 100-acre zone forbidden to the public because of its proximity to 64 tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods patrolled by armed guards.
All told, the request is among $63 million worth of projects under consideration for the $35 million available.
Although Big Rock has been declared clean by contractors hired by the property's owner, Consumers Energy Co., questions remain as to the residual contamination and radiation, and the thoroughness of the environmental assessment.
Consumers Energy and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports reveal a four decade "Radiological Event History" that documents 63 radioactive spills, leaks, overflows, as well as sloppy handling of radioactive materials at the Big Rock site. A single incident in 1984 released 20,000 gallons of radioactive water into the soil and aquifers. Consumers Energy received permission from the NRC for "on-site disposal" of that spill, leaving the contaminants in the ground water to flow out into Lake Michigan. NRC documents reveal that up until the year 2000, the groundwater was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Tritium — radioactive hydrogen — is likely still flowing into Lake Michigan and contaminating Big Rock's aquifers.
"Consumers Energy has treated the Big Rock site as a radioactive septic field, and Lake Michigan as an atomic cesspool, and NRC has let them get away with it," said Kevin Kamps of Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "That's why we call Big Rock the Plutonium State Park."
"Water is in every cell of the human body, therefore water containing radioactive hydrogen — tritium — can enter, contaminate, and bombard any cell in the body, doing harm to this and future generations," said Kay Drey, an NIRS board member who has researched tritium's health hazards for decades.
"The tiny reactor at Big Rock compiled one of the dirtiest radiation release records in the entire country," said Michael Keegan of the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes. "That radioactivity contaminated the soil, groundwater, and Lake Michigan, leaving a public health hazard and legal liability nightmare for generations to come."
The U.S. Department of Energy has stated in recent months that the proposed national dumpsite for high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada cannot open until 2017 at the very earliest. Transporting the eight silos of waste from Big Rock to Nevada could take additional years after that.
"The high-level radioactive wastes at Big Rock are not going anywhere anytime soon," said Kamps of NIRS. "In the meantime, they will remain a radioactive bull's eye on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, vulnerable to terrorist attack or accident."
Each container of high-level waste at Big Rock contains the long-lasting radiation equivalent of 240 Hiroshima bombs, according to Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York City. Resnikoff authored a report in 1996 on Big Rock's decommissioning, advocating that Consumers mothball the plant for decades to allow radiation levels to die down before workers were sent in to dismantle the facility. Instead, Consumers opted for immediate dismantlement.
Groups opposing the state acquisition of the Big Rock property include: Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Citizens Resistance at Fermi Two, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, Don't Waste Michigan, Environment Michigan, Friends of the Detroit River, Great Lakes United, HEAT - Hamtramck Environmental Action Team, Home for Peace and Justice, Huron Environmental Activist League (HEAL), IHM Justice, Peace and Sustainability Office, Les Cheneaux Watershed Council, Lone Tree Council, Michigan Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, Michigan Environmental Council, National Environmental Trust, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Tittabawassee River Watch, and Wayne State University College Democrats.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 29, 2006
Nuclear energy official urges look at waste storage options
Yucca Mountain supporters urged to talk with Reid, other opponents
By Erica Werner
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Industry supporters of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump must work with incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., but also consider alternative waste storage plans, an energy executive said Tuesday.
Despite Reid's strong opposition to a nuclear waste dump in Nevada, "Harry Reid and the Democrats have to be part of the solution," said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group.
"If they are going to support nuclear power, we've got to figure out ways that we continue to move forward on the nuclear waste issue," Kuhn said at a press conference on the energy industry's agenda in a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Some congressional Republicans have offered plans to create temporary waste storage sites around the country because of increasing delays at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The nuclear waste storage site is not projected to open until 2017 at earliest. Some 50,000 tons of nuclear waste is already waiting at power plant sites around the country.
Reid and others in the Nevada congressional delegation want to leave it at those sites, stowed in long-term storage containers.
"We're open, I think, to looking at various alternatives that might be able to move forward on a step-by-step basis," Kuhn said of that idea.
That plan is likely to get more attention, with Reid vowing to cut funding for the Yucca Mountain storage site and keep pro-Yucca legislation off the Senate floor.
"I think that there is going to have to be talks with the Republican and the Democratic side about some new ideas that are coming up here, too, to perhaps look at other interim sites for the nuclear waste," Kuhn said. "But I think it is extremely important for us to continue moving forward with Yucca Mountain."
Originally targeted to open in 1998, Yucca Mountain has been repeatedly set back by lawsuits, money shortfalls and scientific controversies.
The effort to create a national storage site has cost about $9 billion, $6.5 billion of which has been spent on Yucca. Four years ago, the Energy Department estimated the project would cost $58 billion to build and operate for the first 100 years. New projections are expected to top $70 billion.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2006
Editorial: Don't be fooled by spin
Despite what new Yucca boss says, accountability missing at same old Energy Department
Accountability isn't a word typically found in the Energy Department, especially when it comes to plans to dump 70,000 tons of nuclear waste 90 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain.
But Edward Sproat, the administration's point man on Yucca Mountain, used the word last year in his Senate confirmation hearing, saying accountability was one of his guiding values.
Sproat, who was confirmed and took over this summer, should know that was the wrong word.
Continuing its abysmal record on Yucca Mountain, which stretches over two decades, the Energy Department once again won't release documents that would provide a bit of - what's that word again? - accountability.
Gov. Kenny Guinn wrote to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman earlier this month, calling for a release of more than 2 million documents related to the design and science of the project. The department has been compiling documents that it contends will prove its case for Yucca Mountain and sending them to a database to be used when it asks the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build the nuclear waste dump.
By law, the backup documents are supposed to be online six months before the department submits its license application. Sproat has set Dec. 21, 2007, as the deadline to submit the documents and June 30, 2008, as the license application deadline.
In his letter, Guinn said all it would take is a "flip of a switch" to make public the latest batch of documents, about 30 percent of the new information the department expects to file. If the documents were made public today there wouldn't be enough time to adequately review them, given the complexity of the documents and the number of them, but at least it would give Nevada and the public more time to study and scrutinize the project.
That would be called accountability, which judging by its past, is the last thing the department wants.
The woefully conceived project was approved by President Bush and Congress four years ago, but the Energy Department's first attempt at a licensing application was shot down two years ago when its cache of about 1 million backup documents was deemed inadequate. Some of the documents raised questions about the quality of the science, including references to falsifying work to support the project.
If the department wants to live up to the word of Mr. Sproat, releasing documents would be the least it could do. Otherwise, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
---------------------------
KRNV
November 29, 2006
Washington DC
Senator Reid Sets His Agenda, Yucca Mountain Included
Senate majority leader Harry Reid says he has set his agenda for the next two years and Yucca Mountain is included.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Reid said he wants to focus on ethics reform, stem cell research funding and working to cut wasteful spending. The future of Yucca Mountain is also up for debate.
The president of the Edison Electric Institute says if the project moves forward it will take teamwork between democrats and nuclear officials.
---------------------------
Reno Gazette-Journal
November 29, 2006
Reid more cautious than Pelosi about plans for Senate
Diana Marrero
marrero@gns.gannett.com
WASHINGTON -- Incoming U.S. Senate leader Harry Reid uses more caution when discussing his plans for a new Congress than his counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Reid, who will become majority leader next year, says he wants to focus on trying to approve legislation that has a shot at passing both chambers and getting signed into law by President Bush.
"We're going to pick issues Republicans are going to have to support us on, starting with ethics reform," he said. "We're going to talk about stem-cell research. We're going to talk about allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices.
"We're of course interested in raising the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in more than 10 years. These are issues I think we have a real shot of passing."
Bush rejected stem-cell research legislation earlier this year, using his veto power for the first time during his presidency.
Timeline or not
Unlike the future speaker of the House, Reid has not released a detailed timeline for accomplishing his goals. Pelosi, by contrast, has charted an ambitious agenda for the first
100 hours after Democrats take control of the House.
Reid spokesman Jon Summers says the Nevada Democrat's caution reflects the more deliberative style of the Senate.
Norm Orenstein, congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says Senate Democrats can't promise the passage of legislation in
100 hours because of rules that allow one senator to delay legislation.
"It's the nature of the Senate," he says. "You can delay anything for 100 hours or more."
But Reid has shown he is "serious about actually having Congress do something," saying senators will be expected to work longer hours and weeks starting Jan. 4, Orenstein said.
House Democrats seem to be itching to take control of the House, he said.
"The House Democrats have been particularly chafing at the bit over their 12 years of pain," he said. "They really want to hit the ground running and show that they're different."
Like Pelosi, however, Reid argues that many of his legislative priorities would have an immediate positive impact on the lives of middle-class Americans.
"One thing we're going to push very hard on is tax incentives for alternative energy production," he said. "That's certainly directed right at the middle class."
He also wants to provide a tuition tax credit for college students, which he argues would help middle-class families.
Reid, like Pelosi, wants to shed light on the practice in which lawmakers insert into spending bills funding for special projects back home. Such funding is known as "earmarks" and has come under sharp criticism, especially amid the public corruption scandals that have rocked Congress this year.
"There's nothing wrong with earmarks," he said. "The reason people have some concern about earmarks is they don't know where they come from."
Funding Nevada
But Reid said he plans to continue funding projects important to his constituents in the Reno area, such as improving local roads, cleaning up Lake Tahoe and research at the University of Nevada, Reno.
"There's a number of things we're working on for Reno," he said. "The University of Nevada, Reno has one of the best biology departments in the West. We're going to continue to try to fund that. That's important to the university."
Reid also plans to use his influence to make sure the proposal to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain goes nowhere. He says he won't have much work to do.
"I'm not sure there's a spear we can put right through its heart," he said. "I think Yucca Mountain is on a stretcher, bleeding a lot. Basically it's gone, it's just a question of when."
Critics have noted that Democrats may have set themselves up for failure, promising voters more than they can deliver.
But Reid says he's not worried.
"I think they should have those expectations," he said. "We're going to do our very best despite the hole (Republicans) have dug for us."
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
November 29, 2006
News Analysis
Power shift will affect Yucca
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- When Congress targeted Nevada as the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground, the state didn't have the political power to say no.
Twenty years later, the most ardent foe of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is about to become Senate majority leader. Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's new job, which gives him control over what legislation reaches the Senate floor, could deal a crippling blow to the already stumbling project.
Among Reid's first acts after this month's election was to convene a conference call with home-state reporters to declare Yucca Mountain "dead right now."
"It sure is different now than when I came (to the Senate) in 1986," the senator observed.
The dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is planned as the first national repository for radioactive waste. It's supposed to hold 77,000 tons of the material -- from commercial power plants reactors and defense sites across the nation -- for thousands of years. About 50,000 tons of the waste is now stored in temporary sites at 65 power plants in 31 states. Reid would leave all of it in place.
Originally targeted to open in 1998, Yucca Mountain has been repeatedly set back by lawsuits, money shortfalls and scientific controversies. The Energy Department's best-case opening date is now 2017.
The effort to create a national storage site has already cost about $9 billion, $6.5 billion of which has been spent on Yucca. Four years ago, the Energy Department estimated the project would cost $58 billion to build and operate for the first 100 years. New cost projections are being worked up, and they are expected to total more than $70 billion.
The department proposed legislation earlier this year meant to fix problems with the dump, which is a mounting liability to taxpayers because the government was contractually obligated to take nuclear waste off utilities' hands starting in 1998. Energy Department officials say at least one legislative change -- formally withdrawing land around the dump site -- is needed before construction can begin.
Reid, however, pledged after the Nov. 7 election that not only will no bill to help Yucca Mountain reach the Senate floor under his leadership, funding for the project also will dry up quickly. Annual spending on the dump that has ranged between $450 million and $550 million in recent years "will be cut back significantly, that will be for sure," he vowed.
Reid said he couldn't single-handedly kill the dump outright, something that would require a vote of Congress and approval by President Bush. But he added: "There's not much to kill."
The project also is losing some of its most persistent supporters as Republicans relinquish control of Congress. Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has been a vocal advocate for years; he'll be replaced by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who supports Yucca Mountain but is viewed by Nevada officials as more open to their viewpoints.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who will chair the Environment and Public Works Committee with authority over some aspects of the project, is a vocal Yucca Mountain opponent. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., worked unsuccessfully to corral opposition to the project in a crucial House vote four years ago, when she was minority whip.
Administration and industry officials insist the changing of the guard on Capitol Hill won't be the death knell for the project. About 1,500 people in Nevada are now employed there.
Yucca Mountain also has lured research grants to the University of Nevada, and even Reid aides say some spending should be maintained.
"I don't think the program's gone off the edge by any means," said David Blee, executive director the U.S. Transport Council, an industry group that works on nuclear waste transportation. "It'll be more complicated and take a more creative approach, and more of an approach outside the (Washington) beltway."
Supporters say they will now focus on submitting a required license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Energy Department wants to do that in 2008 and it's not dependent on congressional action, though severe budget cuts would be an impediment.
Reid said putting the highly radioactive wastes in dry storage casks at power plants will keep it safe for 100 years or more. To industry officials and the Energy Department, that's no answer.
---------------------------
Pottstown Mercury
November 29, 2006
Permanent solution still lacking for nuke fuel rods storage
Associated Press
In many other industries, the difficult environmental questions center on how to safely dispose of raw materials used in a plant or process.
But when it comes to generating nuclear energy, disposal is out of the question. The highly radioactive byproducts of nuclear energy -- the spent fuel rods -- instead have to be "stored" indefinitely. This begs an entirely different set of questions and dangerous scenarios.
At Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station, the storage of spent fuel rods has demanded some attention and recent action, as the 20-year-old plant’s accumulated spent fuel is exceeding the initial storage location. As a replacement, Limerick Township Board of Supervisors in July approved land development plans for the Exelon plant to install a concrete pad on which its own dry cask storage facility will be erected.
During meetings on those subjects, officials with Exelon and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission insisted the dry casks would only be needed for temporary storage and that the fuel would eventually be moved to Yucca Mountain, a federal disposal siteproposed in Nevada.
However, with the November takeover of Congress by the Democrats, opponents of the federal government’s planned spent nuclear fuel storage facility beneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain gained a powerful new ally. Harry Reid, the new Senate Majority Leader from Nevada, told reporters in his home state last week that the much-delayed, over-budget project is "dead right now."
Originally targeted for opening in 1998, the Energy Department now says the best case scenario for the opening of the Yucca Mountain facility is 2017.
It is intended to hold 77,000 tons of the radioactive spent fuel left over after it has been used to boil water in the nation’s nuclear reactors. About 50,000 tons of that fuel is now stored in dry casks at 65 power plants, including Limerick’s, in 31 states, according to the Others are not so sure.
Edward F. Sproat, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told The Associated Press that leaving the fuel stored at the plants is just "pushing the solution off to future generations." Limerick supervisors’ Chairman David Kane called the idea of leaving the fuel at individual power plants "a terrible solution."
Beth Rapczynski, a spokeswoman for Exelon, said, "It’s important to keep in mind that the federal government has an obligation under the law to build a central repository for used nuclear fuel, which was mandated by Congress in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1983. "Since then, consumers of nuclear-generated electricity have paid more than $25 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund for that purpose," Rapczynski said.
While everyone passes the buck on how to best store the spent fuel, the residents of the tri-county area surrounding the Limerick plant live each day with the material in our midst. The latest wrinkle that makes Yucca Mountain even more remote as a possibility underscores the importance of making "temporary" storage at Limerick as safe as it can be.
After all, it may not be temporary, and the area’s future safety may be at stake.
---------------------------
State Port Pilot
November 29, 2006
Nuclear fuel staying put
Progress Energy plans facility for storing its own reactor rods
By Hilary Snow
Staff Writer
After nearly two decades of transporting spent nuclear fuel to another facility, Progress Energy’s Brunswick Plant will begin work next year on an outdoor nuclear fuel storage site.
Since the mid-1980’s, the Brunswick Plant has transferred, by rail, spent fuel assemblies to Progress Energy’s Shearon Harris Plant in Wake County.
“The Harris Plant was designed for four reactors but only one was built,” Mike McCracken, Brunswick Plant communications supervisor, said Monday. “(The Harris Plant) has extra storage capacity.”
By 2010, the Brunswick Plant plans to have storage capabilities in place on site, McCracken added. Construction on “dry cask” vaults reinforced by steel and concrete on Brunswick Plant property is set to begin in 2007.
While keeping spent fuel at the plant is a safer alternative to rail transport, Jim Warren, executive director of the Durham non-profit environmental watchdog agency North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction (NC WARN), said the Brunswick Plant’s plans for spent fuel storage do not adequately protect against terrorist attacks.
Before fuel assemblies can be stored in the concrete bunkers, spent fuel must first be cooled for five years in “fuel pools,” 40-foot-deep pools of water in which the fuel rods and assemblies are submersed, McCracken explained.
“Every nuclear plant in the country has wet storage. The assemblies remain underwater for five years to cool the radiation and the temperature. After five years the radioactivity decays quite a bit. It’s a very safe way of storing fuel,” he said.
Not so, Warren argued. In fact, Warren said, the real immediate danger at the Brunswick Plant is the “fuel pools,” not the proposed dry storage sites.
“The greatest risk factor is the way (the Brunswick Plant) is storing spent fuel now,” he said. “The pools are high density, meaning they are too highly packed with assemblies, and they are high up inside the reactor buildings.”
Warren said the pools are surrounded by sheet metal.
“We have taken legal action in the past to try to get them to protect those pools better. They are poorly protected from sabotage or terrorist attacks. If water drains out (of the pools), that material is almost certain to burn. There is a large amount of radioactive waste in those pools,” he said.
“Surrounded” is a misleading description, McCracken said.
“There is sheet metal on the roof to provide coverage but the pools are in very thick steel reinforced concrete deep within the plant,” he said.
If the Brunswick Plant would just store fewer assemblies in the pools and take a few “extra steps” to better protect the dry storage canisters, Warren said the spent nuclear fuel could be safe from possible attacks.
The concrete and steel reinforced vaults will be placed together horizontally about 200 yards north of the plant. McCracken said the outdoor storage is designed to prevent “most attacks.”
“The fuel is solid. It’s sitting there dry inside a steel canister inside reinforced concrete in a protected area. It’s enclosed in and will have the same security the plant does. It’s not like it’s just sitting out in the yard,” he said.
Warren said the canisters are sturdy but their location raises some concerns over safety. NC WARN proposes separating the containers and “berming up” each canister to minimize the potential of a release of radioactivity in the event of a breach.
“The berm would also take the target out of the line of sight from the fence line,” he added. “We’re talking about low-tech, low-cost solutions.”
Progress Energy has a history of delaying costly projects and cutting corners, Warren said. He said Progress Energy was supposed to build onsite storage at the Brunswick Plant in 2005 but instead opted to keep transporting spent fuel to the Harris Plant.
“They should have kept the commitment they made three years ago. This is just another one of those occasions where they delay taking action as long as no one holds them to the fire,” he said.
Brunswick Plant’s license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ship spent fuel was set to expire in 2005, but McCracken said the Brunswick Plant had the license extended until 2008 because there is still ample storage space at the Harris Plant.
McCracken said Progress Energy feels confident that the spent fuel bunkers are safe enough without Warren’s recommended precautions.
“The design we are looking at is 18-inch bunkers with the assemblies inside canisters. There is no need to separate the containers because the assemblies are contained within the steel canisters.
It will protect the public and our employees and not have an impact on public health. We are very confident in the security and safety,” he said.
Spent fuel assemblies cannot explode, McCracken added, but he did admit they could potentially burn, although the likelihood was slim.
“Anything can burn at high enough temperatures. But it would be very difficult. It would take a tremendous amount of heat,” he said.
McCracken called the spent fuel vaults an “interim” storage solution, since a federal storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But even if plans for that site move forward, McCracken acknowledged that it most likely wouldn’t begin accepting spent fuel until 2016.
The Yucca Mountain site has been “kicked back” numerous times, Warren argued. He warned that Progress Energy should look at more long-term solutions instead of waiting for the go-ahead to ship spent fuel across the country.
“Progress Energy is really having to think long-term about this. They know, despite what they may say publicly, that the Yucca project is on the ropes,” he said.
“Progress Energy is at an important juncture in terms of public trust and they should look at permanent safe solutions.”
---------------------------
Platts
November 28, 2006
DOE TAD canister specs to be issued by November 30
Washington (Platts)--28Nov2006
DOE specifications for a new cradle-to-grave canister system will be issued sometime before November 30, clearing the way for cask vendors to develop conceptual designs of the so-called TAD systems, the department said November 28. As envisioned by DOE, a TAD, with a change of overpacks, will be used to transport, age, and dispose of utility spent fuel, eliminating the need to repeatedly repackage the fuel as it moves through the federal waste management system to the repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. No information was available at press time on what incentives DOE might offer to cask vendors to develop the system and to utilities to use it. Separately, DOE will reference the canister-based system in a repository license application it plans to submit to NRC by June 30, 2008. DOE said November 28 that some TAD system components are not part of the specification and will be developed later, such as ancillary equipment, shielded transfer casks, and site transporters. DOE said that the TAD canister, transportation overpack and aging overpack will be addressed in the specification released this week.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 28, 2006
YUCCA MOUNTAIN RAIL LINE: DOE seeks more land to examine
Agency asks BLM for additional withdrawal
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is seeking to broaden its access to public land in rural Nevada for studies of nuclear waste railroad corridors to Yucca Mountain, asking permission to reserve use of another 208,000 acres along possible shipping routes.
DOE officials have filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw 139,391 acres of land in a mile-wide corridor running 130 miles from Hawthorne to Goldfield, a BLM spokesman confirmed Monday.
The land withdrawal would enable the department to move forward with environmental studies of the so-called Mina route to the Yucca site, which is 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Mina corridor has gained favor among some government officials as possibly a less expensive and less complicated route to the proposed nuclear waste repository than a $2 billion rail line that would run from Caliente in eastern Nevada.
But critics say the Mina corridor could expose more communities, including downtown Reno, to nuclear waste shipments. Rail cars carrying shielded canisters of spent nuclear fuel would travel across Northern Nevada along the Interstate 80 corridor and then south through the Walker River Indian Reservation and through old mining districts in the western part of the state.
The Walker River Paiute tribe has consented to allow DOE to study the route through its reservation but is reserving judgment on whether to allow the segment to be developed.
As it continues to study the Caliente corridor, DOE also has asked permission to withdraw an additional 68,646 acres of public land along portions of that route, BLM spokesman Doran Sanchez said.
Sanchez said Interior Department officials in Washington were reviewing the DOE application for the two land transactions, which was filed on Oct. 17 and seeks reserved use status of the land until Dec. 27, 2015. A public hearing on the application will be held but has not yet been scheduled, Sanchez said.
Specific information on what areas along the Caliente corridor would be affected by the new land withdrawal was not available Monday.
DOE officials previously have said they were seeking new analyses of alignments in several areas, including Caliente and Eccles, through Garden Valley, near the Reveille Range, near Goldfield and the ghost town of Bonnie Claire, and in Oasis Valley.
Generally the withdrawals would prevent any new mining claims to be filed, and forbid the government from selling or trading any of the land, Sanchez said. Grazing and other public access would not be restricted, he said.
But one Yucca Mountain critic said the latest application coupled with earlier land withdrawals means DOE is reserving use of more than 500,000 acres of government-managed property in the state for railroad studies.
"You have guys tying up as much as half a million acres of public land in Nevada for them to make their minds up what they want to do," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Richard Bryant, chairman of the Mineral County Commission, said county leaders were unaware of the pending land withdrawal.
"DOE really hasn't sat down and talked with us as a board," Bryant said.
Bryant said Mineral County residents have "mixed feelings" about the possibility of Yucca Mountain rail -- they like the potential economic boost of a rail line but don't like that it would be carrying radioactive spent fuel.
"If DOE wants to spend their money on a rail corridor, I would welcome that but I would still fight to keep nuclear waste out," he said.
The Energy Department was holding a public meeting in Reno on Monday night to discuss the Mina railroad corridor. Officials were not available to discuss the land withdrawal application.
Peggy Maze Johnson, director of the Citizen Alert nuclear watchdog group, said she was "disappointed but not surprised" the public had not been informed of DOE's land withdrawal application.
"I am sure that people here today making comments would have appreciated the opportunity to know what you had up your sleeve," Johnson said in written comments submitted to DOE at the meeting.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2006
Agency outlines plan in Vegas for nuclear arms component plant
By Ryan Nakashima
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The U.S. nuclear weapons agency outlined plans Tuesday to consolidate operations and build a plant to produce nuclear arms components called plutonium pits by 2022.
The plan by the National Nuclear Security Administration, called "Complex 2030," calls for the construction of a plutonium pit plant in one of five locations, including the Nevada Test Site, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said Ted Wyka, document manager for the plan's environmental impact study.
Such pits, which serve as the trigger of a nuclear weapon, have been produced in low quantities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico since the Rocky Flats facility near Denver, was shut down by the FBI in 1989 for alleged environmental crimes.
The Los Alamos facility was designed for interim production, and a new, higher capacity plant producing 125 pits per year is needed to help rejuvenate an aging stockpile that contains nuclear weapons averaging more than 20 years old, Wyka said at a public hearing in Las Vegas.
"We haven't replaced any weapon in over a decade," Wyka said. "Components will continue to age and wear out, and we must be able to continue to fix those problems."
Other sites being considered for the pit plant include the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, the Pantex Plant in Texas and Los Alamos.
The plan to overhaul the U.S. nuclear complex also includes moving flight testing from the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico or to the Nevada Test Site.
Overall, the plan aims to consolidate operations from eight nuclear weapons sites around the country by cutting redundancies and making security more efficient.
Since December 2004, the agency has begun moving a ton of high-security nuclear material from Los Alamos to the Nevada Test Site, which is considered better protected. The move will be complete by September 2007.
Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director Citizen Alert, a Nevada group that is opposed to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, said her group favors reducing plutonium pit production rather than expanding it.
"How many nuclear bombs do we need?" she said. "My biggest concern is that they really don't want our input and that they're going to go ahead and do what they want to do."
The United States has committed to reducing its nuclear arsenal to some 1,700 to 2,200 operational, deployed nuclear weapons by 2012, about half the level of 2001.
The agency is holding 90 days of public hearings on its plan until Jan. 17 in South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico and California. It expects to draft an environmental impact statement by the summer, hold more hearings and make a decision in late 2008.
---On the Net:
Complex 2030, http://complex2030peis.com/
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2006
Industry exec: Yucca backers must work with Reid, weigh options
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Industry supporters of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump must work with incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., but also consider alternate waste storage plans, an energy executive said Tuesday.
Despite Reid's strong opposition to a nuclear waste dump in his state, "Harry Reid and the Democrats have to be part of the solution," said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group.
"If they are going to support nuclear power, we've got to figure out ways that we continue to move forward on the nuclear waste issue," Kuhn said at a press conference on the energy industry's agenda in a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Some congressional Republicans have offered plans to create temporary waste storage sites around the country because of increasing delays at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, which is not projected to open until 2017 at earliest.
Some 50,000 tons of nuclear waste is already waiting at power plant sites around the country. Reid and others in the Nevada delegation want to leave it there, stowed in long-term storage containers.
"We're open, I think, to looking at various alternatives that might be able to move forward on a step-by-step basis," Kuhn said of that idea, which may get more attention with Reid vowing to cut funding for Yucca and keep pro-Yucca legislation off the Senate floor.
"I think that there is going to have to be talks with the Republican and the Democratic side about some new ideas that are coming up here, too, to perhaps look at other interim sites for the nuclear waste," Kuhn said. "But I think it is extremely important for us to continue moving forward with Yucca Mountain."
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2006
DOE seeks land for Yucca Mountain railroad studies
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Department of Energy wants access to 208,000 acres of public land for studies of two possible rail routes to the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
DOE officials have filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw 139,391 acres of land in a mile-wide corridor running 130 miles from Hawthorne to Goldfield, the so-called Mina route.
It also has asked permission to withdraw an additional 68,646 acres of public land along portions of the Caliente route, BLM spokesman Doran Sanchez said Monday.
The land withdrawals would allow the department to move forward with environmental studies of the rail routes to the proposed nuclear repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Mina corridor has gained favor among some government officials as possibly a less expensive and less complicated than a $2 billion rail line that would run from Caliente in eastern Nevada.
But critics say the Mina corridor could expose more communities, including downtown Reno, to nuclear waste shipments.
Sanchez said Interior Department officials in Washington were reviewing the DOE application for the two land transactions, which was filed on Oct. 17 and seeks reserved use status of the land until Dec. 27, 2015.
The withdrawals would prevent any new mining claims to be filed, and forbid the government from selling or trading any of the land, Sanchez said. Grazing and other public access would not be restricted, he said.
But one Yucca Mountain critic said the latest application coupled with earlier land withdrawals means DOE is reserving use of more than 500,000 acres of government-managed property in the state for railroad studies.
"You have guys tying up as much as half a million acres of public land in Nevada for them to make their minds up what they want to do," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
A public hearing on the application will be held but has not yet been scheduled, Sanchez said.
---Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
---------------------------
KLAS-TV
November 28, 2006
Weapons-Grade Plutonium Storage Considered For Nevada Test Site
Edward Lawrence
Reporter
The Nevada Test Site is once again being considered to house nuclear materials from across the country. It is not nuclear waste but materials used to make nuclear bombs.
The Nevada Test Site is one of five sites being examined to consolidate the country's nuclear weapons program.
Channel 8 Eyewitness News sources say the National Nuclear Security Administration puts it at the top of the list to build a warehouse to hold weapons grade plutonium until it's needed. Right now, the plutonium is held in Amarillo, Texas.
(Public comments must be received on or before Jan. 17, 2007. Scroll down for more information.)
Anytime the federal government mentions nuclear material and Nevada in the same sentence, people in Las Vegas take notice.
Peggy Maze Johnson said, "Sometimes I feel like we have this big target on our backs saying, hey, it's Nevada. Let's give it to them."
Maze Johnson runs Citizen Alert, a non-profit group formed to fight the proposed nuclear waste site on the Nevada Test Site at Yucca Mountain. With her experience delaying that project, Johnson knew it would be an up hill battle at Tuesday's public hearing.
"They are going to do what they are going to do. I don't think they give a damn what we say because they have their plans," she continued.
Maze Johnson says why not keep the current process?
The National Nuclear Security Administration currently uses nine sites across the country to build a nuclear warhead. Under the agency's proposed 2030 plan, the federal government wants to consolidate locations and make the process more efficient.
The Nevada Test Site tops the list of places to store all of the weapons grade plutonium.
Ted Wyka, with the NNSA, said, "We have a lot of very skilled work force in this area that is used to working with special nuclear materials."
When pressed about specifics, the government project manager deflected answers. "We are talking about material waiting to be used. How long would something like that be stored in the facility at the test site? Again, we will have to analyze that. It will be part of the supplement."
Storing weapons-grade plutonium at the Nevada Test Site means the material will be driven into and out of the test site, some through the Las Vegas Valley.
Wyka responses to the government's transportation concerns, "That is again something that will have to be looked at as we consider Nevada as a potential site for the consolidated plutonium center."
With all the unanswered questions, Maze Johnson pledges not to give up on this battle. "I think it's pretty scary," she responded.
The Nevada Test Site is one of five locations considered for the consolidation.
If you could not attend the public meeting on Nov. 28th, the National Nuclear Security Administration still wants to hear from you. Public comments must be received on or before Jan. 17, 2007.
Email your comments to: Complex2030@nnsa.doe.gov.
You may also submit comments through the project website: www.complex2030peis.com.
If you have the NNSA written consent form, fax it to: 703-671-5197, or mail it to:
Theodore A. Wyka
Complex 2030 SEIS Document Manager
Office of Transformation
U.S. Department of energy, NA-10.1
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585
---------------------------
Reno Gazette-Journal
November 28, 2006
Dozens get to question officials on Yucca plans
Maggie O'Neill
Reno Gazette-Journal
Kim Wyatt left the snowy conditions of South Lake Tahoe to attend a Monday afternoon meeting hosted by federal officials on a new proposed route to transport nuclear waste through Nevada to a storage site near Las Vegas.
"I love Nevada," said the 41-year-old woman who's toured Yucca Mountain, the proposed home for the nation's nuclear waste. "I think the whole Yucca Mountain proposal is unsound, not just the transportation aspect."
She was one of about 65 people at the Reno session seeking more information on the Mina Corridor, railways through the northern part of Nevada before turning south at Winnemucca and heading through Walker River Paiute Tribal land toward Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The proposed route in place since 2002 has been the Caliente Corridor, which approaches Yucca Mountain through the southern portion of Nevada.
"The main problem for me is now they're proposing a route that goes through all the major waterways, through habitats and through areas of more people," Wyatt said. "It just seems strange."
An environmental impact statement -- looking at land use and ownership, noise, vibration, cultural resources, aesthetic resources, ground water and biological resources and more -- is expected on the Mina Corridor in 2007, likely after the summer.
The public will be invited to comment. By 2008, department officials will make a recommendation for either the Mina or Caliente corridors or neither.
In May, members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe who had objected to a route through their land agreed to an environmental impact study of the area. The study does not bind them in any way. And if unhappy with the environmental impact statement, they can refuse use of their land.
"The tribe has only given the Department of Energy the possibility (of using the route)," said Bob Peel of URS Corp., an engineering firm hired by the U.S. Department of Energy to work on the transportation project. "They haven't actually supported construction of the route. It's a fine line there. It could be they decide they don't want to go farther once the study is done."
According to a letter written by tribal chairwoman Genia Williams to the DOE, high-level explosives are transported through the center of the community on their way to the Hawthorne Army Depot. If the Mina Corridor is recommended by planners, and the tribe is in agreement, a new route for the nuclear waste would remove the transportation of munitions through the center of town.
The Mina Corridor would be cheaper because it would use less new track and tie in with existing Union Pacific lines, the DOE said. Some of the nuclear waste could travel through Washoe County or nearby counties on existing Union Pacific lines.
This was a concern of Aaron Kenneston, Washoe County emergency planner, whose team prepares for any type of disaster.
"The county is always very concerned with public safety," he said. "If this came to pass, it could pose a hazard. We want to make sure we have adequate plans, and do the training and exercises we need."
The purpose of Monday's meeting at Lawlor Events Center was to provide information to the public and seek feedback on whether routes should be eliminated from consideration or whether alternative ones should be proposed. The meeting concluded a recent series across Nevada and in Washington, D.C. More than 300 people attended all of the meetings.
Proposals for the facilities at Yucca Mountain have also changed since the last environmental impact statement and DOE employees were present to answer questions. A supplemental environmental impact statement will be produced in 2007 along with rail corridor draft statement.
Proposed changes to the Yucca Mountain facility include six small buildings with limited functions as opposed to one large multi-functional building, according to Jane Summerson of the DOE.
"There are a lot of people that are curious about what is different," she said. "The majority of the comments here are why is this taking so long."
Less than a dozen people left comments to be passed on to transportation planners. Comments are used in generating the environmental impact statement.
"Anything we get will be considered," said Allen Benson, director of external affairs for Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
---------------------------
Hemscott
November 28, 2006
Exec: Yucca backers must work with Reid
WASHINGTON (AFX) - Industry supporters of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump must work with incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., but also consider alternate waste storage plans, an energy executive said Tuesday.
Despite Reid's strong opposition to a nuclear waste dump in his state, 'Harry Reid and the Democrats have to be part of the solution,' said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group.
'If they are going to support nuclear power, we've got to figure out ways that we continue to move forward on the nuclear waste issue,' Kuhn said at a press conference on the energy industry's agenda in a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Some congressional Republicans have offered plans to create temporary waste storage sites around the country because of increasing delays at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, which is not projected to open until 2017 at earliest.
Some 50,000 tons of nuclear waste is already waiting at power plant sites around the country. Reid and others in the Nevada delegation want to leave it there, stowed in long-term storage containers.
'We're open, I think, to looking at various alternatives that might be able to move forward on a step-by-step basis,' Kuhn said of that idea, which may get more attention with Reid vowing to cut funding for Yucca and keep pro-Yucca legislation off the Senate floor.
'I think that there is going to have to be talks with the Republican and the Democratic side about some new ideas that are coming up here, too, to perhaps look at other interim sites for the nuclear waste,' Kuhn said. 'But I think it is extremely important for us to continue moving forward with Yucca Mountain.'
---------------------------
Washington Post
November 28, 2006
Sen. Reid: Ethics, Stem Cells Top Agenda
By Nedra Pickler
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Ethics reform, a higher minimum wage and more money for stem cell research are the top items on the Senate agenda next year, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Reid said he will tackle those priorities after cleaning up the "financial mess" that the outgoing Republican leadership has left. He was referring to nine long overdue appropriations bills covering 13 Cabinet departments for the budget year that began Oct. 1.
"They're just leaving town, it appears," Reid said from his office in the Capitol. "We hope that's not the case, but it appears that's what they are going to do. And so we're going to have to find a way to fund the government for the next year."
The must-pass legislation totals more than $460 billion and promises to divert time and energy from other items on the Democratic agenda.
Reid also said he's doing away with the "do-nothing Congress" that Democrats campaigned against this year as they ousted the Republican majority in both chambers of Congress. The Nevada Democrat, who is wrapping up his final days as Senate minority leader, will take control of the Senate agenda when the new Congress takes the oath of office in January.
"We're going to put in some hours here that haven't been put in in a long time," Reid said. That means "being here more days in the week and we start off this year with seven weeks without a break. That hasn't been done in many, many years here."
Reid said he hopes that President Bush is willing to work with the Democratic congressional leadership, but the early signs have not been encouraging. He said the White House has not reached out to him since his meeting with Bush in the Oval Office on Nov. 10. "Sorry to say," Reid said.
Bush used the only veto of his presidency so far to reject a bill passed by Congress last year that would have expanded embryonic stem cell research through government funding.
Supporters of such research say it could lead to treatments and cures for a wide variety of ailments, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries. Bush and abortion foes, however, have opposed embryonic stem cell research because the embryos die in the process of harvesting the stem cells from them.
Reid said he hoped the president "will relent and see the light" that the research gives hope to Americans struggling with illnesses and injuries. He said the Senate is "not even close" to having the two-thirds vote necessary to override Bush's veto, but he hopes some Republicans will join the Democrats after losing the election this month.
The election came on the heels of several ethical scandals involving lawmakers, and Reid said reform is needed. He said "the first thing we do" will be to try to cut the practice of lawmakers anonymously inserting "earmarks" _ narrowly tailored spending that often helps a specific company or project in their district _ into bills.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group, said there were 9,963 such projects in the spending bills for the 2006 budget year, costing $29 billion.
The third item at the top of Reid's agenda is increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. The White House has signaled that Bush may be willing to consider the proposal.
--On the Net:
http://reid.senate.gov
---------------------------
Austin American-Statesman
November 28, 2006
Commentary
Reed: No, environmentalists don't back nuclear power
Cyrus Reed, Texas Center for Policy Studies
Some press reports have begun to