Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
December 06, 2006
Nuclear waste rail line to Yucca Mountain divides Nevada towns
Ed Vogel
Las Vegas Review-Journal
SILVER SPRINGS, Nev. (AP) – June Mick fled to this rural Lyon County community six months ago to get away from the crime and high costs of south Florida.
She and her husband paid $230,000 for a manufactured home and 4.7 acres of jackrabbits and sagebrush near an infrequently used railroad track about 40 miles east of Carson City. Only recently did Mick learn the track in her backyard was under study as the rail line on which Energy Department trains would carry high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, including from the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach.
"I don’t want that stuff," she said. "What if there is an accident? There is no telling what could happen."
Mick’s thoughts were shared by neighbors a few blocks away. Retired Navy veteran Robert Brittain moved to his track-side Silver Springs home last year. Ruth Curtis purchased her mobile home beside the track 16 years ago.
"I’m pro-military. But I don’t care for Yucca Mountain. Ammunition is different. It’s for national security," Brittain said.
"Nuclear waste?" Curtis questioned, then answered herself: "Oh, no."
Ninety percent of homeowners interviewed in Silver Springs oppose the proposal to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain through their inexpensive but rapidly growing community.
They’ve found peace and quiet in Silver Springs’ wide-open spaces. They knew trains have occasionally carried bombs past their homes to the Army Ammunition Depot at Hawthorne since the 1930s. But they were not aware that the Energy Department was considering using the same tracks to carry waste from commercial nuclear power plants across the country to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
State laws require county planning departments to notify homeowners when new developments are planned in their neighborhoods, but the federal government isn’t obliged to notify people when it wants to haul radioactive waste through their backyards.
The Energy Department placed advertisements in the Fallon newspaper about a recent hearing at which residents could discuss the railroad plan, but in Silver Springs, news travels largely by word of mouth.
Whether hauling 77,000 tons of radioactive waste within a few yards of Silver Springs’ bedrooms poses any danger depends on whom you ask.
Bob Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said a terrorist with a shoulder-held, anti-tank missile launcher could put a hole in a cask containing nuclear waste.
"If 1 percent of the cargo escaped, it would contaminate a 42 square-mile area and take a couple of decades and $8 billion to $10 billion to clean up," Loux said.
It is not just Silver Springs residents who have reason for concern, he added. Trains from power plants will move along the main Union Pacific line paralleling Interstate 80 from the east and west. Nuclear waste would be hauled through downtown Reno.
The nuclear trains would veer off the Union Pacific line north of Fallon and head more than 300 miles south to Yucca Mountain along a route near U.S. Highway 95 that goes through Silver Springs and close to the rural communities of Schurz, Hawthorne, Mina, Tonopah and Goldfield.
Costs of constructing this "Mina Corridor" route, including laying 209 miles of track from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain, have been estimated at more than $1 billion.
Allen Benson, director of external affairs for the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, does not share Loux’s alarm.
He noted the federal government has been hauling nuclear waste by truck for 50 years with no problems, including more than 4,000 shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico.
"The safety record is quite remarkable," Benson said.
Benson noted the waste going to Yucca Mountain would be in solid, not liquid, form. If a cask were penetrated, some pellets might fall onto the ground, but a hazardous materials team would be sent out "to clean it up and move on," he said.
Security officers will accompany the trains, according to Benson, and the Energy Department "is not going to advertise" when shipments will move. He anticipates about two trains a week over a 24-year period.
"There is no such thing as a 100 percent safety guarantee," Benson said. "But this is definitely not Chernobyl. People have this fear of nuclear. We understand that. But nuclear is medicine. Nuclear is electricity."
The public reaction to the word nuclear is far different farther south in economically depressed rural Nevada. Of 25 people interviewed in Goldfield, Hawthorne, Tonopah, Schurz and Mina, 22 expressed support for the rail line.
Hawthorne businessman Rex Mills expressed their views during a hearing in Hawthorne. He said rural Nevadans want the Energy Department to share its Yucca Mountain track with commercial trains.
"If they put the railroad here, it will be great," Mills said. "It will give an incentive for companies nationwide to move into a lower-taxed area. The waste is going into Yucca Mountain, whether we like it or not."
So far the Energy Department has spent $9 billion on the project. Costs could top $58 billion, based on an estimate made in 2001.
Postmistress Theora Janis and resident Dollie Murillo stood in front of the Mina Post Office and discussed the desperate need for economic revival in their community.
The town’s population has dropped to about 100 people, most of them senior citizens. Many homes and businesses are abandoned. The elementary school was closed five years ago. The train tracks were pulled out 10 years ago.
"They already carry (hazardous) waste through here by trucks," Janis said. "We need jobs. A railroad would help us."
Whether the Energy Department allows private business to share its Yucca Mountain line has not been determined.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for the state, said the Energy Department has been trying to win favor for the new rail line by suggesting that the line will be shared with commercial trains.
Loux said a new rail line would provide little upside to rural Nevada.
"They had a rail line to Mina for 50 years and it didn’t do anything for them," Loux said. "Every rail line there in the past has been torn out."
The only reason the Energy Department can contemplate construction of the Mina route is because of a change in thinking by the Walker Lake Paiute Indian Tribe, Loux said.
The tribal council in 1991 rejected an Energy Department move to study moving waste through the reservation by rail. Last April, council members agreed to the study.
Ammunition bound for the Hawthorne depot is carried by rail past tribal headquarters, homes and a school in the town of Schurz. Under the Energy Department study plan, the rail line would be relocated about four miles outside of town.
Chairwoman Genia Williams responded to questions by handing out a prepared statement saying the council opposes the new rail line unless the Energy Department addresses all safety issues and agrees to ban shipments of nuclear waste by truck on U.S. Highway 95.
"Historically our tribe has been a victim of federal government decisions," Williams said. "I do not like the idea of Nevada being a dumping ground for nuclear waste, but this may be a chance to make my tribal community safer from nuclear waste that may come through our community on a highway," she added.
Williams wouldn’t discuss whether the Energy Department has offered financial incentives to win the tribe’s support.
Back in Silver Springs, Brittain walked beside the tracks and wondered if the hoopla about the nuclear trains is meaningless.
"I can’t believe Harry Reid will let Yucca Mountain happen," he said.
Reid, D-Nev., the new Senate majority leader, said he controls what comes up on the Senate floor and he will continue his opposition to Yucca Mountain.
–––On the Net:
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Energy Department, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 06, 2006
Parochial Interests?
Pro-Yucca Mountain group challenges Reid
Some Nuke Interests Indicate a Willingness to Work with New Majority Leader
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a coalition that supports the Yucca Mountain repository Thursday began applying pressure on Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, charging that he is "abusing" his new powers as Senate majority leader by pledging to block votes on the Nevada nuclear waste project.
Reid, who will lead the Senate when it reconvenes in January, was challenged to allow debate and votes on "fix Yucca Mountain" bills that might 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 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," said Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International, a nuclear transport company that hopes to compete for Yucca shipping contracts.
Edlow said Reid is "conflicted" between roles as a 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. I am not going to abuse my power."
Reid has contended that an alternative he has proposed with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., to have the government manage nuclear waste at reactor sites, would be a safer alternative than shipping it to Nevada, whose 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 only 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 those senators 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, in Washington.
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) Durbin and 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 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 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.
A bill by Domenici 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 move the program.
Interest groups and industry organizations that deal with nuclear waste are refocusing their strategies for dealing with a reconstituted Congress on Yucca Mountain.
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 lobbying organization, has been low key so far, offering no glimpses as to how it plans to operate in the new Congress.
Spokeswoman Tricia 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.
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 06, 2006
In Brief: Nuclear Commission open house
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission management and staff will be available at the Pahrump Ambulance Building, 300 North Highway 160 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday to meet informally with members of the public to discuss matters related to the Yucca Mountain project and the NRC's role in licensing the repository.
Light refreshments will be provided.
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Reuters
December 06, 2006
US reactors should store nuclear waste -regulator
by Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Nuclear waste should be kept at the reactors where it is produced until the planned Yucca Mountain storage site opens, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters on Wednesday.
Some have suggested energy companies ship waste to the Nevada site to be held above ground until proposed underground storage opens there in 2017, at the earliest. But Chairman Dale Klein said keeping byproducts from reactions at the facilities is a good temporary solution.
"We need to solve the waste issue, whether there are new plants or not," Klein said. "As a nation we need to solve that problem. How we solve it is obviously a technical and a policy issue. But for our job as the licensing [agency], there is a temporary solution and at-reactor storage is safe, certified and licensed."
For two decades, the federal government has tangled with states' rights group and environmentalists about burying nuclear waste in the desert about 90 miles (150 km) northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department plans to turn in an application for a license to build on the site to the commission in June 2008, Klein said. By then, the commission expects the country to rely more on nuclear energy.
In September Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, introduced a bill that would authorize the Energy Department to build an above-ground depot on the site.
But Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada poised to be Senate Majority Leader, has said he will introduce legislation requiring waste be stored at reactors.
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Platts
December 06, 2006
DOE official touts interim nuclear storage; seeks new waste laws
Washington (Platts)--5Dec2006
The US is facing a "new reality" in addressing nuclear waste, and with Yucca Mountain potentially "decades" away, the country must employ interim storage and reprocessing before shipping most civilian waste to the Nevada repository, an official with the Department of Energy said Tuesday.
Speaking at a nuclear power conference hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act "obligates" DOE to push ahead with Yucca Mountain, largely to the exclusion of interim storage.
He said, however, that new legislation is needed to set a policy based on recycling, rather than once-through spent fuel. That legislation would, in part, allow interim storage.
"We are confident that a good facility, an adequate facility, can be built [at Yucca Mountain] to store the residue of recycled waste or defense waste or other elements of spent fuel that cannot be recycled in a safe way for as long as the country needs it," Sell said.
He added that the ascension of Nevada Democrat Harry Reid to Senate majority leader, and the fact that DOE is eight years past its NWPA 1998 obligation to take spent fuel, necessitates a different approach to handling nuclear waste.
"There are many ways that we can seek to compromise with the congressional leadership in dealing with the question and potential uncertainty of spent fuel management over the next few decades before Yucca Mountain comes online," Sell said.
"We do think that it makes a lot of sense as we think about moving towards a nuclear fuel cycle that is closed rather than once through that ... some type of temporary consolidation of and storage of spent nuclear fuel at recycling locations could possibly be a wise path forward."
He added that opening Yucca Mountain by 2017 or 2020 would only occur if DOE is "wildly successful."
Last week Edward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said 2020 is a "more probable" timeframe than the 2017 date DOE had mapped out earlier this year under a best-case scenario.
--Daniel Whitten, daniel_whitten@platts.com
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Platts
December 06, 2006
US court awards SMUD $39 million for nuclear storage costs
San Francisco (Platts)--5Dec2006
The US Court of Federal Claims has awarded the Sacramento Municipal Utility District $39.8 million in a breach of contract lawsuit against the US Department of Energy, the utility said late Monday.
SMUD said the award comes after two related trials on the storage of spent nuclear fuel from the utility's closed Rancho Seco Generating Station.
SMUD had contracted with DOE to collect and permanently dispose of its spent nuclear fuel as required by federal law. But SMUD said the federal government did not follow through on its obligation to collect and dispose of SMUD's spent fuel due to delays in opening the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada.
In 1998, SMUD filed a lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims in Washington to recover the cost of building and operating a dry cask storage system because the federal government was not making progress on the Yucca Mountain disposal site.
"This is a major victory as it substantially mitigates the costs SMUD has incurred due to the lack of a federal repository," said Steve Cohn, SMUD chief assistant general counsel.
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CBS News
December 05, 2006
Boxer Says No More Environment Rollbacks
AP Interview: California Sen. Boxer says the days of environmental rollbacks are over
John Heilprin
Associated Press Writer
(AP) The Democrat poised to take over the Senate environment committee promises a "sea change" from six years of Republican inaction on global warming and says she expects Congress to send President Bush legislation to start curbing greenhouse gases.
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who will lead the Environment and Public Works Committee beginning in January, acknowledged Tuesday she may fall short of her goal: imposing the nation's first mandatory limits on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
"I have no line in the sand," she said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even a little step will look like a big step."
In the interview, Boxer also promised to end Bush administration rollbacks on environmental rules if they are not supported by science.
"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night _ it's over," Boxer said. "We're going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ... This is a sea change that is coming to this committee."
Her chairmanship will be an abrupt turnaround from Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., whose last hearing Wednesday as chairman will be devoted to his view that the news media have fanned alarmism about global warming. Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, blocked attempts in his committee to regulate carbon dioxide.
Boxer's first hearing next month also will be devoted to global warming, but from an opposite point of view from Inhofe's.
"This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we've never seen," she said Tuesday, explaining that her goal is to impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide, a step vehemently opposed by Bush's top environmental advisers.
Nonetheless, she promised to hear from all sides before trying to move a bill to Senate passage. "I very much want the environment to go back to being a nonpartisan issue," she said.
She said her model will be a new California law that imposes the first statewide limit on greenhouse gases and seeks to cut emissions by 25 percent, dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020. "Real goals, real percentages," she said.
Other areas of primary concern include children's health and toxic chemicals, and contaminated toxic waste sites yet to be cleaned up under the Superfund program. She said she also intends to use a committee chairman's powers to obtain documents on how regulations have been developed and priorities chosen.
"We want to send a signal to the world," Boxer said, complaining the United States now lags behind more than 50 other countries addressing global warming. She said she has received calls from several foreign leaders expressing hope for a new U.S. environmental policy.
Boxer said she supports European plans to make manufacturers demonstrate that their products and processes won't harm the environment or that they have at least considered safer alternatives.
To help pay to clean up Superfund sites that are the nation's worst contaminated, Boxer said she will push to reinstate a special tax on oil and chemical industries and other businesses. She has long criticized the administration for the pace of its cleanup progress. Boxer also plans to hold field hearings in Louisiana on the environmental effects of Hurricane Katrina.
Boxer's committee also is in charge of writing highway bills, the next one due in 2009. She said she does not oppose specific projects inserted into bills at individual lawmakers' request, but she said the sponsors should disclose who they are. "What I don't approve of is secret earmarks," she said.
On other issues, Boxer said:
_There are better alternatives than expanding nuclear power to meet energy needs while reducing greenhouse gases.
_Government plans for storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain in Nevada are in even more trouble now because of opposition from her and Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev.
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Elko Daily Free Press
December 02, 2006
Yucca Mountain Route County worried about nuke waste transport
By John Sents
Staff Writer
ELKO — Before the U.S. Department of Energy decides whether to transport spent nuclear fuel through Elko County, the Elko County Commission wants to say a few words about it.
The department recently expanded the scope of an environmental impact statement to consider an alternate transportation route to the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. If constructed, the Mina Rail Corridor would run over about 240 miles between Hawthorne and Yucca Mountain in Nye County. The line would connect to the Union Pacific Railroad near Hazen.
Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson stressed that the department’s report will address the rail corridor options, but not the existing rail corridors that would connect to them. However, the Mina route may necessitate that nuclear waste be shipped over existing rail lines through Elko County, and the Elko County Commission will discuss this possibility Wednesday.
In a memo to the Humboldt River Basin Water Authority, Intertech Services Corp. Executive Director Mike Baughman said the Mina route would require most shipments of nuclear waste to enter Nevada near West Wendover on the Union Pacific mainline. According to Baughman’s memo, accessing the Mina route from the Union Pacific mainline at Hazen would require nuclear waste be shipped along rail lines that run near West Wendover, Wells, Elko, Carlin, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, Reno and Sparks — among other areas.
The Department of Energy is also considering constructing a Caliente Rail Corridor that runs over about 320 miles from near Caliente west to Yucca Mountain. Whatever route is eventually chosen, Benson said the nuclear material will be safely contained in heavily fortified casks certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said the likelihood of one of these casks being penetrated is “very, very small.” In addition, he said the Department of Energy has been moving nuclear material around the country for a long time and has an outstanding safety record.
“We are confident we can protect the public health and safety and that is our first priority,” Benson said.
The department already held eight public meetings to discuss the rail corridor. However, none were in Northeastern Nevada. Benson said the department may hold additional public hearings once the draft EIS is finished. He said he doesn’t know whether there will be any hearings in Elko County.
“The purpose of the hearings is to get input on the corridor itself, not the whole rail system,” Benson said.
The department is continuing to accept public comments for the EIS until Dec. 12. Benson said the department will continue to take comments afterwards for the “maximum extent possible.”
Elko County Commission Chairman Warren Russell said the Department of Energy has a responsibility to answer questions and provide details for people in Elko County to convince them that the nuclear transportation is safe.
“(Elko County residents) ought to have some say in it, and I’m not sure they are going to,” Russell said. “I would hope (the Department of Energy) would be smart enough to have a meeting here in Northeastern Nevada ... If they don’t, then they won’t be able to convince anyone in Elko County that it is safe to bring it through here. It is their job and responsibility to do that.”
Russell said he wants to send comments to the Department of Energy; request that they extend the deadline for public comments; and strongly advise them to have some meetings here in Elko County.
Elko County Commissioner Mike Nannini said he is concerned nuclear shipments through Elko County would create costly expenditures for the county to train emergency personnel and procure all the necessary equipment in case of an emergency. He said he hopes the department provides some funding if they decide to ship nuclear waste through rail lines in the county.
Benson said the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the department provide training to first responders if they ship waste through a jurisdiction. He said this funding, which is provided to states, hasn’t been allocated yet. He said the department is not planning on shipping any nuclear wastes until at least 2017 and won’t provide the training until three to five years before shipping starts.
The department began reconsidering the Mina route after the Walker River Paiute Tribe withdrew an objection to the EIS. The Mina corridor offers some potential advantages over the Caliente route, including being shorter and cheaper. Benson said some rough estimates put construction of the Caliente route at $2 billion and the Mina route at $1 billion.
For more information on the Yucca Mountain project and transportation lines, go to http://www.ymp.gov.
Also at the Wednesday meeting, the Elko County Commission will:
Consider contributing funds toward a USGS study of eight hydrographic areas in Elko County and Northeastern Nevada.
Consider contributing funds to restore and add new features to Johnny Appleseed Playground in Elko.
Consider appointing an individual to serve on the Elko County Planning and Zoning Commission.
Continue an appeal hearing of a planning commission denial of a conditional use permit for an outdoor advertising billboard along Lamoille Highway.
Consider an agreement with TranSystems Corporation for engineering consulting services on the Northeastern Nevada Regional Railport.
Make comments on proposal issues that will allow the county to acquire more land associated with the Jarbidge Cemetery.
Make comments on an exploration project near Coffin Creek in the Independence Mountain Range.
Make comments on mining exploration activity near Jarbidge.
The meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in room 105 of the Elko County Courthouse. For information, call the county at 738-5398.
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UNLV Rebel Yell
December 04, 2006
Next steps for Titus
Nevada senator reveals her future plans now that elections are over
By: Nicholas Otis
The last election saw a major shift in the party paradigms of late. State and national offices were increasingly won by Democrats; however, the Nevada Gubernatorial election was, in the end, a Republican victory over UNLV faculty member and State Assemblywoman Dina Titus.
Since the election, the State Assembly minority leader has been giving post-election interviews, beside her usual busy life of politics.
After taking a weekend trip to Napa, she said she has "stayed busy holding parties across the state to thank volunteers," and she continues to serve on the Interim Finance Committee where she plans to pursue issues of government such as education and the search for renewable energy. She wants to focus on higher education, "making it a priority and protecting the Millennium Scholarship."
She said it's important that students get involved more in activities on campus, and wants to push to get UNLV as a designative early voting site to help increase young voter turnout.
She's happy with the result of the last election, seeing Sen. Harry Reid become Senate majority leader.
"It should do good for Nevada in the fight against Yucca Mountain," she said, getting more tax dollars back to the state, as it normally receives back 75 cents for every dollar sent to Washington. Nationally, she believes the party shift is good for the country as a whole, saying that "everybody benefits from divided government; it takes government back to checks and balances."
She also thinks that the new U.S. Congress will aim at more social issues, and push for a "higher minimum wage, better health care and lower drug costs, as well as a plan for exiting the war."
Titus does plan on maintaining her place on the UNLV campus as a professor of political science. She will continue to oversee legislative interns from the university and serve on graduate committees.
"There were a lot of students working on the campaign, which made me miss the classroom experience," she said.
She will be back at UNLV after the next legislative session, but she wants to focus now on her place in the legislature, where she says there are several opportunities for Nevada.
She spoke of the ballot propositions such as the smoking initiative and the eminent domain question, and say they will be "interesting to implement, as the devil's in the details."
Titus also mentioned the Education First initiative and its potential to force the legislature into special session where she said "there's room for tom-foolery."
In response to questions as to whether she will run for governor again, she reiterated that she will continue her work in the state government, not denying or confirming plans for a gubernatorial run.
For the time being, she will focus on the upcoming presidential election as the leader of the Nevada Democratic Caucus. Calling the state "purple," intimating a mesh of red and blue, Titus believes Nevada could become an important battleground for a Republican-controlled executive branch in a presidential race that will follow two years after the Democrats took the House and Senate.
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UPI
December 04, 2006
Analysis: Reid's Yucca and nuke waste plan
By Ben Lando
UPI Energy Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Sen. Harry Reid becomes the most powerful person in the U.S. Senate next month and the Nevada Democrat says he'll oversee the killing of a decades-long, multibillion dollar plan to store nuclear waste inside a mountain in his state.
Fellow opponents of the Yucca Mountain Project say the site is unsafe to hold spent nuclear fuel and transporting it there is a security risk.
The nuclear industry calls it a business liability if nuclear waste isn't taken off its hands, warning it may hinder a resurgence of nuclear power in the country.
But after three decades of exploration at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and $10 billion (15 percent of the project's total expected cost for its first 100 years), the U.S. Energy Department is 20 years behind schedule to get federal regulator approval for the site, let alone open it.
"Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen," Reid told United Press International in an exclusive interview in his Las Vegas office.
As a powerful Democratic Party member, Reid has been able to engineer regular funding cuts to the project, though scientific exploration of the mountain-as-repository continues.
Beginning January, he'll be in charge of the Senate, already pledging to block bills aimed at maneuvering the project via legislative mandates, like the failed Bush administration-prompted "Fix Yucca Bill," which would have bolstered the project's funding and allowed the Energy Department to receive permits easier, among other aspects, introduced earlier this year.
Reid also plans to further trim Yucca's annual budget, cut to just over $300 million in fiscal year 2006.
"That's a tremendous waste of money," Reid said. "Just forget about that. It's not going to happen. So why continue this game?"
Nuclear power is getting a fresh look as an alternative energy source to oil and gas, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects around 30 applications for new reactors soon.
"To realize fully the benefits that nuclear power offers, however, the country must resolve outstanding issues related to the ultimate disposal of used nuclear fuel," Tony Earley, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, told a Senate hearing on the Fix Yucca Bill in September.
"If overall spending totals remain flat, even more significant delays could result, not because nuclear power consumers have not provided the funds necessary to support the program, but because of inappropriate federal budget accounting."
In 1987, Congress ended the search for a geologic repository to store the waste, and limited site studies to only Yucca. In 2002, it was officially declared the final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Yucca is capped at holding 77,000 tons, which will either need to be amended or an additional repository built to store waste that remains radioactive for tens of thousands if not millions of years. Currently 54,000 tons are stockpiled at weapons sites and at operating and shuttered nuclear power plants around the country; about 2,000 tons of nuclear waste is produced annually, the byproduct of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and nuclear technology exploration.
Yucca was to be the final solution.
But the project has been plagued by accusations of unsound science and claims the quality assurance program isn't given enough independence.
Outside the mountain, there is no final proposed route to get the waste there. A combination of mostly railway and some trucked shipments is the leading contender for the method of delivery.
It's also another tract for Reid's Kill Yucca agenda.
"There's no way in the world we're gong to have 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, the most poisonous substance known to man, hauled across our highways and railways in this country, past schools, homes, playgrounds and businesses," Reid said.
He said he favors using money from the Nuclear Waste Fund -- money ratepayers contribute to solving the nuclear waste storage issue ($27 billion since 1982) -- for keeping the waste at the nuclear plants. The federal government was supposed to take possession of the waste by 1998, the original opening date for Yucca.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authority to approve the site, but the department's attempt to complete an application has been set back by lawsuits and regulatory challenges as well as controversy over science at the site.
Yucca Mountain was born from the decision mid-20th century that nuclear waste from the U.S. weapons program -- and then nuclear energy when it was developed -- should be buried deep underground.
But when the 110th Congress takes the reins, it may have to choose a new fate for the waste unless it finds some life support to curb Reid's prerogative to kill Yucca Mountain.
"It's dying on its own. It's just happening," Reid said. "You don't need just a sudden demise. It's breathing really hard. Just let it lay there a while and it'll be dead."
--(Comments to energy@upi.com)
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Teen Ink
December 04, 2006
Nuclear Waste
by Nancy R., Roslyn
NY
Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, we are still left with nuclear waste from the arms race. Nuclear waste is highly poisonous and can remain like that for 100,000 years. As we learned after the disasterous 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl, the results of not handling nuclear waste properly can be devastating. The disposal of nuclear waste is clearly a reason for concern, so how can we ensure that it will remain undisturbed for these extended periods of time? Scientists have proposed a number of solutions, though each has drawbacks.
In order to understand how important nuclear waste management is, we need to realize the dangers of mismanagement. Low doses of radiation are suspected of causing genetic defects. At Chernobyl, people were exposed to higher doses of radiation, which caused an increase in cancers and genetic mutations. Another problem was the long-term exposure to radiation since these nuclear substances were dispersed in an extremely large area. (The accident contaminated 125,000 square miles in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.) The death toll from the accident is controversial but a 2006 Greenpeace report estimates that “the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter million cancer cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers.” If nuclear waste is not managed properly, this could happen again.
Nuclear waste that needs disposal comes from two sources: nuclear reactors and decommissioned nuclear weapons. These wastes can be classified by their radioactive half life. Low-level waste (objects exposed to radioactive substances including suits, test tubes, an actual nuclear facility or syringes from hospitals) can be stored for a few years and be completely safe. High-level waste (actual nuclear substances) have half-lives of thousands of years and require extremely long-term storage away from human contact. This high-level waste is the most controversial and there is currently no solution for its storage.
One of the most appealing solutions is to shoot the waste into space but there are a number of problems with this idea. If we could get the waste into space, how far away would it need to be? If it remained in orbit around Earth, it could bump into a satellite and potentially fall back to Earth. Furthermore, launching waste into space could be dangerous; if the rocket malfunctioned and exploded, the waste would be dispersed and irreparable damage done. Finally, there’s the issue of the price tag.
Another solution that is slightly less popular is to bury the waste under the tectonic plates in the ocean floor. When buried, the waste would be virtually unreachable, but it would be extremely costly to build machinery that could get to the ocean floor and bury the nuclear substances encased in something that could withstand the extreme pressure of the depth. Another issue is that we do not have encasements that exceed the half-life of the radio-isotopes and when the encasement disintegrates, there could be a negative impact on the ocean.
The most accepted solution for long-term storage is burial inside mountains. The plan is to create long caverns, bury the waste, and then close the caverns. This seems the most feasible option and the government has designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a burial site. There are, however, some drawbacks to this plan as well. The site is only 90 miles from Las Vegas and close to the city’s only water supply, so there is a fear of contamination. Nevertheless, it seems fairly certain that it will be the site for nuclear waste burial.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding nuclear waste management. Though it is one of the largest issues that the world faces (and there does not seem to be a simple answer), action must be taken.
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San Francisco Chronicle
December 04, 2006
Gudmundur Bodvarsson -- Berkeley hydrogeologist
Rick DelVecchio
Chronicle Staff Writer
Gudmundur "Bo" Bodvarsson, a hydrogeologist and director of the earth sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, died unexpectedly Nov. 29 at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. He was 54.
Mr. Bodvarsson's death was announced in a news release by the lab, where he had worked as a scientist since he was a UC Berkeley graduate research assistant in 1980. The announcement did not give the cause of death.
"I think he's such a greater-than-life figure," said Yvonne Tsang, deputy director of the lab's nuclear waste program under Mr. Bodvarsson. "That's why it's such a shock to us. He's the last person you'd expect."
Mr. Bodvarsson was described as a notably hardworking grad student who matured into a disciplined scientist and a leader who set new standards for the work his division produced.
"He was really dynamic; he was larger than life," said Peter Persoff, a scientist who worked with Mr. Bodvarsson from 2000 to 2005. "Not your stereotypical scientist cloistered in the lab. Not a geek, not a nerd -- just the opposite."
Mr. Bodvarsson's work as a researcher focused on Yucca Mountain, Nev., the federal government's proposed disposal site for high-level nuclear waste.
Building on his knowledge of geothermal formations, he contributed to detailed investigations of the site's underground hydrology. He had his greatest impact leading the development of 3-D scale models of seepage patterns inside the mountain under a wide range of scenarios.
The models were designed to help pinpoint where seepage might pose a risk of corroding waste containers, which the U.S. Energy Department proposes placing in tunnels in thick volcanic rock more than 1,200 feet under the surface and above the water table.
A native of Ljosafoss, Iceland, a community of about 100 people, Mr. Bodvarsson came to the United States in 1972 to attend Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics at Catawba in 1974 and a master's in civil engineering at North Carolina State University in 1976. He received a doctorate in hydrogeology in 1981 at UC Berkeley.
Before joining the Lawrence Berkeley lab staff in 2001, Mr. Bodvarsson worked as a research engineer at the Icelandic Building Research Institute.
Mr. Bodvarsson is survived by two sons, Daniel Bodvarsson of North Carolina and Erik Ma of Berkeley.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 03, 2006
Reid's rise to power may be bad news for Yucca backers
By Lisa Mascaro
<lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - When pro-Yucca Mountain advocates called on Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid to step aside from the nuclear waste debate, some saw it as an act of desperation over the stalled project.
After the Democrats' victory in last month's elections, efforts to build the nation's first nuclear waste repository seem to be at a crossroads.
Reid's new position all but halts legislative efforts to "fix Yucca" and seriously jeopardizes its continued funding. The looming presidential race, with its early Democratic caucus in Nevada, means contenders likely will have little appetite to support a project unpopular with Silver State voters. Plans for establishing interim waste storage elsewhere continue to be floated as options.
And the Department of Energy faces a 2008 deadline to present the project for approval - a milestone that has been blown twice before.
Michele Boyd, legislative director for energy policy at Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group that opposes Yucca Mountain, said all bets are riding on that deadline.
"It really is at the make-or-break point right now," she said.
The day after Democrats took control of Congress in last month's midterm elections, Reid told Nevada reporters that his new position did not mean he could single-handedly kill Yucca Mountain.
Plenty of Reid's fellow Democrats backed the original plan to send waste to Nevada and continue to support it. But as leader, Reid can decide what bills come to the Senate floor, and he could have a heavy hand in slashing Yucca Mountain's annual $450 million budget, essentially starving the project of the money it needs to progress.
Reid has long called for storing the waste where it is now, at dozens of nuclear power sites around the nation.
His impending power as Senate majority leader prompted leaders of a pro-Yucca Mountain coalition last week to call on Reid to step aside, arguing that he should not abuse his leadership position for parochial interests.
"Sen. Reid is now the majority leader, and he has to lead for the country," said LeRoy Koppendrayer, chairman of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Council, which represents states now holding waste at local nuclear power plants. "The majority of this country is in favor of nuclear energy."
While the pro-Yucca coalition doubts Reid will try to eliminate funding for Yucca - the government sends $300 million to Nevada each year for the project, funding 1,400 jobs - it expects that he will simply try to starve it to dissolution.
"He should remove himself from this debate because I do believe he is in a conflicted situation," said Jack Edlow, a founding member of the U.S. Transport Council, a waste-hauling advocacy group.
Some saw those comments as a naive understanding of the way Washington works. Others viewed it as a provocative attention-grabber, one from which some in the industry distanced themselves.
Because of Reid's ascension and other factors, Nevada's clout is much enhanced from what it was in 1987, when Congress chose Yucca Mountain over other potential sites for the waste repository.
The government has spent $9 billion on Yucca Mountain, and costs could rise well above the projected $58 billion price tag.
The incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., has said he would like to hold oversight hearings on the costs.
Last week, the Energy Department's project director, Edward "Ward" Sproat, said the recently announced 2017 opening date - already nearly 20 years behind schedule - was probably ambitious by about three years, due to expected lawsuits.
Still, the nuclear industry remains confident that as the new Democratic Congress tackles the global warming issue, Yucca Mountain will remain on track.
Some environmentalists believe nuclear power is a key component of the climate change debate because it is a cleaner energy source. And if you go nuclear, you need a place to store the waste.
"The timely death of Yucca Mountain has been predicted many times - and it's not dead yet," said Craig Nesbit, spokesman for Exelon, which operates the nation's largest nuclear fleet and represents 20 percent of the country's nuclear industry capacity.
With as many as 30 new applications expected to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year, some believe nuclear energy is poised for a renaissance.
But after President Bush leaves office at the end of 2008, it is unclear whether a new administration would continue the push for a new nuclear era.
The Nuclear Energy Institute has turned its sights to storing waste at some of the dozen sites nationwide that the Energy Department announced last week had received seed money to develop proposals for nuclear recycling facilities - a controversial, long-term plan to one day recycle spent nuclear fuel.
"Maybe the best place to do it may be sites where you develop those," said the institute's Steven Kraft. "We've said that makes a lot of sense."
Boyd, from the watchdog group, has been shopping a proposal to beef up security for the waste now stored at existing nuclear power plants.
She said sooner or later, something's got to give.
"I promise we will be here for another 20 years if we stay on this hamster circle ¦ unless somebody stands up and says this is not working," she said. "One can only hope there's only so much patience Congress has."
--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 02, 2006
Flashpoint
By Jon Ralston
<ralston@vegas.com>
Las Vegas Sun
I love this story about the pro-dump caucus acting so wronged because Sen. Harry Reid plans to use his majority leader's position to hurt the Yucca Mountain Project. Abuse of power, these fine folks cried. How can he put the needs of the few - that's us, fellow Nevadans - before the needs of the many? Oh, please. Were these principled folks outraged when a senator by the name of Bennett Johnston decided to use his power 19 years ago to pass a measure infamously known as the Screw Nevada Bill, one that singled out the state because of its weak political clout? Or how about the devious idea of interim storage, which again was designed to screw Nevada? Where was the protest then? Situational principles. Must be D.C.
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Nevada Appeal
December 3, 2006
Still skeptical even though West has leadership in Congress
Guy W. Farmer
Special to the Appeal
When the newly elected Congress reconvenes early next month, Western Democrats will be in charge in both the Senate and the House - Nevada's own Harry Reid will take over as Senate majority leader and San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi will become the first female speaker of the House. Nevertheless, I have mixed feelings about this change in congressional leadership.
On the positive side of the ledger, I'm delighted that Reid will continue to lead the fight against the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is on life support if it isn't already dead. Pelosi, who worked against Yucca Mountain four years ago when she was the house minority whip, will be a strong ally in Nevada's campaign against the ill-considered nuclear waste dump.
Shortly after the Nov. 7 mid-term election, Reid pledged that no Yucca Mountain bill will reach the Senate floor as long as he is majority leader, and promised to strangle the doomed project by cutting off its funding. Nevertheless, the Bush administration and nuclear energy industry lobbyists continue to throw millions of taxpayer dollars down that particular political rat hole.
Only last Monday, the U.S. Energy Department unveiled a far-fetched proposal to ship nuclear waste through downtown Reno. "If this route were selected it would channel all of the nation's nuclear waste through the Interstate 80 corridor and would affect more Nevada cities and towns than any other (route)," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. That plan is a non-starter despite the Bushies' continuing efforts to jam highly toxic nuclear waste down our throats.
But while I'm optimistic that Reid and Ms. Pelosi will keep Yucca Mountain on the back burner, I'm concerned about their benign approach to another hot-button issue, illegal immigration, because I fear they'll cave-in and endorse Bush's massive amnesty plan for millions of illegal immigrants. Ironically, the president's dangerous plan has more support on the Democratic side of the aisle than it does among his fellow Republicans.
After the president's mid-term election defeat, he claimed victory on the immigration issue. "I think we have a good chance (of passing 'comprehensive' immigration reform) ..." he said. "It's an important issue and I hope we can get something done on it." The moderately conservative Weekly Standard, which backs the president's flawed proposal, said the Democratic victory meant that the Republicans lost on immigration. I disagree, however, because Iraq was the most important issue in the November election, not immigration.
Here in Nevada, voters elected three Republicans who are tough on illegal immigration - Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons, Congressman-elect Dean Heller and Sen. John Ensign - and like-minded candidates who back an enforcement-first approach on immigration reform won elsewhere in the Mountain West and Southwest. Meanwhile, in a stunning bit of overkill, the Pahrump Town Board passed an English-only ordinance and banned the flying of foreign flags in public. Readers who've never heard of Pahrump should go back to California.
President Bush and the new Congress will be at odds on other major issues like Iraq and the economy. On Iraq, both the president and Congress will hide behind the Baker Commission report, due out on Wednesday, as they search for a graceful way out of an increasingly violent Middle Eastern quagmire. Although the president insists that there won't be a U.S. withdrawal any time soon, some of his political allies are talking about troop "redeployments." In any case, the November election clearly showed that the American people want our troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.
There'll be a pitched battle over the economy with the president pushing for permanent tax cuts and Democrats attempting to revoke cuts for wealthy taxpayers. Beyond the Democrats' planned 100-hour blitz to pass their legislative agenda, Sen. Reid and Speaker-elect Pelosi have pledged to restore ethical and fiscal discipline to Congress. Ms. Pelosi got off to a promising start last week by rejecting a bid by Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a former federal judge who was impeached on corruption charges, to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In January, senators will clash over whether to ratify the feisty and outspoken Ambassador John Bolton (who I support) as our permanent representative to the United Nations.
In summary, I hope the new Democratic Congress will get us out of Iraq and bring higher ethical standards to our federal government.
--Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.
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Inside Bay Area
December 02, 2006
Berkeley hydrogeologist Bodvarsson dies at 54
Iceland native also stood out in local sports
By Ian Hoffman
Staff Writer
Gudmundur Svavar "Bo" Bodvarsson, a voracious athlete and Berkeley hydrogeologist who led efforts to ensure a Nevada desert mountain safely could store the most radioactive nuclear wastes for tens of thousands of years, died Wednesday. He was 54.
Bodvarsson, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led a team tapped to investigate the movement of water inside Yucca Mountain and figure out whether its mammoth volumes of volcanic ash could lock up casks of spent nuclear fuel indefinitely.
Bodvarsson and his researchers wired Yucca Mountain with sensors and recreated it, down more than 1,000 feet below the surface, as a model inside Berkeley computers. The instruments fed the model and were sensitive enough to pick upa desert rain cloud passing overhead.
Bodvarsson persuaded himself that Yucca Mountain was as dry and as good as anyone could hope for in an underground nuclear dump.
Critics and the state of Nevada say the mountain is unsuitable, and it has not been licensed to receive the waste piling up at 104 nuclear reactors nationwide.
Bodvarsson also was a towering figure in Bay Area amateur sports, a relentless competitor in two-man beach volleyball and a powerful scorer in more than 20 years of senior league soccer.
"He's just a tremendous natural athlete," said Marvin Vinik, coach of the Berkeley Fog, a top-division team for over-30 players in the East Bay. "Whatever sport he touched, he was just fabulous."
Bodvarsson never showed for a game two weeks ago. At the same time, he told colleagues at the Earth Sciences Division that he led at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that he was going on vacation. Instead, Bodvarsson checked into Kaiser Permanente Hospital Oakland, complaining of problems breathing and stomach pains. His health and appetite seemed to improve, and lab coworkers came visiting. Hospital officials informed them on arrival that Bodvarsson had died, one day before he said he was to be released. The cause of death had not been determined Friday.
Bodvarsson grew up in a tiny Icelandic village, Ljosafoss, and was valedictorian of a school built on his grandfather's land. After graduation, 6-foot-3 Bodvarsson played on Iceland's national volleyball and basketball teams. He landed in Salisbury, N.C., on a full scholarship to Catawba College, where he collected degrees in physics and mathematics. He met a girl from Charlotte named Mary and married her. After studying civil engineering at N.C. State, Bodvarsson and his wife and son came to UC Berkeley for his doctorate in hydrogeology.
"It was just obvious this was a gifted young man who could take any course and do very well," said his Ph.D advisor, Paul Witherspoon.
The young Icelander plunged himself into learning about hot geothermal pockets miles deep and how to turn their steam into electricity. Figuring out the mysteries of the deep Earth from a few, well-placed borings helped get him a job in 1980 among Lawrence Berkeley lab's earth scientists.
At Berkeley, "he was simply a born leader," Witherspoon said.
"He had the ability to recognize what the key problems were to be broken down into key questions so groups could be organized around answering these questions by such and such date," Witherspoon said.
Coworkers found Bodvarsson got a lot out of them gently, and his deputy Ernie Majer said Bodvarsson fought harder than any manager for his people.
Mary Pratt, Bodvarsson's former wife, said her husband channeled his stress from work into sports. Bodvarsson played for a semi-pro soccer team, The Swedes, in San Francisco and for years terrorized Bay Area beaches in four- and two-man volleyball games.
"He never did anything halfway," she said. "He just loved two-man sand ball, and he played in lots and lots of tournaments with people half his age."
Bodvarsson also loved tennis and basketball. But outside of volleyball, soccer was his game.
"He understood the game really, really well. He was a beautiful player," said Vinik. "He knew how to get open, how to find open people and in the old days he was a scorer, a big scorer, very powerful, very fast."
Stunned as Bodvarsson's death left scientists at the Berkeley lab, the news rocked his soccer team, which has had more than its share of severe injuries this season. Players remembered a big guy with fast feet and a quick, dry wit.
Angelo Commandatore thought he'd regale the Icelander with tales of fly fishing for salmon. "He said, 'Listen, in Iceland we go to the river with a pitchfork and nail the bastards. ... That's how we catch them and this way we always go home with a meal!"
Bodvarsson is survived by two sons, Daniel Bodvarsson, 28, and Erik Ma, 8, and in Iceland, his father Bodvar Stefansson and brothers Reynir and Stefan Bodvarrson. A memorial service is 2 p.m. Tuesday at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St., Berkeley.
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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