Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, December 21, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, December 21, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
December 21, 2006

Editorial: Standing strong against Yucca

Delegation should also lead fight against more nuke plants and their deadly wastes

The new Democratic majority in Congress, which includes Senate Majority Leader -elect Harry Reid of Nevada, offers the best chance in two decades to bring about the beginning of the end of Yucca Mountain. And as before, Nevada's congressional delegation stands in bipartisan readiness to lead the way for this action.

The delegation, including incoming Republican Rep. Dean Heller, met Tuesday at the George Federal Building in downtown Las Vegas. The members discussed strategy for turning Congress against the project, which would see the nation's high-level nuclear waste dangerously transported across the country for unsafe burial at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Among the delegation's strategies is to meet with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to propose alternative solutions for the waste. The NRC is the agency that will decide whether to license the rightfully stalled Yucca repository if the Energy Department ever submits an application.

Other encouraging strategies include reiterating to every member of Congress the dangers associated with Yucca, and to widen the scope of the state's lawsuit against the project.

It was not encouraging, however, to hear President Bush's support of nuclear power during a Wednesday press conference. The president touted "the technologies that will eventually come to fore that will enable us to reduce the wastes, the toxicity of the waste and the amount of the waste."

Scientists independent of the Bush administration, however, are skeptical that such technologies can ever be developed. In standing strong against Yucca Mountain, our delegation should also lead congressional opposition to more nuclear power plants. They would produce even more waste for burial - if not in Nevada, then someplace where it would be just as dangerous.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 21, 2006

Editorial: Talks with NRC welcome

Who knew? Nevada's delegation in Washington has never conducted a dialogue with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees and regulates power plants, licensing and safety. Such talks should have started long ago.

Pronouncements in which the Energy Department and other administration officials say that Nevada will take the nation's spent nuclear material and store it, while Nevada officials say we won't is not a dialogue. It's a standoff. Failure of the appropriate officials at the NRC to conduct high-level talks with the Nevada congressional delegation has produced nothing, except delay and bitterness.

If pragmatic, scientific provisions for disposal of nuclear waste had been made when the nuclear power industry began gearing up in the middle of the 20th century, Yucca Mountain might never have become such a line in the sand.

There would have been no stonewalling to hold back progress on a repository that threatens to endanger the health of Nevadans. There would have been no allegations of fraud regarding substandard plans for the dump. There would have been no reason to fear possible spills as the federal government ships waste by rail through Northern Nevada.

Further, if federal officials had been talking instead of forcing the repository on Nevada, some of the rancor of the past decade could have been avoided. Further, a new generation of cheaper, safer, more efficient technology might have been developed by now. The nation might have developed a reasonable plan for getting rid of the radioactive waste.

Dialogue with the NRC is a welcome new strategy.

At the end of 2005, plants were generating electricity in 31 states, excluding Nevada. About 50,000 tons of nuclear waste were waiting at the sites for storage, and officials are eager to ship the waste out of their states, mostly in the East, and ship it to the dump site north of Las Vegas. Nevada's lawmakers deserve credit for holding their ground and refusing to take this treatment lying down.

Regardless of what Nevada lawmakers say or do, it is impossible to say the administration will stop trying to push this project through, but a dialogue that focuses on facts and aims to discover solutions for storing waste could be productive.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 20, 2006

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Lawmakers join to fight project

Congress members launch bipartisan effort

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Nevada's congressional leaders vowed Tuesday to put a bipartisan stranglehold on funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project while continuing to raise awareness among their out-of-state colleagues about the risks of hauling deadly spent fuel across the nation.

After meeting for more than an hour behind closed doors at the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse, the lawmakers led by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., announced they also intend to launch a number of new legal moves through Nevada Attorney General-elect Catherine Cortez Masto aimed at stopping the Department of Energy's attempt to license the planned repository.

Reid said the strategy session coincides with a "changing landscape" that has resulted from the DOE's consideration of delivering waste by rail through Northern Nevada on the so-called Mina corridor to reach Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"There's an intensely more significant interest in Northern Nevada now," Reid said, adding that Cortez Masto and Rep.-elect Dean Heller, R-Nev., will add to the new landscape.

Regardless of sentiments against the project in Nevada, Reid and Ensign said the mood among their Washington colleagues favors slashing funding on projects like Yucca Mountain that are behind schedule and over budget.

Reid noted that last year $470 million was spent on the project and there's been a request for nearly $1 billion.

"It goes to show you that money is not going to be as free and loose as it has been in the past," he said. "The reason for this meeting is to indicate that we're going to fight on all fronts."

Reid said that Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., will write letters to all new House members.

Ensign said from the Republican side "we're going to try to work with our members on our side of the aisle."

"We just lost power in the House and the Senate and one of the reasons that Republicans lost power is that we were being fiscally irresponsible," Ensign said.

He said the last estimate on the price tag for the project in the late 1990s was $58 billion.

"We're waiting on the new estimate to come out and most of us are expecting it will be closer to $100 billion and remember that people are saying they need a second repository," Ensign said. "And from a fiscal standpoint it blows the lid off any kind of fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., and that's a message we're going to be taking to our side of the aisle."

Department of Energy spokeswoman Megan Barnett said the agency has heard similar reports before about opposition to Yucca Mountain.

"We're hopeful we can work on a solution," she said, noting that energy is a critical issue facing the new Congress and 20 percent of the nation's electricity comes from nuclear energy.

"The department remains committed to licensing and opening Yucca Mountain as the repository for the nation's spent nuclear fuel," Barnett said.

Heller, who was elected to the seat vacated by Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons, reflected on past efforts by Nevada governors to keep nuclear waste out the state. "My job and my effort is to help carry this banner with this delegation. I think we have a new perspective. I think we have a new direction."

Cortez Masto said, "Yucca Mountain has always been a priority for me on a legal perspective. It's nice to ... be a part of what's important for the state: Working with the delegation on preventing Yucca Mountain from occurring here."

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Las Vegas SUN
December 19, 2006

Nevada lawmakers promise new fight against Yucca Mountain

By Erica Werner
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nevada lawmakers who will represent the state come January met Tuesday for a strategy session to combat Yucca Mountain, emerging to promise more setbacks for the nuclear waste dump.

With Democrats in control of Congress and Sen. Harry Reid as majority leader, the waste dump project could face crippling blows, they told reporters after meeting in Las Vegas.

"The next two years may very well be the death knell to sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Berkley is planning to write to fellow House Democrats to enlist support against the project the Energy Department is trying to build 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Some 70,000 tons of toxic waste would be stored there. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is planning a letter to House Republicans.

Reid is aiming to cut annual appropriations, which have ranged from $450 million to $550 million in recent years.

The lawmakers plan to meet with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must issue a license before the nation's nuclear waste could be stored at the dump site.

They also want Nevada Attorney General-Elect Catherine Cortez Masto to review legal options to gum up the project with lawsuits. Reid said that too much money is being spent on outside lawyers and he wants state officials to reassess that.

Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said they won't allow pro-Yucca legislation to reach the Senate floor. The Energy Department wants certain legislative fixes, and Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has introduced legislation in the past to make such changes

Domenici will lose his chairmanship next year, but Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said recently he plans to reintroduce the bill.

"We have every legislative tool at our disposal to defeat this. We will use every legislative tool, and I think they have virtually no chance" of moving pro-Yucca legislation through the Senate, Ensign said.

Cortez Masto was one of the newly elected officials in the meeting. Newly elected Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., also participated, and Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons sent a representative.

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.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 20, 2006

Editorial: Transporting toxic cargo

Bush administration's rail security proposals ignore the nation's most hazardous cargo

Federal Transportation and Homeland Security department officials have proposed tightening safeguards for the nation's rail system, saying that a chemical spill from a derailment or one caused by a terrorist attack could result in an urban catastrophe.

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters has proposed that railroads should use routes that are the farthest from residences and cities for shipping chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and other poisonous gases and hazardous loads. Peters' plan was announced Friday, shortly after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff outlined his recommendations for improving railway security, the Associated Press reports.

Chertoff's plan would require that railroads curtail the amount of time that cars carrying hazardous loads stand still. He also said that freight and passenger cars should undergo regular inspections and be kept in secure areas when not in use.

However, these plans apply mostly to urban areas that have concentrated populations and are perceived to be at higher risk of terrorist threats and catastrophic outcomes. Hazardous materials would be rerouted through remote areas or smaller communities - places that, we can assume, would have fewer people and resources for reacting to attacks or spills.

"Radioactive substances" are included in the government's definitions of hazardous materials. But specific references to trains carrying high-level nuclear waste were not made - as usual. The proposed rules do say, however, that transport of hazardous materials is "unavoidable."

Certainly fuel for motor vehicles or chlorine to purify drinking water is essential. But federal officials bent on opening a repository for nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain also would have us believe that transport of nuclear waste is necessary. Proposed train routes for this toxic cargo would cross remote areas - which are not included under these new proposed security upgrades.

Democrats, who are to take control when Congress reconvenes in January, told AP that they would introduce legislation that includes calling for increasing the number of hazardous materials inspectors and routing trains carrying dangerous materials away from areas in which a spill could do serious damage.

Still, discussion of the most hazardous type of cargo - high-level nuclear waste - needs its own soapbox. Nevada's congressional delegation must aggressively emphasize that, even with tighter security, there is no safe way to tote this lethally toxic substance across the country by train to Nevada.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 20, 2006

Nevada's delegation tries new Yucca tactic

Diana Marrero
dmarrero@gns.gannett.com

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers want to meet with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission early next year to begin a dialogue regarding the agency's proposal to dump nuclear waste in Southern Nevada.

It's something they have not tried to do in the past, said incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid hopes that meeting with members of the commission could help them come up with solutions for what to do with the nation's nuclear waste.

The new tactic was among developments Tuesday from a meeting between Reid and other Nevada lawmakers in Las Vegas to discuss the latest Yucca Mountain plan and ways to continue fighting the proposed nuclear waste dump. Members of Nevada's congressional delegation also plan to reach out to new lawmakers who will take office in January to brief them about the issue.

"We have a lot of things we are talking about," said Reid, who says he will be able to use his position in the Senate to continue to stall the project. "Everyone's concerned about Yucca Mountain."

The Yucca Mountain issue has been of particular interest for residents of Reno and other Northern Nevada communities recently, after the public learned about a proposed railroad route being studied by the Energy Department that could ship nuclear waste through Northern Nevada on its way to Yucca Mountain.

"There's an intense and significant interest in Northern Nevada now," Reid said.

Lawmakers also plan to tailor their message against the project in different ways.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., says the issue is about fiscal discipline, something voters feel Republicans have forgotten.

"That's one of the messages we're going to take on Yucca Mountain," he said.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 19, 2006

City sends complaint letter to DOE

FERNLEY–Although 77,000 tons of nuclear waste may be traveling through Fernley, Silver Springs and Wabuska on its way to Yucca Mountain, the U.S. Department of Energy didn’t include any Lyon County community that is directly impacted by the proposed transportation in public scoping sessions.

The recommended Mina Corridor route would bring nuclear waste material through the Nevada communities of on its way to Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas.

The Fernley City Council voted at its Dec. 6 meeting to send a letter to federal officials on concerns levied by Councilman Monte Martin at the meeting in a written draft outline.

The Council voted to direct City Manager Gary Bacock and Councilman Martin to craft a letter to federal officials with the City’s concerns.

Previously, the Lyon County Commissioners also directed County Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Page to also send a letter to DOE officials of the County being excluded from public scoping meetings.

The City of Fernley’s letter read, “Lyon County seems totally left out of the official scoping but heavily affected if the route becomes a reality: key information about communities actually affected and potential impacts are obscure and these communities are not brought into the process, Hazen, Fernley, Silver Springs (including Lahontan State Recreation Area, which is an important regional recreation area with up to 40,000 people on a holiday).”

It continued, “The existing Wabuska track of the proposed Mina project goes to Silver Springs-Lake Lahontan to Hazen where it then joins to the main Union Pacific track which runs east to Fallon and west to Fernley and then Reno. Northern EIS Scoping Hearing were limited to Reno and Fallon. Fernley is no even on the map.

“There were no EIS scoping meetings held in Lyon County.”

The City’s letter also indicated the map in the EIS does not show the complete rail access route or the main rail line.

Further, “Maps and handout literature don’t show where radioactive material is linking to the proposed routes.

“There probably is nuclear material coming from both west and north (California and Idaho/Washington.).”

Martin and Bacock’s letter also pointed out that previous EIS data involving Fernley is two years old and “very inaccurate and must be updated.”

Part of the information indicated that Fernley’s population is at about 20,000 people and quickly growing.

Further the population is spreading with proposed subdivisions and industrial parks near Hazen.

The letter indicated, “There are many large subdivisions right along the ten mile railroad track frontage Fernley has with Highway 50A and the railroad tracks which is just north of Highway 50A.”

Also included in the letter is Fernley’s main business park is near the railroad tracks. The letter also read, “We think that an EIS should be conducted from Wabuska to Hazen.

a. There are obvious potential problems such as will the track be build to handle the weight of the train and cars carrying the waste?

b. What about places where the track intersects important state roads. Is either the road or the RR going to be made into an under or over pass? (At least four paces that there are ‘at grade’ crossings: Hazen/Highway 50A; Silver Springs/Highway 50, Fort Churchill State Park/Highway 95A and Wabuska/Highway 95A. and Wasbuska/95A.

C. The City is in the process of designing a fresh water treatment plant which has a common frontage with the UP east/west main track.”

City officials mailed the letter last week.

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LasVegasNow
December 19, 2006

Yucca Mountain: New Game Plan to Stop the DOE

Adrienne Augustus
Investigative Reporter

The fight to preserve Yucca Mountain is gaining some new momentum at a meeting called by Senator Harry Reid.

Congressional representatives laid out a new game plan to stop the Department of Energy from building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been the focus of a twenty-year battle. Now, with a shift in Congress, Nevada's elected officials are pledging to work in a bipartisan effort to kill the plan.

Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, (D) Nevada, said, "I have always believed there will never be one nanogram of nuclear waste stored at Yucca Mountain. But I think the next two years will be the death kill for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain."

Strategies mentioned at Tuesday's meeting are continuing to fight the proposal in court and finding alternatives to using the Yucca Mountain site to store nuclear waste.

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Stockton Record
December 20, 2006

Anti-terror rules for trains in works

Regulations aimed at tank cars with hazmat loads

By Alex Breitler
Record Staff Writer

That tank car sitting on the tracks for days could be loaded with harmless corn syrup - or potentially deadly chlorine.

Proposed federal rules to be published today are meant to secure chemical railroad tankers that could become tools in terrorists' hands.

Tank cars rolling down the tracks behind your home or sitting unprotected in a rail yard might carry two of the most-dangerous hazardous materials: chlorine, used to purify public water supplies, and ammonia, used in fertilizer.

Officials either won't or can't say how much of these toxins might be on the rails any given day. "We really don't know what's traveling through the county" every minute, said Ron Baldwin, San Joaquin County's emergency services director.

For similar reasons, the shipment of hazardous materials via railroad has drawn public scrutiny across the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as well as the more-recent bombings of passenger trains in England, Spain and India.

And in the future, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada could mean nuclear waste being shipped through dozens of states via truck and train.

A number of cities are considering ordinances that would force railroads to reroute trains around their communities.

"There is no security in the American railroad system, and there never will be. You can't put fences around 142,000 miles of track," said Fred Millar, a Virginia-based hazardous-materials expert who works as a consultant for the conservation group Friends of the Earth. The group supports rerouting.

Stockton doesn't qualify as a high-threat urban area, according to the federal government, but the new regulations could have some effect here:

» Homeland security officials will be allowed to inspect railroads and rail yards, examining tank cars for signs of tampering.

» Railroads must compile annual reports on hazardous-materials shipments.

» Attendants must be present when tank cars are transferred.

Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe officials declined to talk about the implications of these rules for San Joaquin County, instead referring questions to the Washington-based Association of American Railroads.

About 1.8 million carloads of hazardous materials are transported each year throughout the nation. Beer, paint and propane are among the materials classified as hazardous by federal regulators, said Tom White, a spokesman for the association.

The more-dangerous toxins, such as chlorine and ammonia, add up to about 100,000 carloads per year, White said. Many of the tank cars people see in the city may be empty, however.

"We try very hard to make sure they are not just sitting around," White said.

Under federal law, railroads cannot deny shipment of these substances. While details aren't publicized, fire departments across the nation can request lists of hazardous materials moving through their communities.

The Stockton Fire Department, for instance, subscribes to a database that can give real-time data about materials on passing trains. But officials can't track every shipment.

"We handle more hazardous materials on the nation's railroads than people could ever imagine," said Tim Smith of Auburn, who represents the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. "It's every day. Constant."

The tracks are indeed vulnerable, he said. Many rail yards lack lights and fences to keep the public out. Stockton should be concerned, Smith said, since the city is a hub for freight transport.

One of the federal government's worries is a terrorist planting a bomb onto a chlorine tanker in a rural area, then detonating that device as the car passes through a large city.

"It would be so simple," Smith said.

--Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler@recordnet.com

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The Republican
December 20, 2006

Editorials

Moving the problem is no solution at all

Across the nation, spent nuclear fuel is stored at facilities in 39 states. Looked at from almost any direction, this is no one's idea of an ideal situation.

What it is instead is a whole series of potentially deadly accidents that could happen at any time. And that's just when one considers human error or wear and tear. Taking a look at the possibility of a terrorist strike can make the potential for calamity even more worrisome.

It was with this in mind that federal officials hatched a plan to store all of the nation's spent nuclear fuel - radioactive material that will be a threat for centuries - in one place, beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

This might have initially sounded like a good idea, but even a quick glance at the plans showed that the proposed solution posed a greater danger than the current situation. To get the nuclear waste to Yucca, it would have to be transported there, through 44 states. It would be moved by truck and train and on barges, along highways and rail lines and on waterways, through cities and towns and past farms. It would be moved alongside homes and schools and businesses and reservoirs.

It would be a nightmare on the move.

By one estimate, a vehicle loaded with spent nuclear fuel would have to leave a facility somewhere in the United States every four hours for 24 years in order to get it all to Yucca Mountain. One needn't have attended soothsaying school to foresee terrible trouble in such a plan.

Thankfully, cooler heads have started to prevail on the issue of nuclear waste.

With Democrats set to take charge in Congress next month, plans for Yucca are all but dead. Those who will be in key leadership positions - including Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the incoming majority leader - strongly oppose the Yucca proposal.

Locally, there is spent nuclear fuel stored at the closed Yankee Atomic Electric Co. plant in Rowe. That situation is repeated at sites across the nation. No one is cheering the current circumstances. Until considering the alternatives, that is.

No one wants radioactive waste stored right up the road, but when that is compared to the Yucca plan, keeping it around starts to look pretty good.

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Nevada Appeal
December 19, 2006

Lyon County smart to demand a voice on Yucca

For Lyon County residents worried about trains carrying high-level nuclear waste through their back yards, we remind them of these words from Sen. Harry Reid: "The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is never going to open. ... The tide is turning on Yucca Mountain, and it is time we look at viable alternatives and realistic approaches to long-term nuclear waste storage."

Even longtime supporters of Yucca Mountain are beginning to change their minds, which will likely doom not only the project, but the proposed rail line that would carry the waste.

The question remains then, why doesn't the Bush administration quit throwing money into the project when there are so many more worthwhile things to do with that cash? The rail line alone could cost more than $1 billion and Yucca Mountain itself could top $58 billion, yet work toward completing both continues.

But there's a lot more at stake than money, and we applaud Lyon County and Fernley officials for demanding a voice in the process. They're sending letters of complaint that a meeting was not conducted in their county about the rail line. The nearest meeting was in Reno, and plans for the rail line came as a surprise to many residents recently.

The director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects said a terrorist with a missile launcher could put a hole in a cask containing nuclear waste and contaminate a 42-square-mile area.

All we have to say to that is we hope Sen. Reid is a man of his word.

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Sacramento Bee
December 19, 2006

Showdown on nuke waste storage

With power in the Senate shifting to the Democrats, opponents of a Nevada repository push for keeping the material at nuclear reactor sites.

By David Whitney
Bee Washington Bureau

A few years ago, the plan to store the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada seemed all but certain.

Congress decided that highly radioactive waste from commercial nuclear power plants, which takes centuries to decay, needed to be stored underground. And it voted by a wide margin in 2002 that Yucca Mountain, 100 miles from Las Vegas, was the place to build such a repository.

But after the Nov. 7 elections, which propelled Democrats into power on Capitol Hill, the plan is facing challenges.

Despite strong bipartisan support for Yucca Mountain in Congress, the incoming majority leader of the Senate, Nevadan Harry Reid, pledges that Yucca Mountain will never open. The incoming chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Californian Barbara Boxer, agrees. Both voted against the Yucca repository.

They say nuclear waste should stay right where it is -- at the nation's nuclear power plants -- at least until better waste technology comes along.

"There's no rush to put it someplace that's dangerous," Boxer said.

Opponents are raising questions over how safe the Yucca Mountain facility would be and whether transporting radioactive waste on roads and rail lines would pose unacceptable risks of accidents or terrorist attacks. More than 100 national and state environmental groups -- including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council -- coalesced in September behind a set of principles that include permanent storage of used fuel at the reactor sites.

"The problem is the concept that the public wants the waste moved," said Michele Boyd, the legislative director and nuclear expert at Public Citizen. "That's a 20-year-old concept."

The nuclear power industry is giving ground. It still wants Yucca Mountain opened, but it's willing to allow taxes that plant operators pay into a fund for Yucca Mountain to be used for interim storage, a euphemism for aboveground storage until a way is found to reprocess old fuel assemblies safely into new fuel.

Because of the long delay, plants already are turning to surface storage. At facilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo on California's scenic central coast, construction is well under way on thick concrete pads that eventually will hold concrete-encased steel containers where fuel assemblies would be entombed.

PG&E spokesman Shawn Cooper said the company was still hopeful that Yucca Mountain would open someday. But as long as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses cask storage, the waste could be there well into the next century, venting heat from the decaying fuel into the brisk Pacific Ocean winds. "It's called temporary dry-cask storage, but the canisters can hold the waste 100 years," he said.

Jill ZamEk, a leader of San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, was one of the signers of the environmentalists' principles in September. Mothers for Peace is fighting to force a rearrangement of the dry casks so that they'd better survive a terrorist attack, and the Supreme Court will decide soon whether to hear that case.

"We want Diablo Canyon plants shut down," ZamEk said. When it comes to the plant's waste, however, she said, "the risk of transporting it is so great it needs to stay where it is."

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, whose district includes Diablo Canyon, agrees that the waste should stay put but with more security.

"I believe that we should actually be beefing up security against potential terrorism and improving safety to prevent accidents at all nuclear facilities around the country," she said in a statement.

Among Boxer's biggest concerns about Yucca Mountain is that it's not as impervious to water as initially thought. Sophisticated testing has shown that water percolates through its caverns and heads toward the Colorado River.

"Sixteen million Californians drink from that river," Boxer said.

Jon Summers, Reid's spokesman, said the senator would do all that he could to make sure Yucca Mountain never opened because the site was unsuitable. He said Reid had introduced legislation a year ago directing the Energy Department to take possession of the waste at the nation's nuclear plants and store it on site.

The bill went nowhere this year. The chairman of the Senate environment committee, James Inhofe, R-Okla., favors a Yucca Mountain repository. When the bill is reintroduced next year, however, Boxer will be heading the committee. She leans toward on-site storage but with the possibility of constructing regional or state gathering places for some of it, such as that at Rancho Seco where a reactor closed in 1989.

Boxer also favors research into reprocessing, something that environmentalists oppose.

Boxer said that if a way to reprocess nuclear waste safely could be found, it would help with the waste issue, produce new fuel for reactors and "make me feel more positive about nuclear power" as a pollution-free alternative for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions from oil-, natural gas- and coal-burning power plants.

Growing interest in building a new generation of nuclear plants since the enactment of an energy bill that offers generous government subsidies is driving the industry's shifting attitude about waste storage.

Since Congress began working on the energy bill, nearly three dozen applications for new reactors have been planned. The bill was signed into law in August 2005, touching off what Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., called a "nuclear renaissance."

"I am a pragmatist," Boxer said. "The vast majority of the members on my committee support nuclear power, and so do the majority in the Senate. So my focus is on safety, security and research, because I don't think there is any question that we are going to be seeing new plants."

--The Bee's David Whitney can be reached at (202) 383-0004 or dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com.

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Idaho Statesman
December 19, 2006

Our View: Nation, Idaho need Yucca Mountain

A new Democratic Congress is talking about ending the 20-year Yucca Mountain debate by burying the proposed nuclear waste dump.

A Virginia energy startup company is talking about building the nation's first nuclear power plant in a generation — in remote Bruneau.

The first conversation is troubling. The second, while sketchy, is overdue. And of course, the topics are inextricably linked. The longer the nation procrastinates and politicizes its nuclear waste disposal issue, the more it complicates building the next generation of nuclear plants, in Bruneau or anyplace else.

Yucca Mountain — a remote ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas — is supposed to be the federal government's burial ground for high-level nuclear waste. At least that's why the feds have studied Yucca Mountain's geology since 1978; in 1987, Congress made Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste dump of choice.

The topography hasn't changed since then, or in the 11 million to 14 million years since volcanic eruptions created Yucca Mountain, but the political geology is shifting. New Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is vowing to block Yucca Mountain, and he may have some key party allies on his side.

The not-in-my-backyard politics, while unfortunate, is bad enough. What's worse is the suggestion that highly radioactive nuclear waste ought to simply stay put, in 126 backyards in 39 states across the country. Even Idaho, which gets no electricity from nuclear reactors, is on the hook. High-level waste stored at the Idaho National Laboratory is slated for Yucca Mountain.

We've said this before — we've had some practice these past 20 years — and we'll say it again.

It's unacceptable to indefinitely store waste above Idaho's Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, a primary source of water for much of southern Idaho.

It's insulting to Idaho, since the feds have promised to move this waste.

And it's inefficient to manage waste at dozens of sites; the benefits of permanent storage at one site override the challenges of transport.

As long as the nation does nothing to address nuclear waste, critics have a ready argument against any nuclear power proposal, such as Alternate Energy Holdings' idea to build a nuclear plant near Bruneau.

At first blush, the proposal sounds surreal. The cost would approach $2 billion. The plant could power 1.5 million homes and would be twice as large as the Three Mile Island reactor, the site of a 1979 accident that threw the industry into a 30-year tailspin.

We cannot and will not reflexively dismiss the idea. We support pursuing a second generation of nuclear plants. We believe nuclear power offers a possible answer to several problems: greenhouse gases; the demands of providing power in a growing Northwest; and the need to replace hydropower generated at four lower Snake River dams, a fish-killing obstacle to recovering Idaho salmon.

However, a viable nuclear industry requires an efficient method for storing the waste.

Many of the activists who oppose Yucca Mountain also would oppose new nuclear power. Killing Yucca Mountain would serve their interests nicely. But it doesn't serve the nation's interest.

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Nevada Appeal
December 18, 2006

Department of Energy held no Yucca rail line meetings in Lyon County

'Scoping' meeting not held in affected communities

Karen Woodmansee
Appeal Staff Writer
kwoodmansee@nevadaappeal.com

The Department of Energy is considering using a rail line that passes through the Lyon County communities of Silver Springs and Wabuska for the transport of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, but officials didn't hold a public meeting in that area.

"We held a scoping meeting in Reno," said Allen Benson, director of External Affairs for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste. "One could ask why we don't hold scoping meetings all over the country."

Benson said the meeting was held in Reno because it was the population center of Northern Nevada.

"We've gone far beyond the minimum requirement of the law in order to allow people to give public comments on what we should be looking at in trying to prepare this impact statement," he said. "There were a lot of locations that were not included."

Lyon County emergency management director Jeff Page attended the Reno meeting, and said meeting officials didn't seem to know where the affected communities were located.

"They thought Silver Springs and Fernley were in Washoe County," he said. "Our concern is folks locally didn't have the opportunity to comment."

Since the session involved discussion of the Mina corridor from Hazen in Churchill County, through Silver Springs, Wabuska and south to Schurz, and didn't cover concerns about transporting the waste through Reno, Page said he saw no point to holding the meeting in Reno.

Benson said the meetings were designed to look at a rail spur that will connect from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain, not to discuss the route of the nuclear waste shipments.

He added, "We certainly provide the citizens in the area of the rail spur with the ability to talk. That is the proposed action. This is a very defined project. That's all we're talking about."

He said the Department of Energy held scoping meetings from Nov. 1 through Nov. 27 in Amargosa Valley, Caliente, Fallon, Goldfield, Hawthorne and Reno, but none were held in Lyon County.

Lyon County commissioners and Fernley officials both plan to send a letter of complaint about the absence of meetings in the affected communities.

The Mina route to transport 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to the proposed facility at Yucca Mountain was considered in 1989. However, the Walker River Paiute Tribe would not allow nuclear waste transportation on the track it owns from Wabuska to Schurz. This year, the tribe gave the federal government permission to include the stretch in an environmental impact study.

The other route under consideration is the Caliente corridor in Southern Nevada.

--Contact reporter Karen Woodmansee at kwoodmansee@nevadaappeal.com or 882-2111, ext. 351.

---------------------------

Nevada Appeal
December 18, 2006

Rail line to Yucca divides small towns

Proposed route would pass by Silver Springs

ED VOGEL
Las Vegas Review-Journal

SILVER SPRINGS - June Mick fled to this rural Lyon County community six months ago to get away from the crime and high costs of south Florida.

She and her husband paid $230,000 for a manufactured home and 4.7 acres of jackrabbits and sagebrush near an infrequently used railroad track. 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.

"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 manufactured home 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 Fallon's Lahontan Valley News 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.

---------------------------

Pahrump Valley Times
December 18, 2006

Tech Review Board to meet in Las Vegas

PVT

The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet Jan. 24 in Las Vegas. The agenda will include updates on Department of Energy (DOE) technical and scientific activities related to the proposed repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.

The meeting will be open to the public and opportunities for public comment will be provided.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. and conclude at approximately 6 p.m. It will be held at the Atrium Suites Hotel; 4255 South Paradise Road; Las Vegas; (tel.) 702-369-4400; (fax) 702-369-3770.

A final agenda detailing meeting times, topics and participants will be available approximately one week before the meeting date. Copies of the meeting agenda can be requested by telephone or obtained from the board's Web site at nwtrb.gov.

Time will be set aside at the end of the meeting for public comments. Those wanting to speak are encouraged to sign the "public comment register" at the check-in table. A time limit may have to be set on individual remarks, but written comments of any length may be submitted for the record.

Interested parties also will have the opportunity to submit questions in writing to the board.

Transcripts of the meeting will be available on the board's Web site, by e-mail, on computer disk and on a library-loan basis in paper format from Davonya Barnes of the board's staff, beginning Feb. 19.

A block of rooms has been reserved at the Atrium Suites Hotel for meeting participants. When making a reservation, state that you are attending the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meeting. Reservations should be made by Jan. 8 to ensure receiving the meeting rate.

For more information, contact Karyn Severson, NWTRB external affairs; 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22201-3367; (tel.) 703-2354473; (fax) 703-235-4495.

---------------------------

Pahrump Valley Times
December 18, 2006

Homestead Road signal could be a year away

By Mark Waite
PVT

Nevada Department of Transportation officials have presented a draft agreement to Nye County for the construction of a traffic light at Homestead Road and Highway 160.

However, it could still be another year before motorists see relief from the lines of cars waiting to enter Highway 160 there.

Under the agreement with Nye County, NDOT agrees to pay $250,000 in federal safety grant money and $100,000 for drainage improvements, according to Rudy Malfabon, NDOT deputy director for southern Nevada. The state will also pay for the design of the signal.

Nye County officials last July offered to contribute $300,000 from impact fees and the remainder of the cost from the payments it receives from the U.S. Department of Energy for the Yucca Mountain Project.

That came after Pahrump residents loudly rejected a proposal from NDOT to build a roundabout at that intersection instead of a traffic signal.

The slow pace of the agreement with NDOT was a subject of concern for Nye County Commissioner Patricia Cox, who leaves office at the end of this month.

"It's five months later and we still don't have a contract," Cox said at the Dec. 5 county commission meeting.

Nye County Public Works Director Samson Yao said Monday he is hoping NDOT adds comments to the draft agreement this week so he can put it on the next Nye County Commission agenda Dec. 19.

"We're going to try to figure out how to design that (signal) to accommodate the county's future plans to widen Homestead," Malfabon said.

Yao said the widening of Homestead Road to five lanes is in the county's capital improvement plan for 2007. But he said the county plans to install the traffic signal before the widening project occurs, placing the light far enough to the right so it won't have to be moved again.

"Initially, when you put traffic lights in, you want to put it in the ultimate location," Yao said. "Otherwise it'd be very costly to relocate."

Yao said he didn't know when the full build-out of Homestead Road to five lanes would take place, but initial plans are for a three-lane approach to Highway 160.

Yao said the traffic light at Blue Diamond Road and Durango Drive in Las Vegas Valley is an example of a traffic signal placed far enough off the road to allow for the future widening of Highway 160.

Once the design is approved, the project will be put out for bid. Contractors will then have three weeks to review the plans, Malfabon said. The signal lights are custom fabricated for each location, which he said takes about four months. It would then take another 45 days to construct them. Finally, activation of the light would depend on when the utility company can hook up the new traffic signal, he said.

"If the county comes up with their share of the money, it should be about a year," he predicted.

"I was told it would take 16 months or 18 months to get this stuff fabricated and installed because there's such high demand for those traffic lights," Yao said. "That's from the time you actually have the design completed and actually place an order for those poles."

NDOT engineers may determine the traffic light can't be installed properly, in which case some modification to the interchange may occur, he said.

There are other intersections in Pahrump that meet NDOT warrants as requiring a traffic signal, Malfabon said. He said Nye County is negotiating with developers to make those improvements. The Homestead Road interchange with Highway 160 has aroused the most interest.

NDOT estimates the average annual daily traffic on Highway 160 just south of Highway 372 increased from 18,900 vehicles in 2004 to 23,000 vehicles in 2005. That's significantly more traffic than a counter just north of the Clark County line farther south on Highway 160, which averaged 9,800 vehicles per day in 2005, an increase from 8,600 in 2004.

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said Homestead Road has been getting busier, which has also led to the deterioration of the road.

"Traffic has been increasing. It's now becoming a route for heavy trucks," he said. "The road is becoming horrifying, all those heavy trucks are ripping up Homestead."

DeMeo suggested some temporary solutions to solve the lack of a traffic light that weren't entirely tongue in cheek.

"Actually, they could give me the money. I could put a deputy out there in the busy times to direct traffic," DeMeo said. As another alternative, "I was hoping maybe a temporary traffic light, solar powered, wouldn't require anything."

Insurance agent Robert Worden, from Worden's Insurance Agency, said auto insurance premiums are determined by a number of factors in addition to the accident rate on State Highway 160, like the rising cost of auto repairs, the cost of litigation and increased medical costs.

Worden said he sees accident claims from various locations on Highway 160, not just Homestead Road. He discounted the positive effect a traffic light at that intersection might bring.

"I see as many accidents at Highway 372 and Highway 160 as I see at Homestead and 160," Worden said. "Drivers don't follow the traffic control signals when we have them."

He added, "We have an infrastructure that cannot keep up with the population."

"We're going to try to move as fast as we can. That's all we can say," Yao said.

Meanwhile, Highway 160 motorists heading to and from Las Vegas are finding more signals along the way.

NDOT has constructed a number of new traffic lights on Blue Diamond Highway going into Interstate 15 on Blue Diamond Road. Whereas there used to be only a few traffic lights for Pahrump motorists to navigate going into or driving from Las Vegas, there are now seven signals on the highway west from I-15, and two more for those traveling eastbound.

Malfabon said those new traffic lights were paid for out of the contract for the improvements to the I-15 interchange with Blue Diamond Road.

"It may look like it just sprung up there but the interchange contract was awarded a year and a half ago," he said.

Two temporary lights have been installed at the entrance to a new shopping center with a Kohl's Supermarket and Target discount store just west of I-15.

NDOT was able to speed up the installation of the traffic light at Decatur Avenue with traffic light poles loaned by Clark County, Malfabon said.

"There have been cases where we've been able to get help from the county to help address the need for a signal," he said.

---------------------------

NEI
December 18, 2006

On Yucca Mountain, Senator Boxer and The Colorado River

Here's a quote from Senator Barbara Boxer about the Yucca Mountain Project that just didn't sound right when I read it. It ran in a story on the Yucca Mountain Project that appeared in the McClatchy Newspapers this morning:

Among Boxer's biggest concerns about Yucca Mountain is that it'?s not as impervious to water as initially thought. Sophisticated testing has shown that water percolates through its caverns and heads toward the Colorado River.

"?Sixteen million Californians drink from that river," Boxer said.

I sent a note to Rod McCollum, one of our NEI staff experts on Yucca Mountain, asking him for some clarification. Here's what he wrote back to me:

With all due respect to the Senator, that statement is incorrect.

The groundwater beneath Yucca Mountain is in an enclosed basin and does not communicate with any rivers or other major sources of drinking water. That was one of the main reasons for selecting the site in the first place. While Death Valley is the ultimate endpoint for flow beneath Yucca, it is important to note that very little if any radiation will actually make it all the way to Death Valley -- and if it does, it will take thousands of years for it to happen.

The EPA standard requires water only 12 miles down gradient from Yucca to be safe to drink with no treatment. It is another 50 miles to Death Valley. The geology along the route further removes radionuclides and the flow is joined by waters that never pass beneath Yucca. This dilutes the radioactive concentration to levels so low they would be very difficult to detect --? even after the many thousands of years it would take to travel that far.

To repeat: Yucca Mountain is absolutely not a threat to the Colorado River. None of the groundwater flowing beneath Yucca Mountain ever reaches the Colorado River watershed.

Thanks to Rod for his quick response. As always, the best background information available on the Yucca Mountain Project is NEI's Yucca Mountain Source Book.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Yucca Mountain, Used Nuclear Fuel, California, Nevada, Senator Barbara Boxer

posted by Eric McErlain

---------------------------

Guardian
December 18, 2006

Will Nev. Set the Course for 2008 Pick?

Nedra Pickler

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Forget Hillary vs. Obama. There's another question in the Democratic presidential race: Does what happens in Vegas really stay there, or can Sin City set the course for the nation?

Nevada has a new prominence in deciding the party's next nominee. It will hold an early caucus Jan. 19, 2008, sandwiched between Iowa and New Hampshire. The prized position is an attempt to bring more diverse voices into determining the Democratic candidate beyond the two overwhelmingly white, rural states that have traditionally dominated the process.

The hope is that a Western state with a large population of Hispanics and union workers will bring fresh issues to the debate.

``I've always felt that the system we have of choosing our president has been very cockeyed,'' said incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the state's top Democrat. Nevada ``will give the American people a better idea of what a candidate should be for and against.''

That doesn't mean candidates should be for gambling and against limits on prostitution. Nevada may be famous for some of the nation's most liberal entertainment laws, but state leaders are more interested in promoting other, less sexy political concerns. Those include water rights, nuclear waste disposal, health care, education and maintaining military installations.

Local activists say they don't expect to see the candidates on the Strip, except maybe to hold fundraisers in the large meeting rooms or spend the night in the hotels. However, they can be expected to be asked where they stand on Internet gaming and betting on collegiate sports, issues important to the local economy.

``You are going to get certain questions about local issues just like you get questions in Iowa about corn subsidies,'' said Democrat Tony Sanchez, chairman of the committee drafting the caucus rules and overseeing its operation. ``But the thought of, 'Hey, let's get a picture of you rolling the dice,' that's not going to happen.''

The selection of Nevada is part of an effort to increase Democratic support in the West, once a bastion of conservatism. Democrats won several statewide elections in the West last month and the Democratic National Committee is considering holding its 2008 convention in Denver.

Reid was the driving force behind moving up Nevada's caucus and has a lot at stake in its success.

That will be a big job. Nevada had only 17 caucus sites in 2004 - one per county - and just 8,500 of the state's nearly 1 million active registered voters took part. That was a huge jump from 2000, when fewer than 1,000 participated, and the increase overwhelmed the party and delayed results for hours.

This time, the party plans to have as many as 1,000 sites, Reid said.

The Nevada Democratic Party hired Jean Hessburg, the former head of the Iowa Democratic Party who helped oversee the last Iowa caucus, to run the operation and avoid some of the problems seen in 2004. She will be assisted by Iowa political veteran Jayson Sime and a trio of media consultants experienced in presidential politics - Jamal Simmons, Bill Buck and Roger Salazar.

The question is how much time the candidates will spend in Nevada versus Iowa and New Hampshire, where they are expected to attend parties in people's homes statewide. The candidates will have an incentive to stick to the Las Vegas area because two-thirds of the voters live in Clark County. Reno also has a concentration of Democrats, but the rest of the state is sparsely populated and overwhelmingly Republican.

At stake in the Nevada Democratic caucus voting will be 22 base delegates, compared to Iowa's 39 and New Hampshire's 19.

Many Democrats considering a bid have been working Nevada. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has visited repeatedly from his nearby home state, and John Edwards has been courting the state's labor leaders. The 2004 vice presidential nominee already has an endorsement from the Laborers' Local 872.

The labor support will be critical in Nevada because unions will be the most natural organizations to get voters to the caucus. The largest is the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, with 60,000 members who serve the drinks, clean the hotel rooms and cook the food at casinos. Political director Pilar Weiss said the union has many friends in the race and won't make an endorsement until late in the process.

``There is not a favored son or daughter,'' she said.

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack stopped in Las Vegas on his presidential campaign announcement tour and Edwards plans to include it on his later this month. Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Chris Dodd of Connecticut have also made trips in recent months.

Two top-tier contenders who have not announced - Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois - have not visited since Nevada moved up its date.

It's too early to gauge what kind of appeal they would have in the swing state, although former President Clinton made many friends here with his 2000 veto of a bill that would have sent nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

One of Bill Clinton's fans is Billy Vassiliadis, who created Las Vegas' successful ``What happens here, stays here'' marketing campaign and a slick brochure and video that helped convince Democrats to bless Nevada's early caucus.

Vassiliadis has a picture of himself with Obama hanging in his office and once held a fundraiser for Edwards at his chic headquarters. He said he wants to stay neutral in the presidential primary, but paused when asked what he would do if the former president asked him to support his wife.

``There's almost nothing Bill Clinton couldn't ask me for,'' Vassiliadis said. ``That would be tough.''

Reid said that with so many senators in the race, he will not endorse anyone. ``That would be a little bit foolish for me to do that when I have to ask them for things here all the time and they have to ask me for things,'' he said in a recent interview.

He said he will ask the gambling industry to support the caucus effort.

``I hope they step up and help with funding some of the things that need to be funded in this new environment we have there,'' Reid said. ``And I'm confident they'll do that.''

Reid rejects suggestions that associations with legalized gambling could hurt presidential candidates, noting that numerous states have it.

Frank Schreck, an attorney who has worked for gambling clients and was a chief fundraiser for Bill Clinton, said the industry is sensitive to appearances for politicians but will want to know where they stand on issues important to them.

``It's in private conversations because you don't want to embarrass anybody,'' Schreck said.

---On the Net:
Nevada Democratic Party: http://www.nvdems.com

---------------------------

San Luis Obispo Tribune
December 18, 2006

Question for Democrats: Will Sin City and Yucca Mtn. set coure for 2008 pick?

Nedra Pickler
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) – Forget Hillary vs. Obama. There’s another question in the Democratic presidential race: Does what happens in Vegas really stay there, or can Sin City set the course for the nation?

Nevada has a new prominence in deciding the party’s next nominee. It will hold an early caucus Jan. 19, 2008, sandwiched between Iowa and New Hampshire. The prized position is an attempt to bring more diverse voices into determining the Democratic candidate beyond the two overwhelmingly white, rural states that have traditionally dominated the process.

The hope is that a Western state with a large population of Hispanics and union workers will bring fresh issues to the debate.

"I’ve always felt that the system we have of choosing our president has been very cockeyed," said incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the state’s top Democrat. Nevada "will give the American people a better idea of what a candidate should be for and against."

That doesn’t mean candidates should be for gambling and against limits on prostitution. Nevada may be famous for some of the nation’s most liberal entertainment laws, but state leaders are more interested in promoting other, less sexy political concerns. Those include water rights, nuclear waste disposal, health care, education and maintaining military installations.

Local activists say they don’t expect to see the candidates on the Strip, except maybe to hold fundraisers in the large meeting rooms or spend the night in the hotels. However, they can be expected to be asked where they stand on Internet gaming and betting on collegiate sports, issues important to the local economy.

"You are going to get certain questions about local issues just like you get questions in Iowa about corn subsidies," said Democrat Tony Sanchez, chairman of the committee drafting the caucus rules and overseeing its operation. "But the thought of, ‘Hey, let’s get a picture of you rolling the dice,’ that’s not going to happen."

Reid was the driving force behind moving up Nevada’s caucus and has a lot at stake in its success.

That will be a big job. Nevada had only 17 caucus sites in 2004 – one per county – and just 8,500 of the state’s nearly 1 million active registered voters took part. That was a huge jump from 2000, when fewer than 1,000 participated, and the increase overwhelmed the party and delayed results for hours.

This time, the party plans to have as many as 1,000 sites, Reid said.

The question is how much time the candidates will spend in Nevada versus Iowa and New Hampshire, where they are expected to attend parties in people’s homes statewide. The candidates will have an incentive to stick to the Las Vegas area because two-thirds of the voters live in Clark County. Reno also has a concentration of Democrats, but the rest of the state is sparsely populated and overwhelmingly Republican.

At stake in the Nevada Democratic caucus voting will be 22 base delegates, compared to Iowa’s 39 and New Hampshire’s 19.

Many Democrats considering a bid have been working Nevada. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has visited repeatedly from his nearby home state, and John Edwards has been courting the state’s labor leaders. The 2004 vice presidential nominee already has an endorsement from the Laborers’ Local 872.

"There is not a favored son or daughter," she said.

Two top-tier contenders who have not announced – Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois – have not visited since Nevada moved up its date.

It’s too early to gauge what kind of appeal they would have in the swing state, although former President Clinton made many friends here with his 2000 veto of a bill that would have sent nuclear waste – including from the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach – to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.

One of Bill Clinton’s fans is Billy Vassiliadis, who created Las Vegas’ successful "What happens here, stays here" marketing campaign and a slick brochure and video that helped convince Democrats to bless Nevada’s early caucus.

"There’s almost nothing Bill Clinton couldn’t ask me for," Vassiliadis said. "That would be tough."

Reid said that with so many senators in the race, he will not endorse anyone. "That would be a little bit foolish for me to do that when I have to ask them for things here all the time and they have to ask me for things," he said in a recent interview.

He said he will ask the gambling industry to support the caucus effort.

"I hope they step up and help with funding some of the things that need to be funded in this new environment we have there," Reid said. "And I’m confident they’ll do that."

Reid rejects suggestions that associations with legalized gambling could hurt presidential candidates, noting that numerous states have it.

"It’s in private conversations because you don’t want to embarrass anybody," Schreck said.

--On the Net:
Nevada Democratic Party: http://www.nvdems.com

---------------------------

Bangor Daily News
December 18, 2006

Editorials

Don't change course on nuclear waste storage

By BDN Staff

The history of nuclear waste disposal in the United States is one of broken promises, wasted money, obfuscation and delays - decades worth of them. It may get worse as incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has declared the federally designated repository in his home state of Nevada to be "dead." For states such as Maine, which are holding nuclear waste that was supposed to be deposited at Yucca Mountain, this is unacceptable.

It is also illegal. A federal court earlier this fall ordered the Department of Energy to pay more than $75.8 million to Maine Yankee for failing to abide by federal law requiring that the department provide a disposal site by Jan. 31, 1998. The department has appealed the decision, but if any damage award is upheld, the money would be returned to ratepayers, most of whom are in Maine.

The damage award pales next to the $24 billion the nation’s electric ratepayers have paid to research and develop a permanent storage site and to store nuclear waste at reactor sites in the interim. An estimated $6 billion has been spent so far on Yucca Mountain. Billions more are being spent to store waste at current and former nuclear power plants, including Maine Yankee in Wiscasset.

Faced with the reality that Yucca Mountain was decades behind schedule and continues to face political and legal challenges, New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, proposed that federal money for Yucca Mountain be diverted to the states to pay for storage at interim sites. This would have been a reasonable compromise if governors and others had reason to trust that the federal government would agree on a final storage site and that the 126 storage sites scattered around the country would be short-lived. There is no basis for such trust.

Fortunately, the new chair of the committee, Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, opposes the dispersed storage plan and wants to move forward on Yucca Mountain.

Sen. Reid’s threats aside, disposing of waste at Yucca Mountain is settled policy for Congress. The Department of Energy began studying the suitability of Yucca Mountain as a long-term repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 1978.

In July 2002, President Bush signed legislation officially establishing Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository. It is supposed to begin accepting waste in 2017. The Department of Energy is currently in the process of preparing an application to obtain the Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to proceed with construction of the repository.

Switching to another site or multiple sites, which would be harder to secure, makes no sense. Further, as discussions about alternatives to fossil fuels get more serious, nuclear power is likely to be part of the conversation. It can’t be seriously considered until waste disposal is settled.

Congress has slowly, expensively and deliberately settled on Yucca Mountain. Now is not the time to change course for political gain.

--Reader Comments

Susanne E. Vandenbosch, Tucson, AZ, - 12/18/06

I can appreciate the concern expresed in your editorial that spent nuclear fuel has not been sent to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nevertheless, it is important to realize thatthere are legitimate scientific concerns over the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. There is a possibility that water penetration may result in contamination of the groundwater. Also the presence of earthquake faults and evidence of volcanic eruptions at the site are concerns. No country has succeeded yet in permanently disposing of spent fuel.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 17, 2006

Editorial: Meddling with research

Government geologists criticize new reviews that they fear are peppered with politics

U.S. Geological Survey scientists are concerned about a new Bush administration policy that calls for scientists to submit all reports and presentations to agency managers to determine whether they meet its approved scientific standards.

According to a Thursday story by The Washington Post, USGS scientists are concerned that their reports would be altered or censored from public view if their findings conflict with established Bush administration policies.

The agency's associate director told the Post that the reviews are designed to ensure "the scientific excellence of USGS products." But another provision of the new Bush rules - which requires scientists to notify the agency's press office regarding any reports with "potential high visibility" or containing "policy-sensitive issues" - indicates that the administration is concerned about the public getting hold of information that conflicts with Bush policy.

And USGS researchers have clashed with administration policy. In 2002, the Post reports, the agency released a study saying that oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska could harm caribou. The report was rereleased a week later saying that the caribou would not be harmed. This came at a time when Bush was pushing Congress for permission to drill in the Arctic refuge.

But the Bush administration never has been known for embracing objective, fact-based scientific conclusions - especially when they conflict with the president's policies. His administration has meddled with government scientists in many agencies, including those charged with approving drugs and studying global warming's effects.

Government geologists are among the scientists studying Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a proposed site for a high-level nuclear waste repository. Bush wants that dump to be built, and the project already has been riddled with shoddy scientific work and political tampering. An investigation last year showed USGS scientists had falsified data concerning how fast water could corrode the storage canisters. Adding rules that seemingly require scientific geological conclusions to pass the president's policy test only further erode our confidence in the government's science.

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Sarasota Herald-Tribune
December 17, 2006

Growing needs, changing attitudes fuel drive for new nuclear plant

By Cathy Zollo
cathy.zollo@heraldtribune.com

Progress Energy Florida, which this week took the first steps toward building a multibillion-dollar nuclear power plant in Levy County, is betting it will benefit from a changing public attitude toward nuclear power.

Only a handful of such plants have gone up in the United States in the past 25 years, none in Florida.

But with memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl fading and the federal government encouraging nuclear technology, as many as 30 new nuclear plants could be proposed in the next few years.

Progress Energy secured an option on 3,000 acres in rural Levy County, about eight miles north of its existing Crystal River nuclear plant.

It is the first step in what is a multiyear process to gain approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The initial reaction, especially in Levy County, where the prospect of 500 jobs is enticing, has been supportive.

"That is not to say we don't expect some opposition," Jeff Lyash, CEO of Progress, said at a news conference.

"...We'll look forward to addressing that as openly and collaboratively as we can."

FPL has also said it is considering nuclear energy as an option for a future power plant, but it has not yet picked a site.

At a series of public meetings recently, FPL officials said they generally heard support for building more nuclear plants.

"We never take for granted we're going to be able to go out and build what's needed," said Rachel Scott, FPL spokeswoman.

"We recognize that we need to go out and talk to the community ... listen to their interests and concerns and address them early and throughout the development of the project."

Nationally, an October 2005 survey of people who live within 10 miles of one of the nation's 64 operating nuclear power plants showed that 83 percent favor nuclear energy, and 76 percent were willing to see a new reactor built near them.

Lyash said Progress will complete its application for construction and operation in the next 18 months and begin the review with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, though at any point it could abandon the project.

The single permit for both functions is part of the NRC permitting process that was streamlined with the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The law offers incentives for new nuclear power plant construction and measures to protect companies against government review delays.

That will be followed by three or four years of analysis and design for the plant.

Construction will take about five years, and Progress officials expect the plant to be online around 2017, producing enough electricity to power 700,000 homes.

Environmental groups would rather the approximately $3 billion it will cost to build one reactor in Levy went toward developing safer, cheaper energy from the sun and wind and for driving up energy efficiency.

"These nuclear power plants create radioactive waste that is the most dangerous substance known to mankind," said Holly Binns, field representative for Environment Florida.

"They'll spend billions and billions of ratepayer dollars on a plan that will exacerbate that problem."

While environmentalists concede the plants themselves are safer today, a major problem that remains unsolved is what to do with the radioactive nuclear waste.

The U.S. government, environmental groups, the nuclear power industry and the state of Nevada are still wrestling over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site.

Cherie Jacobs, spokeswoman for Progress Energy, said wind and solar power are not practical ways to meet Florida's energy needs.

"Alternative energies ... are too expensive still to use on a broad enough scale to handle the kind of power that we're seeing the state will need in 20 years," Jacobs said.

Progress expects a 25 percent increase in electric usage in its 35-county territory, fueled largely by population growth but also by increased demand for electricity in existing homes and businesses.

Nuclear power proponents say new technology and safety regulations will prevent accidents like Chernobyl from happening again.

"Even 30 years ago, we couldn't have gotten away with that design," said Daniel Sprau, professor of environmental health at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

Reactor regulations have stiffened since then and must include multiple, redundant safety systems as well as automated safety systems and stronger physical barriers between the radioactive end of the nuclear energy production and the outside world, among others safety features.

Sprau, who took his students to Chernobyl in April for the 20th anniversary of the disaster, thinks nuclear energy can combat global warming as well as answer the growing demand for electricity.

"I would prefer nuclear power over coal or any other source of fuel," Sprau said. "We need to do everything we can with wind and solar power, but that's not going to cut it with the demand we have now."

In Levy County, Sue Colson, a clam farmer and member of the Cedar Key Aquaculture Association, says she's got some studying to do before she decides if the plant is a good or a bad thing.

She wonders about how warm water from the plant might affect nearby Gulf of Mexico waters, home to some 200 clam farms and one of the biggest clam-producing areas in the United States.

But Colson is less worried about a nuclear plant than, say, a housing development.

"If I had 3,000 acres of private homes going in or condos, I'd be worried because they cannot be managed," she said. "...The runoff from people is horrible."

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The State
December 17, 2006

Nuke waste, spent fuel might stay in S.C.

Opposition to Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository could force states to continue to handle storage

By Sammy Fretwell
sfretwell@thestate.com

South Carolina could be saddled indefinitely with nearly 6,000 huge containers of nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site and hundreds of tons of commercial spent fuel if a Nevada senator successfully slows an atomic waste disposal project near Las Vegas.

The burial ground’s arch-opponent, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, will become Senate majority leader when Democrats take control of Congress next month. That makes him more effective in opposing the Yucca Mountain plan — and Reid said recently he will do everything possible to derail the project.

While Reid can’t single-handedly stop Yucca Mountain, his influence presents a potential roadblock. As majority leader, Reid can refuse to schedule votes on bills affecting Yucca Mountain.

Legislation supporting Yucca Mountain will be killed next year in Congress, an aide to Reid said this month.

Yucca Mountain supporters in South Carolina — primarily the commercial power industry and SRS backers — say the government needs to keep its word and open the permanent disposal site for the high-level waste.

The site was supposed to open in 1998. That has been delayed until at least 2017, in part because of environmental concerns. The government has spent more than $4 billion on the project.

“It is extremely important for the Savannah River Site and the nation for Yucca Mountain to eventually open,” said Mal McKibben, director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, a supporter of SRS.

Yucca, a hollowed out mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is being designed to hold nuclear waste for 10,000 years. Reid and some environmentalists have said that, despite government studies, it isn’t safe.

Many opponents of Yucca Mountain prefer holding nuclear waste at atomic power plants and federal weapons facilities.

Backers of the Yucca Mountain plan say it is safer to store all the nation’s high-level nuclear waste in one spot, rather than scattered around the nation.

If Yucca Mountain is stopped, the Savannah River Site will continue storing highly radioactive waste in vaults at the nuclear weapons complex near Aiken, the U.S. Department of Energy says.

According to plans, SRS will produce 5,862 canisters of highly radioactive material for eventual disposal at Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department is turning deadly waste sludge into glass in an attempt to stabilize the material.

The glass is poured into 10-foot-long steel canisters, which are kept in vaults at the weapons complex. The Energy Department has produced more than 2,000 glass-filled cans since 1996. The glass logs weigh about 5,000 pounds each.

Amy Poston, an Energy spokeswoman in Aiken, said the government would need to build extra storage areas for the canisters if the waste can’t be shipped to Yucca Mountain.

The commercial nuclear industry is perhaps more concerned about not having a permanent site to ship atomic waste.

Nuclear power accounts for more than half the energy produced in South Carolina, one of the nation’s highest percentages. Atomic energy executives want to get rid of the toxic refuse.

Four atomic power stations owned by South Carolina Electric & Gas, Progress Energy and Duke Energy produce tons of atomic waste every 18 months when reactors refuel. Because the material is highly radioactive, it must be stored in pools or sealed, above-ground casks to contain the radiation.

SCE&G, which generates 26 tons of high-level nuclear waste every 18 months, believes it is time for Yucca Mountain to open, said company spokesman Robert Yanity. One of the four sites in the state is SCE&G’s V.C. Summer plant near Jenkinsville, northwest of Columbia.

“When it comes to politics, you just never know,” Yanity said. “We will continue to handle waste appropriately and safely as we have always done., but it has long been our belief... that it makes sense for all spent fuel to be handled and maintained by the government.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, nuclear power companies have been reluctant to say how much nuclear waste they store at atomic power stations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported in 2002 that 6,000 used fuel assemblies were stored at atomic power stations in South Carolina. Fuel assemblies typically weigh about 1,500 pounds each.

Progress Energy, which operates the Robinson nuclear plant near Hartsville, reported this week that it has about 194 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at that facility.

Nationally, nuclear waste is growing at a rate of about 2,000 tons per year, experts have said — and that’s only at current operating levels.

SCE&G and Duke Energy, which runs plants in Oconee and York counties, are interested in growing their operations in South Carolina. In SCE&G’s case, the amount of nuclear waste it produces annually could triple if it adds two new reactors at its power station in Fairfield County.

Yucca Mountain supporters note that an Energy Department plan to begin recycling nuclear fuel from atomic power plants could reduce the amount of waste that goes to Nevada.

Part of the discussion involves developing regional interim storage sites for high-level nuclear waste, but Yucca Mountain supporters say the site still will be needed for waste created from the recycling process. Recycling is still years away because of funding problems and political opposition.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said he doesn’t think Reid’s opposition will stop the Yucca Mountain project. Reid could cut funding for studies at the site, but Clyburn said the project will go forward. Clyburn, the incoming House majority whip, supports opening Yucca Mountain.

“It may be symbolic, his new leadership position, but it doesn’t change anything,” Clyburn said.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will continue to push to open Yucca Mountain, spokesman Kevin Bishop said.

“Sen. Graham remains a strong supporter of building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain,” Bishop said. “Some of the first waste that will be transported to Yucca will come from the Savannah River Site.”

Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537. McClatchy newspapers contributed to this story.

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The State
December 17, 2006

Yucca nuclear storage project may be doomed

By David Whitney
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A few years ago, the plan to store the nation’s nuclear waste in Nevada seemed all but certain.

Congress decided that highly radioactive waste from commercial nuclear-power plants, which takes centuries to decay, needed to be stored underground. And it reaffirmed by wide margins in 2002 that Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles from Las Vegas, was the place to build such a repository.

Now that’s being rethought, for a variety of reasons. And the Nov. 7 elections, which propelled Democrats into power on Capitol Hill, are likely to accelerate that thinking despite strong bipartisan support for Yucca Mountain in Congress.

• The incoming majority leader of the Senate, Nevadan Harry Reid, long has pledged Yucca Mountain will never open. The incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Californian Barbara Boxer, agrees. Both voted against the Yucca repository.

They think that nuclear waste should stay right where it is — at the nation’s nuclear power plants — at least until better waste technology comes along.

“There’s no rush to put it someplace that’s dangerous,” Boxer said.

• There are questions about how safe the Yucca Mountain facility would be, and others about whether transporting radioactive waste on roads and rail lines would pose unacceptable risks of accidents or terrorist attacks.

• More than 100 national and state environmental groups — including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council — coalesced in September behind a set of principles that include permanent storage of used fuel at the reactor sites.

• Even the nuclear-power industry is giving ground. It still wants Yucca Mountain opened, but it’s willing to allow taxes that plant operators pay into a fund for Yucca Mountain to be used for interim storage, a kind of euphemism for aboveground storage until there’s a way to reprocess old fuel assemblies safely into new fuel.

The Energy Department is eight years late in responding to a federal mandate to open an underground repository. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said recently it could be “decades” before Yucca Mountain opens.

Because of the long delay, nuclear power plants already are turning to surface storage. At facilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo on California’s scenic central coast, construction is well under way on thick concrete pads that eventually will hold concrete-encased steel containers where nuclear fuel assemblies would be entombed.

PG&E spokesman Shawn Cooper said the company still was hopeful Yucca Mountain would open someday. But as long as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses cask storage, the waste could be there well into the next century, venting heat from the decaying fuel into the brisk Pacific Ocean winds. “It’s called temporary dry-cask storage, but the canisters can hold the waste 100 years,” he said.

Among Boxer’s biggest concerns about Yucca Mountain is that it’s not as impervious to water as initially thought. Sophisticated testing has shown that water percolates through its caverns and heads toward the Colorado River.

“Sixteen million Californians drink from that river,” Boxer said.

Jon Summers, Reid’s spokesman, said the senator would do all that he could to make sure Yucca Mountain never opened because the site was unsuitable. He said Reid had introduced legislation a year ago directing the Energy Department to take possession of the waste at the nation’s nuclear plants and store it on site.

The bill went nowhere this year. The chairman of the Senate environment committee, James Inhofe, R-Okla., favors a Yucca Mountain repository. When Reid’s bill is reintroduced next year, however, Boxer will be heading the committee — and she likes it or something like it.

She leans toward on-site storage but with the possibility of constructing regional or state gathering places for some of it.

Although she’s a skeptic, Boxer also favors research into reprocessing, something that environmentalists oppose.

Boxer said that if a way to reprocess nuclear waste safely could be found, it would help with the waste issue, produce new fuel for reactors and “make me feel more positive about nuclear power” as a pollution-free alternative for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions from oil-, natural gas- and coal-burning power plants.

Growing interest in building a new generation of nuclear plants since the enactment of an energy bill that offers generous government subsidies is driving the industry’s shifting attitude about waste storage.

“I am a pragmatist,” Boxer said. “The vast majority of the members on my committee support nuclear power, and so do the majority in the Senate. So my focus is on safety, security and research, because I don’t think there is any question that we are going to be seeing new plants.”

Victor Gilinsky, who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1975 to 1984, said a reshaping of the waste debate was under way, which eventually would spell the end of the notion of a repository at Yucca Mountain.

“Now that they (the nuclear industry) have a possibility of building new reactors, they don’t want to be chained to this,” Gilinsky said of Yucca Mountain. “They are working their way around to saying that surface storage of the waste is a workable solution.”

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Pahrump Valley Times
December 15, 2006

Tech Review Board to meet in Las Vegas

PVT

The meeting will be open to the public and opportunities for public comment will be provided.

Interested parties also will have the opportunity to submit questions in writing to the board.

For more information, contact Karyn Severson, NWTRB external affairs; 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22201-3367; (tel.) 703-2354473; (fax) 703-235-4495.

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Earthtimes
December 15, 2006

NRC head: Permanent waste solution needed

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 The top federal nuclear regulator says the United States needs a finalized plan for storing nuclear waste.

Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at a news conference Friday it will be advantageous to move forward on a permanent solution to housing the nuclear waste. U.S. nuclear plants and defense programs churn out 2,000 tons of waste a year now, with 54,000 tons already produced. But plans to create a permanent repository inside Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, are 20 years behind schedule.

The project has been hampered by funding issues, political blockades and lawsuits, as well as controversy over the science and quality assurance aspects. The U.S. Energy Department, which heads the project, estimates it won't open until at least 2017, but probably after.

The nuclear industry wants the waste taken off its property, as required by law, and has won numerous lawsuits.

This has prompted calls for alternative plans, either permanently or temporary.

At reactor, dry cask storage is safe, Klein said, although as a citizen I'd prefer an interim central storage site.But as the chief nuclear regulator, he said the NRC is not promoting any option, but will review the license application of whichever option is submitted.

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Albuquerque Tribune
December 15, 2006

PNM chief urges Congress to act now

Seeks legislation for climate change

James W. Brosnan
Tribune Reporter

WASHINGTON — New Mexico will have another influential voice in the coming congressional debate over climate change besides its two senators who lead the Senate Energy Committee.

That voice belongs to Jeff Sterba, president and chairman PNM Resources, the parent company of the utility serving Albuquerque.

Sterba also is chairman of the Climate Change Task Force of the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry lobby. As vice chairman of the group, he's on track to become chairman of the institute next summer.

Sterba's message to Congress about climate change legislation might be surprising from an industry viewed as a major culprit in global warming.

Act now.

"The sooner you start to make changes, the less draconian the changes will be," Sterba told The Tribune.

Plus, Sterba said, the industry needs to know the rules of the road ahead for future investments in plants and technology.

"There is nothing that creates greater disruption about trying to plan future resources than the uncertainty about what carbon limitations will be imposed. It can make a clean coal project work or be very disadvantageous," said Sterba at a symposium in Washington, D.C., last month sponsored by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

That doesn't mean the utility industry is ready to support any mandate or the entire burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Sterba said.

"No one knows what the answer will be because there is no single answer," he said.

It would be faster to reduce greenhouse emissions in the auto and agriculture sectors or through conservation and efficiency, he said.

For instance, there are 20 light bulbs in the average Albuquerque area home. If every Albuquerque household replaced just five ordinary incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs it would reduce energy demand by 10 million kilowatt hours per year, and savings on electric bills would pay back the cost of the bulbs in less than a year, Sterba said.

Sterba, 51, is no stranger in the halls of the Capitol. He estimates he spends four days a month in Washington. In 2005, it was more like eight days a month when Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, crafted the energy bill with the help of Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat.

Which party controls the Senate is in doubt due to the illness of Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat. If Democrats retain control, Bingaman will be the committee chairman.

Bob Simon, Bingaman's staff director on the Energy Committee, said Bingaman and Sterba have known each other a long time and are "pretty good friends."

Simon said Sterba could play an important role in the climate change debate but faces a difficult task in trying to achieve a consensus within the utility industry.

"He doesn't want to be the guy who presided over the blowing apart of the Edison Electric Institute," said Simon.

Sterba responded, "I have certain views about climate change and what our industry ought to do that are shared by some of my cohorts, and some of them have different views. I think increasingly the industry understands they must be a part of the solution."

Sterba said the biggest problem they face is technology.

For instance, people often talk about injecting the carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants into underground caverns, but there has been no large-scale demonstration of the project, he said. Nuclear power plants emit no greenhouse gases, but unless there is some resolution to storing the waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada or some alternative like reprocessing, no new plants will be built in the United States, he said.

Sterba favors some version of a market-based system that would allow utilities to trade credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He also favors Bingaman's proposal to require utilities to generate 15 percent of their energy from renewable resources like wind and solar power if utilities also get credit for improving efficiency.

Sterba is looking to Bingaman and Domenici to play a major role in a climate change because it will take bipartisan leadership.

In contrast, he said, the differences could "not be more dramatic" on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where California Democrat Barbara Boxer succeeds Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, who disputes the belief of most scientists that humans are contributing to climate change.

"I do not dispute the science. Neither can I say it's 100 percent right," Sterba said. "But I'm convinced enough that I'd rather believe it and be proven wrong rather than not believe and be proven wrong."

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Bay City Times
December 15, 2006

Old nuclear plant site should be newest state park

Is the site of a former nuclear plant worth maybe

$20 million for a new state park?

If it's 1.5 miles of northern Lake Michigan shoreline, you bet it is.

Yet there are concerns about a Michigan Department of Natural Resources proposal to buy the 450-acre site of the former Consumers Energy Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant near Charlevoix.

Some environmentalists worry about contamination, and especially the nuclear fuel that will be stored there, maybe until a national repository is built for such waste, presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

In response, the state DNR has pulled back its pitch to buy the land. The agency will try to address the concerns that were raised.

That's OK, for now.

But it would be a shame for the state to dally too long, and to see the land sold for condominiums or resorts.

It is one of the largest undeveloped, private tracts along the Lower Peninsula's Lake Michigan shore.

State officials ought to get their facts and funding all in a row, and prepare to buy that parcel for a state park.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that detectable contamination at the site is limited to tritium in groundwater that is at half the radioactive level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems safe for drinking.

But - darn it - there's still the nagging worry of the fuel stored at Big Rock in casks.

In the meantime, the state should secure Big Rock Point, seal the fuel from the public and have Consumers Energy provide security at that basketball court-size parcel.

A brand-new state park.

Can there be any better use for an old nuke plant site?

Not by a long shot.

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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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