Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, January 25, 2007
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 26, 2007
Official: Yucca Mountain rail to have little effect nationally
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Regardless of which Nevada rail route is chosen to haul nuclear waste to the planned Yucca Mountain repository, the effect nationally will be small, a federal transportation planner this week told a panel overseeing the disposal project.
"It really doesn't make much difference nationally on the number of shipments a state will see," Gary Lanthrum, director of the project's Office of Logistics Management, told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board at its meeting Wednesday in Las Vegas.
He was referring to the options for building a rail line to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Among the top candidates are a north-south route through the rural community of Mina and a corridor that runs generally west to the mountain from Caliente.
Bob Halstead, transportation consultant for Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, reacted to Lanthrum's comment by saying Thursday, "That's totally absurd."
Lanthrum "has no basis saying that because he hasn't modeled that," said Halstead, in a telephone interview from Wisconsin. "Supposedly we'll see some analysis when they come out with the draft (environmental impact statement) later."
Halstead said the "absolute minimum impact" of the Mina route would double the rail shipments of deadly, metal-encased spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would go through California.
Double means 10 percent of the nation's overall nuclear waste shipments.
As many as half of the rail shipments planned for delivery nationwide to Yucca Mountain could pass through California under a maximum-impact scenario, Halstead said.
In his presentation to the board Wednesday, Lanthrum showed a schedule that calls for a final Nevada rail design in 2008 with construction on the selected rail line to start in 2009.
The route would become operational in 2014, about three years before the Department of Energy expects to open the Yucca Mountain repository where 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel and defense waste would be entombed in a maze of tunnels.
Halstead said such a schedule is "really optimistic."
"I don't think any sports books in the state would be interested in any bets there. It's very unlikely," he said.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 26, 2007
School Board also seeks Mina Rail Corridor meeting in county
Keith Trout
Reno Gazette-Journal
With limited discussion, the Lyon County School District Board of Trustees voted to write a letter to the federal Department of Energy asking that a public hearing/scoping meeting be conducted in Lyon County about the Mina Rail process being considered to potentially transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
It was indicated the letter would be similar to one the Lyon County Board of Commissioners had approved to be sent on the same subject to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as the proposed rail routes would travel through Lyon County in Fernley, Silver Springs and Mason Valley.
The DOE is looking at transportation options and routes for nuclear waste if the Yucca Mountain repository site is approved and implemented.
Concerns with the rail line deal with safety issues due to the potential for a railroad car overturn that could spill some of the nuclear waste.
LCSD Superintendent Nat Lommori said, "Fernley is terribly exposed," adding the rail line in Fernley travel near the downtown area and are pretty close to several Fernley schools (high school is farthest away).
He also noted the DOE had contacted Lyon County about meeting with officials on Feb. 7 (but it was indicated it was a staff meeting, not a public meeting) to discuss the Mina Rail proposal, with Lyon County personnel expected to attend.
The Lyon County Commissioner on Dec. 7 had directed staff to write a letter on this topic.
The letter drafted by County Manager Donna Kristaponis began, "The Lyon County Board of Commissioners had directed me to communicate their displeasure with the Department of Energy's EIS Scoping process," noting some of the track passes through several areas of the county.
Scoping meetings were held in Fallon and in Reno but not in Lyon County and the letter noted some DOE officials at a meeting in Reno attended by Lyon County Emergency Management Director Jeff Page expressed surprise the proposed route passed through Lyon County.
Kristaponis wrote, "Because scoping meetings were held in other affected jurisdictions, the general public, their elected officials, and their first responders were given an opportunity locally to be informed and make their decisions based upon the information."
She continued, "Lyon County requests that a Scoping Meeting be held in Lyon County prior to any further decisions being made in regards to the Mina Corridor.
"Lyon County resident, elected officials, and first responders should be afforded the same opportunity as other affected jurisdictions."
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Reno Gazette Journal
January 26, 2007
Reid: Nuclear Energy Institute 'backing off'
Rachel Dahl
Fallon Star Press Correspondent
U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-NV, on Wednesday held a press conference call with area reporters and after joking easily for a few minutes with the press, talked mainly about the issue of nuclear waste and his reaction to President George Bush's State of the Union address.
"It's good news that the Nuclear Energy Institute is backing off, and for the first time the industry is saying what we've been saying for a long time now," said Reid. "Yucca Mountain is in trouble here and that's good."
According to Reid, he is not opposed to nuclear power, but the issue of disposal of the waste is the problem that must be solved. "On-site storage is the solution," he said.
In addressing the President's speech to the country Tuesday night, Reid said that President Bush is good at identifying problems and did a good job in his seventh State of the Union address. "Unfortunately," said Reid, "his track record is not good at solving these problems. I was happy to see finally the words global warming came out of his mouth."
According to Reid, there are currently over 500 coal fire power generating plants being proposed or built across the country.
In regard to the Democratic Party's response to the president's speech, Reid said he believed that Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) did a good job addressing the president's comments. For the most part, Reid said he was pleased with the president for covering the issues that most needed to be discussed.
Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said he was dismayed over the new plans for Iraq, saying that plans for escalation would be "hard for him to accept" when he remembers the huddled masses who have been forgotten in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.
On a local topic, Reid said that the work being done on the Walker River is going well and the government is currently obtaining contracts for the settlement project. There will be a meeting in Nevada in February to address the issue and the Senator said he will attend.
"I feel better today than I ever have. I was able to get quite a bit of money through the ag bill that people didn't think I was going to get. We are going to save that lake," he said.
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PhysOrg
January 26, 2007
Book Assails Unrealistic Mathematical Models
Using equations to forecast the specific behavior of complex natural processes such as beach erosion and long-term nuclear waste storage creates a false sense of security, according to a new book by a retired Duke University geologist and his geologist daughter.
In a preface to "Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future," Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis write that relying on such mathematical models has “done tangible damage to our society in many ways."
Among their examples, the pair charge that faulty mathematical models contributed to the collapse of a prime North American fishery. They say such models also are predicting unreachable margins of safety at a planned national U.S. high-level radioactive waste repository and have given coastal communities overly optimistic expectations about the endurance of beach nourishment projects.
"We make this point again and again: if your basic assumptions are wrong, it doesn't matter what the math does," said Pilkey, a retired professor at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.
"Since scientists now have computers on their desks that can do all kinds of sophisticated calculations, they have been saying 'give us enough money and we'll come up with a good model,' " he added. "And they have failed miserably. We scientists have to hang our heads in shame. We should have, long ago, admitted our weaknesses."
The authors focus their criticisms on quantitative mathematical models, which they define as those attempting to make specific predictions about natural outcomes by answering the questions "when," "where" and "how much."
In the case of the now-collapsed Grand Banks cod fishery, the authors argue that Canadian scientists used unrealistic quantitative models of total allowable catch to determine harvesting levels. "According to these models, the Grand Banks should still be full of fish," they write.
In its assessments of the unfinished Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste site in Nevada, the U.S. government has used a "pyramid" of hundreds of quantitative mathematical models to predict the repository's long-term behavior, according to the authors. Those flawed models, they write, predict a questionable 10,000 years of certainty that natural processes will not cause the repository to leak radiation.
"Of all the examples of quantitative models that I looked at, the worst is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ modeling of the behavior of beaches," said Pilkey, who has also assailed those models in previous books on coastal development. "There is no truth in those models at all."
State and local governments use Corps models to guide engineering projects to "nourish" eroded beaches with imported sand. To receive federal funding, the government agencies must predict in advance the life span of the beach nourishment projects in order to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs, and project supporters typically use modeling to make such predictions, the geologists write. But, they added, some of those beaches have been replenished more than 20 times since the early 1960s.
"Agencies that depend upon project approvals for their very survival (such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) can and frequently do find ways to adjust models to come up with correct answers that will ensure project funding," the book adds.
While condemning quantitative modeling, the book is more supportive of qualitative models that predict only direction and magnitudes of natural phenomena while accepting the possibility of being "imprecise or wrong to some degree.” As examples of good modeling, the authors cite hurricane-tracking forecasts and global climate models.
Pilkey, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology at the Nicholas School, began Duke’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, which is now a joint program with Western Carolina University. An expert in the geology of deep ocean plains, he has also written numerous books on how ocean forces and human development jointly affect beaches.
Pilkey-Jarvis is a geologist and expert on oil spills for the state of Washington's ecology department.
Source: Duke University
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African American Environmentalist Association
January 25, 2007
Yucca Mountain Must Be Opened Sooner
The Achilles heel of nuclear power is nuclear waste because opponents say there isn't a solution for it. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants can be reprocessed and reused. Global warming and smog are prevented using nuclear power and these are the most important environmental issues facing us today.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Energy says it cannot open the national repository for nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, until 2017. This is unacceptable. There is no good reason to take this long to get a permit to open the repository. We understand that litigation, objections from NIMBY Nevadans and funding funny business are impediments. There is also the matter of this being the home state of the new Senate majority leader. However, the stakes for the planet are simply too high for America to move slowly on this project. We must assure an adequate and dependable allocation of funding from the Nuclear Waste Fund to accelerate permitting and operation of the site.
We believe nuclear waste should be placed in an agency that has the sole function of managing nuclear waste. We are promoting the establishment of a Nuclear Waste Mangement Agency (NWMA) to centralize and accelerate the opening and operation of Yucca Mountain. We believe the facility could be operating no later than 2012. The NWMA would also manage reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. America should reprocess spent nuclear fuel at Yucca and other locations. The NWMA would give this important and challenging operation the singular attention needed to properly develop recycling and disposal of nuclear waste.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 25, 2007
Radioactive waste chief defends Yucca
He counters NRC member's assertion that project should be scrapped
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
The nation's radioactive waste chief on Wednesday countered remarks made earlier this week by veteran Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Ed McGaffigan, who told reporters the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada is deeply flawed and should be scrapped.
Ward Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said McGaffigan expressed similar concerns to him last year. Though he agreed with some of McGaffigan's assertions about past leadership problems tied to politics and setbacks that could have been avoided with quality assurance and the cultural mind-set, the effort to license and build a repository in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should not be abandoned for some other site.
"Commissioner McGaffigan had a lot of valid points. Some of those will need to be addressed for long-term success," Sproat told a nuclear waste oversight panel that was meeting in Las Vegas.
After his presentation to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a nonpartisan panel of presidential appointees, Sproat said McGaffigan's comment to reporters Monday in Washington, D.C., that "it may be time to stop digging" at Yucca Mountain, wasn't a valid point.
"The site is Yucca Mountain. That decision was made in 2002. The next step is, can you license a repository at that site. That's where we are now," Sproat said during a break in Wednesday's meeting. "I believe we can license that site."
McGaffigan has said the Energy Department has "no chance" to get Congress to fix the Yucca Mountain program with legislation and that agency officials knew years ago there would be problems with land withdrawals, water rights and exemptions for toxic waste handling. He said Monday he also favors forming a government-chartered corporation to run the project and bring in long-term managers instead of letting political appointees command the program.
But Sproat said, "I'm not convinced that's the right way to go."
He acknowledged there has been "discontinuous leadership" that has resulted in some setbacks. "The program, the way it is set up, is subject to the political process," he said.
Sproat stressed that he still intends to meet his goal of submitting a license application for the NRC to review on or before June 30, 2008. "We are on that schedule and we're going to meet it," he said.
"My approach is working within the legalities and organization that exists and to make sure the program has the right people, right skills set, right processes and right culture to make it work right," Sproat said.
After seven months at the helm, he said he needs to spend a lot more time improving the organization of the Yucca Mountain program so that it will be more streamlined to overcome the technical hurdles in submitting a defensible license application. Data that is needed from past scientific endeavors should be available with the push of a button and not take five days and five people to retrieve.
In addition, he said, "I recognize the need to work with this new Congress and establish credibility."
In his presentation to the board, Sproat said, "I can tell you there is bipartisan support for this program" on Capitol Hill. The problem, he said, has been that "the Department of Energy has not given them confidence in that it will be carried out. That's where I'm going to be spending a lot of my time in the coming year."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 25, 2007
No litmus test for NRC choices, senator promises
Reid to submit candidates for nuclear panel
By Steve Tetrault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday he is considering candidates to sit on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but will not insist that the person he picks oppose a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
Reid said he is weighing a successor to Edward McGaffigan on the five-member NRC, which regulates the nuclear industry and the handling of nuclear materials and nuclear waste.
McGaffigan, 58, announced early this year he is suffering from an aggressive cancer and will resign when a replacement is confirmed by the Senate.
President Bush makes the nomination, but McGaffigan occupied a Democrat slot on the commission. That gives Reid, D-Nev., the opportunity to submit candidates to the president.
Reid said several senators have suggested candidates to him, "but none of them sounded that good to me personally." He did not say who they were or why they were unacceptable.
"I would hope we could have somebody who is a scientist and somebody who has some government experience, so they are not in the dark as to how government works," Reid said.
But Reid said a candidate's views on the Yucca Mountain repository will not determine his choice.
"I don't think that is something I will get into with them. I think it would be inappropriate," Reid said. "I am not going to litmus test. If somebody is a good scientist and understands government that will speak for itself."
The NRC commissioners will play a role in licensing a nuclear waste site that Reid and most elected leaders in Nevada have argued will be unsafe and have battled for years.
In 2004, when he was in the Senate minority, Reid blocked action on 175 White House appointments until reaching a deal with President Bush to appoint Gregory Jaczko to the NRC.
Jaczko was Reid's science adviser and chief aide on Yucca Mountain matters.
Jaczko, initially opposed by Senate Republicans and the nuclear industry in 2004, was reconfirmed in May.
Regarding Reid's current stance, "we can do nothing more than take the senator at his word," said Patricia Conrad, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Political science professor Eric Herzik said Reid "is saying exactly the right thing" by stating Yucca Mountain politics will play no role in his selection.
"He is being statesmanlike," said Herzik, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno.
"Reid has taken some forceful positions against Yucca, but by the same token, he is in a position now where he has to show evenhanded treatment. He isn't just a Nevada senator."
But, Herzik said, "if a person has worked for the nuclear industry or has written work praising Yucca Mountain, that person might expect to get a lot of questions."
The Senate is expected to debate NRC nominees later this year.
McGaffigan's replacement probably will be considered at the same time as a successor to departing NRC commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield, who occupies a Republican seat.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 25, 2007
Coal crashing party for clean energy sources
Nuke power takes a back seat in environmentalists' nightmares in Nevada
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Suddenly, coal - not nuclear power - looks like the more worrisome environmental threat to Nevada.
In just a few days this week, that dirtiest of fuel sources, responsible for one-third of the emissions from the U.S. that contribute to global warming, has taken center stage.
President Bush said in his State of the Union address Tuesday that alternative fuels, such as those from coal-liquefaction plants, which convert coal to vehicle fuels, can help reduce the country's gasoline consumption by 20 percent by 2017.
One day earlier, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons talked up the same technology in his State of the State speech. Gibbons said Nevada should consider building a coal-liquefaction plant.
The idea comes as Nevada faces higher carbon dioxide pollution from as many as four new coal-fired power plants. Separately, the owners of the legendary "smog monster" - Laughlin's closed Mohave Generating Station - are considering restarting the plant. It was blamed for decades for dirtying the air at Grand Canyon.
Environmental activists noted Wednesday that the coal-liquefaction idea comes as the nation seems poised to embrace clean renewable energy: wind, solar and geothermal energy.
"The irony is Nevada is one of the most renewable-rich states in the union," said Dan Geary, a member of the state's renewable energy task force. "That we're moving forward so aggressively with coal-fired power plants just seems to be on the wrong track."
Congress has been rolling out its energy agenda with legislation that gives Nevada's renewable energy companies a financial break with the kinds of tax breaks oil, coal, gas and nuclear have enjoyed for years.
The push for coal comes as Bush gave just passing mention to nuclear power during his address to the nation, drawing complaints from nuclear energy advocates, who note that just a year ago the president was calling for a nuclear power renaissance.
Then, the prospect of more nuclear plants increased pressure on the federal government to move ahead with a long-delayed nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But today, problems with the project and growing national opposition make it less likely that a Yucca dump will ever open.
Instead, coal is ascending.
In Nevada, applications are pending before the state Public Utilities Commission for four coal-fired power plants. White Pine County, which is bankrupt, has welcomed two of them as a potential source of jobs and economic development. Another plant, in Eureka County, is under construction. A fourth plant is planned in Lincoln County. A fifth, near Gerlach in Washoe County, has been delayed by protests from residents.
Nevada Power says coal is needed to reduce its dependence on natural gas, which affects consumers mightily as prices soared in recent winters.
The company plans to give its portfolio a flip - swapping a portion of natural gas production for coal. By the time the first phase of Nevada Power's $3.2 billion Ely Energy Project is completed in 2013, Nevada Power will have gone from getting 70 percent of its energy from natural gas and 30 percent from coal and other sources to 40 percent from coal, 40 percent from gas and 20 percent from renewables.
The power company says it would like to use more renewables, but they cost too much and are not as readily available.
Wind, solar and geothermal sources can play a role in meeting the state's energy needs, but "cannot replace some of our conventional sources," said Nevada Power's Roberto Denis, vice president for energy supply.
The Mohave Generating Station outside of Laughlin shut down in 2005 because the utility's owners did not want to spend the $500 million needed to comply with a court-ordered consent decree to clean up emissions. One of those owners, the Phoenix-based Salt River Project, is seeking new partners to buy a share of the plant and reopen it.
In his national address, Bush refused to call for strict limits on carbon-producing power plants, preferring a voluntary approach. Since 1992, carbon emissions have increased more than 30 percent despite an array of voluntary programs, according to the National Environmental Trust.
Congress is determined to consider emission caps as part of global warming legislation. Europe and much of the industrialized world have agreed to caps as part of the Kyoto Protocol, and chief executives from some of the nation's leading energy companies suggested it's time for caps the day before Bush's speech.
Denis said even with potential caps and fees, coal would be cheaper.
Scot Rutledge of the Nevada Conservation League said coal would not be so cheap if not for the subsidies it enjoys. Why not give some of those economic benefits to the renewable industry sector?
"Why don't we not go back to coal?" he said. "If Nevada's going to be a part of the solution as part of carbon emissions and creating really clean affordable energy, then we need to stop talking about pulverized coal-fired plants and turning coal into fuel. There are other solutions."
Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Grist Magazine
January 25, 2007
Nuclear: A great choice for uniformly competent groups of people
Posted by David Roberts
The longest-serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is retiring. Here's what he has to say about Yucca Mountain:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2007/Jan-23-Tue-2007/news/12133717.html
Ed McGaffigan, a veteran member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Monday that the Yucca Mountain program is deeply flawed and that the Nevada nuclear waste site should be scrapped.
--sidebar--
"It may be time to stop digging, and it may be time to rethink," McGaffigan said in a critique of the Energy Department program as he prepares to retire from the five-member commission that regulates nuclear safety.
...
"I think Yucca Mountain has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy throughout its history," McGaffigan said. "Every time somebody has done something to try to speed things up, it has backfired."
This reminds me of an argument against nuclear that's worth reiterating: the consequences of an accident at a reactor or waste-holding facility are enormous. It may be possible to design systems that make such an accident extremely unlikely, but all those systems, in the end, rely on the competence of everyone from regulators to managers to low-level employees.
--sidebar--
Relying on the uniform competence of large groups of people to prevent catastrophe doesn't strike me as a particularly wise strategy. Part of what's attractive about a decentralized renewable energy system is that it degrades gracefully; the consequences of individual screw-ups, accidents, or wrongdoing are relatively localized.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
January 23, 2007
Press Release of Senator Reid
Reid: We Should Work Together to Take America in a New Direction
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi today released the following statement on President Bush’s sixth State of the Union Address.
“Congress has demonstrated in the last three weeks that great things happen for the American people when we work together. In his sixth State of the Union Address, President Bush once again talked about many of the issues facing our country. It is long past time to stop talking about our problems and start working to solve them. The Congress is delivering results, and doing it in a new way - by reaching across the aisle and putting the American people first. Tonight, we welcomed President Bush's overtures of bipartisanship and we hope to begin working with him to move our country in a new direction. “Energy independence is a national security issue and an economic security issue. President Bush's goals for energy independence are commendable, but we now must get straight to work on a real national energy policy. In Congress, we have already begun work in earnest on renewable fuels, on global warming, and on shifting energy tax incentives away from Big Oil. We ask the President to join us to take real steps forward. “Unfortunately, tonight the President demonstrated he has not listened to Americans' single greatest concern: the war in Iraq. The overwhelming majority of Americans, military leaders, and a bipartisan coalition in Congress oppose the President's plan to escalate the war. Democrats, Republicans, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group have offered the President a plan to end our open-ended commitment to Iraq, transition the U.S. mission, and begin the phased redeployment of American troops. While the President continues to ignore the will of the country, Congress will not ignore this President's failed policy. His plan will receive an up-or-down vote in both the House and the Senate, and we will continue to hold him accountable for changing course in Iraq. “When it comes to health care, we welcome the President's commitment to help the 47 million people living without health care and the millions more in danger of losing it. However, the President's plan falls short of meeting the health care challenge. Health care is a crisis in costs and coverage, and the President's plan will make both fronts worse for millions of Americans. “Last November, Americans asked all of us in Washington to work together. Democrats will continue to take America in a new direction by making our nation energy secure, improving access to affordable health care, cutting costs for middle class families, and working to end the war in Iraq.”
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 24, 2007
Nuke industry mindful of Reid
Association won't push bills to speed work on waste repository
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Mindful of the powers wielded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the leading nuclear industry association does not plan to push Congress for bills this year to speed waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, the group's chief lobbyist said Tuesday.
"We are frustrated by the schedule. The Department of Energy is way behind," said Alex Flint, senior vice president of government affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"But we also are respectful and realistic of the influence of Senator Reid," Flint said at an NEI conference for industry executives.
"It is going to be extremely hard to use legislation to accelerate the schedule at Yucca Mountain" because Reid has "extraordinary authority," he added.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Flint added, "A fight with Senator Reid right now is not in our best interests" because NEI also wants to nurture policies that encourage new nuclear plant construction.
Flint left a door open for possible breakthroughs with Reid. "We are working real hard to find solutions for our used fuel. I don't want to take anything off the table," he said. "I would like to work with Senator Reid as well as our supporters to see if we can come to some accommodations."
Flint told industry officials NEI will work to get the Energy Department enough money from Congress to meet a June 30, 2008 application deadline for a Yucca Mountain repository, the latest goal for a project that missed a 1998 opening and other deadlines since then.
"Our eggs are in that basket," Flint said.
Speaking later at the conference, a Department of Energy official hinted that DOE's latest repository effort could be its last if it fails to meet the latest application deadline.
"We need to deliver by 2008 or else there will be a substantial restructuring of the program, and perhaps a new direction," said Christopher Kouts, a senior manager in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "My sense is that we will deliver."
Kouts said afterward he did not know how the repository project might be changed if DOE falls short.
"I just think that everybody knows we need to deliver this time and that is what we are driving very hard to do," Kouts said. "I do think that people are very impatient with the program."
In his presentation, Flint provided a glimpse of NEI's efforts in the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Flint said NEI lobbyists are expanding outreach to Democrats and to junior members of Congress. He said he was encouraged that most lawmakers generally have become accepting of nuclear power.
"Congress has become de facto neutral on issues affecting our industry," Flint said.
For instance, Flint said, there may not be enough votes in Congress to speed Yucca Mountain, but on the other hand there are not enough votes to repeal the 1982 nuclear waste law that underpins the project.
"So the federal policy and the federal program will continue indefinitely until there is an agreement on some other course, and I don't know if there is a consensus on another course," Flint said.
As Senate majority leader, Reid has said bills that would help the Energy Department obtain permits and accelerate spending for Yucca Mountain will not be brought up for votes.
Nonetheless, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has said he and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., plan to reintroduce a bill to allow military nuclear waste to be shipped to Yucca Mountain starting in 2010 and commercial spent fuel to be stored there in above-ground casks in 2011.
DOE officials have said their plans don't call for nuclear waste to arrive at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, until 2017 at the earliest, and probably three or more years later.
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MSNBC
January 24, 2007
U.S. plan for nuclear cartel faces reality check
Expense, technical challenges threaten to keep GNEP in starting gate
By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
MSNBC
To Greg Simonton and other civic leaders in Piketon, Ohio, population 1,973, it’s all about the jobs. Jobs to bolster the economy of the Appalachian burg where the double-digit unemployment rate is always near the highest in the state. Jobs to replace more than 1,500 that have been wiped out over the past decade with the downsizing of a uranium enrichment plant. Jobs that are so attractive they have led Simonton’s nonprofit agency to pair up with a private enterprise in a venture that could eventually bring Piketon thousands of tons a year of some of the most toxic nuclear waste on the planet.
Piketon is one of 11 communities recently awarded a total of $16 million in study grants by the U.S. Department of Energy. The grants are to be used to determine if they would be suitable sites for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, a hotly debated proposal that proponents promise will change the world.
Unveiled by the Bush administration early last year, GNEP envisions a system in which developing nations would receive nuclear power plants and fuel from the West in return for agreeing not to develop their own nuclear technology. The plan hinges on the controversial element of reprocessing spent nuclear rods to produce fuel that can be burned at GNEP plants, an activity that has never been done commercially in the United States.
GNEP supporters say not only will it power up the Third World, it will boost the U.S. nuclear industry, greatly reduce nuclear waste and air pollution and avoid the further spread of nuclear weapons.
Opponents say the program has the same problem as conventional nuclear power: It’s impossibly expensive. But it’s GNEP’s added element of nuclear fuel reprocessing, shelved for more than 30 years as unsafe and unnecessary in the United States, that really inflames critics of the program.
The race for toxic waste
The criticism has not deterred the Department of Energy and job-hungry communities that vied for the study grants. “We are very excited about the opportunity to take a look at this,” Simonton said after Assistant Secretary of Energy Dennis Spurgeon announced in November that the Piketon group was among the grant recipients.
The area’s congresswoman, Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt, was equally enthusiastic, saying the grant “will go a long way toward future economic development opportunities and may bring thousands of jobs to the area.”
Simonton directs the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, a nonprofit whose purpose is to create jobs in a region hit hard by the layoffs at the Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, owned by the Energy Department and operated by the United States Enrichment Corp., currently the only U.S. firm in the enrichment business.
What better way to do that, figured Simonton and his partner, Cleveland entrepreneur and former Enrichment Corp. board member Dan T. Moore II, than to find a new nuclear purpose for a 3,714-acre facility that has been processing radioactive materials for 52 years, first for weapons at the height of the Cold War and later for commercial nuclear power plants?
Politicians in other communities that received GNEP grants also expressed eagerness to cash in on what they believe could be an economic bonanza. “These nuclear fuel recycling facilities would firmly establish our state as the leader in this field,” said Republican Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, where the DOE awarded two study grants. "This is an exciting opportunity for East Tennessee,” echoed Republican Rep. Zach Wamp, whose district includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, another potential GNEP site.
Welcoming locals are just part of what senior Harvard nuclear researcher Matthew Bunn describes as a large and “unwieldy coalition” that has kept the GNEP proposal afloat despite serious questions about its technical feasibility, concerns over its potential to spread nuclear weapons materiel, doubts that nuclear “have-not” nations will submit to a Western fuel and technology cabal and tepid support and a lack of funding from Congress.
That coalition includes the national nuclear labs, which see the potential for billions in research funding, and some players in the industry, who hope for lucrative contracts as part of GNEP and the general growth of the nuclear power industry that they expect will accompany it.
Cover for waste dump stalemate?
And there appears to be a growing faction that sees it as at least temporary cover for long-delayed efforts to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev., a vital component if the nuclear power industry’s predictions of a “renaissance” are to be realized.
But Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens denied that finding an interim storage for waste is a GNEP goal.
It’s the "stated policies" that matter, he told MSNBC.com. “This is a big thing. If it’s successful and we can make it work, and make it attractive enough at an economic level, this will change the way we power the world.”
The proposal set off strong protests in anti-nuclear and non-proliferation camps, because it reintroduced the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel to the U.S. nuclear landscape. The critics say the practice would make it far easier for terrorists to get their hands on plutonium that could be used to make crude nuclear weapons. That concern is the major reason reprocessing was banned under the Ford and Carter administrations.
The argument for reprocessing
GNEP proponents maintain that reprocessing — which the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have taken to calling "recycling" — has the twin benefits of cutting down on nuclear waste and ensuring a rich fuel supply for hundreds of new reactors.
In the “once-through” fuel cycle currently used in U.S. nuclear reactors, thousands of tons of uranium ore are mined and processed to produce a relatively small amount of fuel. Once the fuel has been used, it is highly radioactive and must be stored for years in pools of water before it has cooled enough to be placed in concrete casks and eventually transferred to a permanent disposal site.
The only such U.S. site under development, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has faced political and regulatory hurdles for decades and is not expected to receive waste for at least 10 years, if ever. That’s currently the most daunting obstacle for the nuclear power industry, which wants to build more plants and thus create more waste.
Reprocessing advocates say that 95 percent of current nuclear waste, chiefly uranium and plutonium, is still rich with energy that could be harnessed by new “recycling” technology. The process could be repeated until virtually all of the energy is sucked out of the waste, allowing far more widespread use of nuclear power and drastically reducing the amount of permanent disposal space required.
The problem with plutonium
The problem with that logic, opponents counter, is that reprocessing would make it more likely that plutonium — the material of choice for nuclear bomb makers — could fall into the wrong hands. When it remains mixed with other components of highly radioactive spent fuel, the waste is "self-protecting" because it is quickly fatal to anyone who tries to handle it without specialized equipment and technical know-how. But once plutonium is separated from the other waste via reprocessing, it can be handled without any immediate danger to a would-be bomber's health.
“Plutonium itself is not a major radiation hazard,” explained Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “You can carry weapons-grade plutonium around in your hands for hours and you’re not going to sustain a severe radiation injury. And it only takes maybe 10 pounds to make a nuclear weapon.”
As a result, foes say the amounts of plutonium that would be produced in commercial settings under the GNEP scenario would greatly increase the chances that it could fall into terrorists’ hands.
“Do you really want more bomb-grade plutonium floating around the world?” asked Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for the anti-nuclear environmental group Greenpeace.
“Reprocessing is a very dangerous technology,” said Lyman. “The Department of Energy is in love with the idea of reprocessing. They at first claimed that the purpose behind GNEP was to develop new types of reprocessing that would not pose the same proliferation risks as conventional reprocessing and would not produce separated plutonium. But in fact none of the ideas that the Department of Energy proposed is new.”
Current commercial reprocessing technology, like that practiced by the French firm Areva, extracts plutonium and uranium from spent fuel and produces "mixed oxide" or MOX fuel that can be used in conventional reactors. The remaining high-level wastes are "vitrified," or sealed up in glass, and stored. But GNEP's goal is to also recycle that waste and turn it into fuel to be burned in a new generation of reactors.
New techniques touted
GNEP backers insist that new reprocessing techniques can extract all of the materials for fresh fuel from nuclear waste in ways that greatly limit proliferation threats. At a September hearing before a Senate panel, Dr. Alan S. Hanson of Areva, which hopes to be a key participant in GNEP, testified that a “phased approach” would avoid separation of pure plutonium, limit its concentration in other mixtures and develop “advanced safeguards” to protect it.
But a "GNEP Strategic Plan" released earlier this month by the Energy Department acknowledged that "there are limits to the nonproliferation benefits offered by any of the advanced chemical separations technologies, which generally can be modified to produce plutonium.” Nonetheless, the plan says that GNEP’s broader goals and security procedures will be a net plus to global nonproliferation efforts.
Because of that confidence, and high interest from Areva and other companies, the Energy Department's Spurgeon said in remarks prepared for the September hearing that the agency is ready to proceed with “commercial demonstrations of these (reprocessing) technologies.” That triggered the selection of the 11 communities that had applied for GNEP study grants.
The Energy Department is looking for locations that could host a reprocessing facility capable of reprocessing 2,000 to 3,000 tons of nuclear waste a year or a new type of “advanced recycling reactor” that would consume nuclear fuel created in the reprocessing facility – or both.
In addition to Piketon, Oak Ridge and the two communities in New Mexico, DOE awarded grants to two communities in Idaho; Barnwell, S.C.; Hanford, Wash.; Morris, Ill.; Paducah, Ken.; and Savannah River, S.C. Like Piketon, most of the sites are at existing nuclear facilities.
According to Spurgeon, the site studies and other analysis are aimed at a decision sometime in 2008 by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on whether or not to proceed with full-fledged GNEP development and seek the billions of dollars in funding it would require.
At the September hearing, Harvard’s Bunn, a leading authority on nuclear arms and a supporter of the expansion of conventional nuclear power, presented a 19-page paper that concluded that GNEP initiatives are headed in “precisely the wrong direction” and will “do more to undermine the future of nuclear energy than to promote it.”
‘A talking point, not serious analysis’
To begin with, Bunn said, reprocessing is far more expensive than “once through” use of nuclear fuel. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that reprocessing the approximately 62,000 tons of spent commercial fuel now in existence would cost as much as $100 billion more than placing it in a repository like Yucca Mountain. Like Lyman, Bunn flatly disagreed that new reprocessing technology removes the risk of proliferation, calling that notion “a talking point, not a serious analysis.”
Stevens, the Energy Department spokesman, disputed that contention. “The policy will not move forward unless the technology is proliferation-resistant," he said. "If it doesn’t work, we’re going to find another way to do it. We believe, in a lab setting, it does work. It’s a matter of ramping that up.”
Bunn’s paper raised a host of other questions about funding, the Energy Department’s lack of experience in overseeing “a commercial-scale facility of this complexity” and the lack of political sustainability for a program that would require years of financial commitment from Congress. He told MSNBC.com he believes it’s “very likely” GNEP will collapse before it gets serious funding from Congress.
Lyman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, agreed. “This is the height of fiscal irresponsibility,” he said.
He also argued that there are “zero” non-nuclear nations who would participate in GNEP out of fear of being seen as lackeys of the West and charged that the Bush administration is rushing GNEP along so that it can't easily be undone by future administrations and Congresses.
Not so, said Stevens. "It's a serious project. We have staffed up the office" and recruited Spurgeon, a former executive with USEC, the operator of the Piketon plant, out of retirement to lead the effort, he said.
Potential for world changing ‘payoff’
As for GNEP's high costs, he said, "We recognize the government has a role and a responsibility to invest in basic research. If it works, the payoff will be many times greater than the investment. ... It can literally change economies around the world."
At the September hearing on GNEP, Lyman and Bunn's objections were quickly brushed aside by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., one of the biggest backers of the nuclear industry in Congress and the fuel reprocessing program's chief proponent.
Domenici, then chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, charged that Bunn “isn't living in the same age I am with reference to support for nuclear power. He's still talking about things like we need (political) support for certain things, where I already think the nation is far ahead of that.”
Domenici's staff refused MSNBC.com's requests for an interview with the senator.
But GNEP has not been as warmly embraced by other members of Congress, and the $250 million sought by the Bush administration to begin work on the program is snarled in an appropriations battle.
Nor has the nuclear industry been a strong supporter, though that could be changing because of the program’s perceived potential to solve some of the issues surrounding nuclear waste disposal.
“I support GNEP as a responsible solution to addressing our spent fuel needs,” Domenici said at the outset of the September hearing. He has since introduced legislation that would “integrate” Yucca Mountain and GNEP to allow waste to bypass Yucca and be sent to a holding facility if “the secretary of energy determines if it can be recycled within a reasonable amount of time.”
New interest in waste implications
The waste-handling implications caught the attention of Nevada's Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, now the Senate majority leader and a staunch foe of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. At the hearing, Reid said he was “pleased that we're taking another look at the administration's GNEP plan and pleased to see that we're looking particularly at the waste recycling portion of the plan.”
The Nuclear Energy Industry, nuclear power’s chief lobbying group, is showing new interest in GNEP after initially expressing concerns that the plan’s potential for overreaching could stymie near-term plans for new reactors. As recently as July, NEI President Skip Bowman called GNEP “a distraction factor” on the waste issue and an NEI policy paper in August noted that viable reprocessing technologies are “decades away.”
But in December, NEI spokesman Scott Peterson told MSNBC.com that there had been "a bit of a shift" in industry thinking on GNEP’s implications for the waste problem. “It’s not a shift away from a repository," he said. "But what I think it does recognize is the need we’re going to have for new fuel from the 30 reactors we’re going to have." And "you will need some definite movement toward the DOE taking (spent) fuel from plant sites," to dispose of it, as it is legally obligated to do, for U.S. nuclear expansion to proceed.
Echoing the Domenici bill, the GNEP strategy released Jan. 10 notes that "once the nuclear fuel recycling center is approved to accept spent fuel, shipments of (spent) fuel could begin from utilities, which would be a significant step in providing confidence in our nation’s ability to meet its nuclear waste management responsibilities.”
Asked by MSNBC.com if such shipments could lead to a GNEP site becoming a nuclear waste dump if plans for a “recycling reactor” don’t pan out, Spurgeon said no.
Not a ‘de facto permanent repository’
"We're not talking about interim storage … that would have it morph into a de facto permanent repository,” he said during a conference call to unveil the strategy document. And he pledged that the Department of Energy would seek licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its projects, even if not legally required to do so.
Such discussion has led some anti-nuclear activists in Piketon to charge that GNEP is a "secret plan" by DOE to turn the old Portsmouth plant into "a giant dump for commercial spent fuel,” breaking the Yucca logjam and allowing more nuclear reactors to be built.
But the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group will fight the plan regardless, said Geoffrey Sea, a member of the group and a neighbor of the Piketon site.
Sea called it “an abomination to even consider this place” for GNEP projects for a number of cultural and environmental reasons and confidently predicted that the project will never happen. “It’s very clear that the new Congress is going to kill GNEP,” he said.
But Simonton, the Piketon civic leader, said his group would not advocate anything that is unsafe. “The true community leaders understand that taking a look at something makes sense,” he said. “Finding out more information is never a harmful process as far as we’re concerned.”
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New London Day
January 24, 2007
Hole In Energy Policy
Congress has shortchanged the agency that was going to make more nuclear plants possible.
By Day Staff Writer
One of the key pieces in the nation's energy policy is nuclear power. The federal energy bill passed in 2005 emphasized the need for more nuclear power plants, and included provisions to encourage their development after years of inactivity on that front.
But there's one problem. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it doesn't have the funds to process applications for new reactors, and probably won't for at least another year. While no utilities have applied to build new plants yet, plans are being considered for 20. Several utilities planned to submit applications this year.
The NRC says that due to the shortage of funds, it will have to shelve the applications. The agency faces a $95 million, or 12 percent, cut in its budget as a result of the federal budget impasse, according to The New York Times. While some companies may wait, others are expected to choose other alternatives, including coal, The Times reported.
This is not the only obstacle to the Bush administration's hopes for nuclear power. Plans for disposing of spent nuclear fuel in Nevada are more out of reach than they ever were. A commission member told the Times the Energy Department needs to begin looking at alternatives, since it may now not be for another 20 years before issues regarding the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada are resolved and that facility will be ready to accept its first shipments.
With nobody to process applications and no place to store the fuel, the government seems to have found another hole in its energy policy.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 23, 2007
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: 'It may be time to stop digging'
Years of flaws have killed repository, NRC member says
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Ed McGaffigan, a veteran member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Monday that the Yucca Mountain program is deeply flawed and that the Nevada nuclear waste site should be scrapped.
"It may be time to stop digging, and it may be time to rethink," McGaffigan said in a critique of the Energy Department program as he prepares to retire from the five-member commission that regulates nuclear safety.
Speaking to a group of reporters, the official said the Nevada site probably could be licensed "if it had been handled properly through the years."
But he said it has been doomed by failures in Congress to correct flaws in nuclear waste laws and by Energy Department missteps, including appointment of some directors "who really weren't cut out for the job."
"I think Yucca Mountain has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy throughout its history," McGaffigan said. "Every time somebody has done something to try to speed things up, it has backfired.
"Each year that passes, we are not going to get any closer to Yucca under the current circumstances," McGaffigan said. The Energy Department has projected a 2017 repository opening, but he said 2025-2027 would be more realistic.
McGaffigan, 58, has been an NRC commissioner since 1996, making him the longest-serving member in the agency's 32-year history.
He is undergoing treatment for metastatic melanoma, an aggressive cancer that he has said he does not expect to defeat.
McGaffigan, who is a physicist, has questioned the Yucca program in the past. But his comments Monday were among the strongest and most direct of any federal official watching over the project.
In another instance, physicist Paul Craig resigned from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a DOE advisory group, in 2004 to speak out against what he saw as safety and design flaws in the proposed repository.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has monitored DOE's work at the Nevada site, and its leaders would pass judgment on the repository's safety and operational plan when the department submits an application for a license.
McGaffigan's views were embraced by critics of the Yucca program, although some wondered why he waited to make them public. McGaffigan said he felt free to speak as a private citizen as his NRC tenure comes to an end.
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the criticism from McGaffigan was "highly predictable."
"It is good that we are going to get somebody new with open eyes to look at this at the NRC," Stevens said, referring to McGaffigan's successor who has not yet been named.
McGaffigan "is tainted in our view," Stevens said.
"We believe there is no better place to store spent nuclear fuel than in the middle of the desert in the belly of a mountain," Stevens said.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she plans to broadcast McGaffigan's views to other lawmakers as Congress resumes debate on nuclear waste disposal.
"This is akin to the generals who are leaving Iraq and speaking their minds once they are in a position to do so," Berkley said.
McGaffigan "is serving in a very important position where he has had an opportunity over a period of time to get input from both sides, and he has come out squarely against Yucca Mountain."
Michele Boyd, energy legislative director at the Public Citizen, a watchdog group that opposes the repository, called McGaffigan's comments "stunning."
But, Boyd said, "I find it disturbing that he waited until he was leaving office to start saying these things. The bottom line is that these facts about the dubiousness of the project should have been brought up before."
McGaffigan said the Energy Department was able to open the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico because the state thought development of the nuclear mixed-waste site was a fair process.
That was not the case in Nevada, which was singled out for high-level nuclear waste by Congress in a 1987 law known as the "Screw Nevada" bill, he said.
Now given opposition from Nevada leaders, McGaffigan said the department has "no chance" to get Congress to pass legislation it needs to fix the Yucca program.
He said DOE officials knew as far back as the Clinton administration they were going to run into problems with land withdrawals, water rights and exemptions for toxic waste handling at Yucca Mountain.
The department did not pursue solutions aggressively because, McGaffigan said he was told, the department's thinking was that Nevada was going to back down eventually.
McGaffigan endorsed formation of a government-chartered corporation with a bipartisan board of directors to run the repository project and bring in long-term managers rather than political appointees.
"You have to have people who are going to be there for a while, who can approach the issue analytically and not emotionally," McGaffigan said. "Having these rotating sets of leaders doesn't serve anybody's interest."
In the meantime, he said, "I think realistically we should be starting to look at other sites."
"We have to look, and maybe we can create incentives and find a state, if it is a fair process, but it would have to be a fair process."
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New York Times
January 23, 2007
Lack of Budget Could Hurt Nuclear Energy Revival, Official Says
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 — The senior member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned on Monday that the failure of Congress to pass a detailed budget for the current fiscal year could damage the nuclear renaissance that the government tried so hard to encourage with the energy bill of 2005.
No one has applied for permission to build a power reactor since the 1970s. But with the incentives offered by the federal government in 2005, utilities are considering building about 20 reactors, and several of them are expected to apply for authorization this year.
The commission member, Edward McGaffigan Jr., said that if the commission received applications this year, “we basically are going to have to put them on the shelf, because we’re not going to have the folks to work on the applications until well into calendar year 2008.”
Congress passed only 2 of the 11 spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2006, those covering the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department. The rest of the government has been operating under a “continuing resolution,” a stopgap measure that finances most agencies at the previous year’s levels. Democrats say they plan to extend that resolution through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
According to the nuclear commission, under a continuing resolution its budget would be lower by $95 million, or about 12 percent, compared with the level approved by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees but never by the full Congress.
Most of the commission’s budget comes from fees paid by companies licensed to use radioactive material. The agency has been arguing on Capitol Hill that giving it the amount already approved by the Appropriations Committees would require only $13 million of general tax revenues.
Mr. McGaffigan said that if the commission could not process applications, some companies wanting to build would decide to wait. But he said that “some, seeing the instability, may disappear” and build coal plants instead.
Earlier this month, Mr. McGaffigan, saying he had metastatic melanoma, told the White House that he would serve only until a successor could be confirmed. He spoke Monday at a meeting with reporters organized by Platts, an energy information company.
Mr. McGaffigan also said that the Energy Department should begin looking for alternatives to Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, for disposing of nuclear waste. When he came to the commission in 1996, he said, the opening of the repository was said to be 14 years away; now it is probably 20 years away.
“There’s just tremendous uncertainty,” he said, “and each year that passes, we’re not going to get any closer to Yucca under the current circumstances.” He said the government should look for a site where there was local cooperation.
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Energy Daily
January 23, 2007
U.S. Should Rethink Yucca--Retiring NRC Commissioner
By Jeff Beattie
The United States may need "to go back to the beginning" in its efforts to build a national spent reactor fuel repository, and abandon the beleaguered Yucca Mountain project in Nevada in favor of a new repository plan at a different location, retiring Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Edward McGaffigan said Monday.
"It may be time to stop digging" at Yucca, said McGaffigan, explaining that he thought the project has been undermined by "bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad personnel policy...bad budget policy" and other problems "throughout its history."
"Realistically, we should probably be starting to look at new sites," said McGaffigan, the longest-serving NRC commissioner with more than 10 years of service. McGaffigan recently announced that he will leave NRC for health reasons as soon as President Bush finds a replacement.
Speaking at a press conference sponsored by Platts, McGaffigan spoke expansively about the challenges NRC faces--particularly given current federal budget constraints--as U.S. utilities consider building up to 29 new reactors in the coming years. The buzz of activity comes after a long period of relative dormancy for the U.S. nuclear industry, which has not ordered a new nuclear reactor since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
In assessing the surge of interest, McGaffigan described a handful of merchant generator proposals to build new reactors as "among the most serious" of the proposed projects that he sees on the horizon.
But McGaffigan's most extensive comments were on how the nation should move ahead in finding a long-term solution for defense-related high-level waste and radioactive spent fuel rods currently building up at dozens of commercial reactor sites nationwide.
Broadly speaking, he noted that experts worldwide for years have generally agreed that geologic burial is the best way to manage spent fuel and said that developing those repositories is not impossible.
As examples, he cited Finland's progress in siting a national repository, and U.S. success years in ago in building the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), an underground disposal facility for transuranic waste in New Mexico.
McGaffigan also had warm praise for Edward "Ward" Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which is responsible for developing Yucca. In Sproat and his colleagues, "DOE has the best people they have ever had running this program," McGaffigan said Monday.
But McGaffigan said DOE's efforts to develop Yucca have been badly hampered over the years by frequent changeover in Yucca leadership, inconsistent funding and ineffective legislative attempts to fix problems with the program, among other challenges.
Taken together, those types of problems are likely to continue delaying Yucca, McGaffigan said, noting that when he arrived at NRC in 1996 Yucca was scheduled to open in 2010.
"I arrived at the commission 14 years from the alleged opening date of Yucca, and I leave the commission 20 years from the alleged opening date," said McGaffigan, citing recent DOE projections Yucca could open between 2025 and 2027.
To take control of the spent fuel problem, McGaffigan said it might make sense to form a government corporation, whose leaders would be picked by a board of directors and would not need congressional approval. That would provide for more leadership stability over time, and insulate the leaders somewhat from political forces, he said.
McGaffigan described the plan as a "government-owned back-of-the-fuel-cycle corporation `a la TVA," referring to the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Former TVA Chairman Craven Crowell has also called for formation of a government corporation to manage U.S. spent fuel, McGaffigan noted.
McGaffigan said such a corporation could also assume responsibility for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), the Bush administration's marquee nuclear recycling initiative.
Among other goals, GNEP is aimed at restarting spent fuel processing in the United States, a process that extracts elements of spent fuel and re-manufactures it into new fuel. Ideally, that also reduces the volume and toxicity of high-level waste that would need to be buried.
McGaffigan said reprocessing could help the nation manage its spent fuel once the underlying technologies are fully developed, but that "GNEP is not going to come in and save the day" in the near term.
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Platts
January 23, 2007
NRC's McGaffigan says US should start over on waste disposal
Washington (Platts)--22Jan2007
The US government should start over in its effort to develop a long-term solution to nuclear waste disposal by turning over management of the project to a government-owned corporation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Edward McGaffigan said Monday.
Speaking at the Platts Energy Podium, McGaffigan said there are so many problems plaguing the US Department of Energy's proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, that the agency should begin looking at alternative sites.
He said his comments were his personal views and did not represent the NRC's position.
As a he first step to reforming the nuclear waste program, McGaffigan suggested that a group of experts be appointed to develop recommendations, similar to the recent Iraq Study Group.
He said a government-chartered corporation with a bipartisan board--like the Tennessee Valley Authority model--would be the best way to run the program because it would eliminate the frequent turnover of political appointees that currently head DOE's civilian nuclear waste office.
"Things nuclear have to be stable across presidencies and across Congresses because they take so long" to implement, he said.
--Jenny Weil, jenny_weil@platts.com
Listen to a recording of the Platts Energy Podium at
http://www.platts.com/energypodium/index.xml?src=story
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EnergyBiz Insider
January 22, 2007
Nuclear Energy's Potential Comeback
Ken Silverstein
EnergyBiz Insider
Editor-in-Chief
America may like an underdog. But, it's still unclear whether the public will take to nuclear energy. While the technology has been in the shadows of national energy policy for nearly three decades, it has subsequently emerged from obscurity and is continuing to get an ever-increasing amount of attention.
Future electricity demand and stricter emission limits have combined to give nuclear energy a shot of energy. Unlike the fossil fuels, there is a near endless supply of uranium to keep such plants perking along while almost no greenhouse emissions are thrust out the smokestack.
Some key issues stand in the way. The first, which at this point appears intractable, is that of where to store the radioactive nuclear fuel after it is burned. Exelon Corporation, which is the nation's biggest nuclear operator, says it won't build until the matter is resolved. And, the second, which could be overcome after a few new plants are built, is how to persuade Wall Street to finance such ventures when in the past they have been hugely expensive.
"While nuclear generation can provide many benefits, the challenges of successfully completing the next construction cycle will be significant and are bound to test the industry's resolve in addressing increasing demand and the evolving and the increasingly stringent emissions regulations," writes Dimitri Nikas, credit analyst for Standard & Poor's in a recent report on the subject.
To put the matter in perspective, consider that the U.S. Energy Information Administration is predicting a 45 percent increase in energy demand by 2030, necessitating an additional 350,000 megawatts of new generation. The primary alternatives, natural gas and coal, each come with problems -- namely supply shortages and dirty emissions, respectively. Nuclear energy plants, meanwhile, have shown themselves to be safer and more productive than ever before.
In 2001, the Bush administration's National Energy Policy recommended the expansion of nuclear energy. More recently, the president has called for a national strategy to deal with carbon emissions and as such has backed the expansion of nuclear projects. The 2005 Energy Policy Act grants $1 billion in tax credits as well as $500 million in insurance to protect against delays in construction that are directly tied to regulatory logjams. And, finally, the first six reactors to get built in the 21st Century are promised millions in loan guarantees.
At present, 103 operating nuclear reactors exist in the United States. But, none have been ordered here since the 1970s. The partial meltdown at Three Mile is to blame along with cost overruns and construction delays. Now, however, things have changed. Given the market dynamics and the government incentives, about 30 such plants are under consideration. Before the energy act was signed, only a few were on the drawing board.
Alternative Strategies
Consider TXU: it is planning to file applications with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build new nuclear plants in the range of two to six gigawatts. It says it will have the applications completed in 2008 while the actual facilities could be up and running between 2015 and 2020.
"While new nuclear generation cannot come on line in time to meet the growing power needs of Texas for the next 10 years, TXU continues to aspire to be a leader in the commercialization of the next generation of low-cost, clean technology," says John Wilder, CEO of TXU. "Nuclear generation offers the potential to deliver our customers lower, stable prices and continue to reduce Texas' over-reliance on natural gas."
The matter of huge capital costs and government subsidies is important to both the industry and to nuclear opponents. The price tag to build a nuclear facility in the days before Three Mile Island totaled about $1 billion. After, the sunk costs amounted to about $6 billion. And in the days before that event, it would take about five years from the time it took to initially site a plant to the time pre-construction might begin. After that, the time frame doubled to 10 years.
There's also a lot of discussion over where to store the spent nuclear fuel. While Congress has authorized the building of Yucca Mountain 90 miles from Las Vegas, its future is uncertain because of continuous legal and political battles. Understandably, Nevada's citizens are dubious of a permanent nuclear waste site located in their back yard. And, they might have the political muscle to stop it as Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat from the state, is now the majority leader.
"Nuclear power will divert resources from other technologies," says Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "We need to direct our resources to things that are not as dangerous and to where we know we can move forward."
Advances in nuclear technology could alter the landscape. The difference between the so-called Very High Temperature Reactors and the current design is that the future ones will operate three times the temperature of today's light water reactors. That results in a more efficient use of fuel and the ability to create hydrogen in the process. All of that makes the proposition a lot more economically attractive.
Meantime, the reactors are cooled by helium gas and not water. That means that the reactors rely on gravity and not on mechanical instruments to flush water through the system in the event of emergency. Therefore, the odds of any leaks and subsequent meltdowns are close to zero, say advocates of the design.
"We have to prove to Wall Street that nuclear works and that it operates as planned and that the financials look good," says Dan Keuter, vice president of nuclear business development for Entergy Nuclear. "If we are able to build the first few, there will definitely be a renaissance."
No one disputes that new energy forms are a must. All forms are potentially viable and especially renewable technologies. Surely, the overall demand for power will be so expansive that any newfound resurgence in nuclear energy cannot be ignored.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 23, 2007
Porter, Heller split with party on three of Democrats' priority bills
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Last fall, when Republican Rep. Jon Porter was portrayed as being in lock step with President Bush during a brutal reelection campaign, he tried to show his independence through two legislative positions - his support of stem cell research and opposition to a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
Now, after winning reelection with less than 49 percent of the vote, he is rapidly adding others to that list.
Porter, and fellow Republican Rep. Dean Heller, supported three of the six initiatives House Democrats pushed through during the first 100 hours of the new Congress. All six Democratic legislative priorities passed in the House, each with some Republican support.
Neither Porter nor Heller supported three items that were popular with voters: increasing the minimum wage, lowering Medicare drug costs and repealing tax breaks for big oil. Porter, a three-term incumbent, and Heller, a freshman, will have to explain those votes in the next election.
"Those three will all have the potential to be a negative campaign ad: Hurting seniors, hurting the poor and a tool of big oil," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at UNR.
AARP has already announced that the Medicare bill is the first vote of the 110th Congress that it is tracking for the 2008 election.
Porter and Heller voted with Democrats to fund embryonic stem cell research, cut student loan interest rates and fully carry out the 9/11 Commission's security recommendations.
Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley voted for all six items.
Herzik said the votes by Nevada's two Republicans show that Republicans feel freer to break with party leadership than they did when House Speaker Tom DeLay ran the chamber.
"It is a new day for the Republicans in the House," agreed James Hershman, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Government Affairs Institute.
The three issues the Republicans voted to approve were comparatively easy to support, given voter sentiment. Stem cell research is supported by vast majorities of Americans who are longing for cures to debilitating diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's that affect loved ones.
Cutting student loan interest rates in half over the next four years was supported by 124 Republicans - nearly two-thirds of the total in the House. Few politicians want to have an ad against them saying they opposed the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Where the Democratic agenda really hit a nerve with voters was on the partisan issues of tax breaks for oil companies, Medicare drug prices and minimum wage.
Berkley says there wasn't a voter in America who didn't know Democrats were going to raise the minimum wage.
On those, the Nevada Republicans "voted like a Republican," Herzik said.
The fate of the issues in the Senate is far from certain. A combination of Senate rules and the slim 51-49 Democratic majority makes it more difficult for Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid , to push through their legislation.
Congressional observers say they expect the minimum wage and stem cell items will garner support, but the fate of the other four issues is in doubt.
Critics have said the Medicare plan will not really lead to lower costs as Democrats suggest. The minimum wage increase will need small-business protections to win Republican support in the Senate, they say.
Hershman said there's a chance for the Senate to accomplish more than the doubters suggest because Reid and his counterpart know the inside game so well they can cut deals.
Democrats announced the end of the 100 hours with fanfare last week, saying they had accomplished all they set out to do with time to spare. They put the clock at 42 hours, but the Associated Press, tallying a wider definition of the time in session, put it at 87.
But Hershman said coming on the heels of the do-nothing 109th Congress "and the turgid pace of the last months ... it really was action and it got things done."
Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 22, 2007
Magnetic sling would zing packets into space
Test Site one possible site for new technology
By Launce Rake
Las Vegas Sun
Southern Nevada has been on the frontier of a lot of things for a long time: gambling, prostitution, cheap thrills. Even nuclear testing and weapons development.
And now a California company sees us on the frontier of space.
LaunchPoint Technologies of Goleta says it is developing technology to send packages into orbit from a large, open and secure area.
Think the Nevada Test Site, an hour's drive northwest of Las Vegas.
LaunchPoint Vice President Jim Fiske said the company's system involves some patented modifications of an older technology - magnetic levitation - that essentially would accelerate a package along a circular track and then whip it into space at more than 20,000 mph.
The technology could launch small satellites, including weapons, or could be used to send material into space to support manned missions.
The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research has put about $600,000 into the project, and the company is refining its analysis of the cost of actually building a launch system.
Although more precise figures won't be known for a few more months, "our numbers are looking pretty good, even better than we expected," Fiske said.
Vicki Stein, a spokeswoman for the Air Force research office, said the Goleta project is worth investigating.
"We're interested in being able to pursue ways to send microsatellites into space," she said. "We're looking into all those possibilities on a fundamental research level."
The system is based on creating acceleration - enough to make a 175-pound man weigh about a million pounds.
While such gravity is lethal, Fiske said LaunchPoint is preparing a proposal for NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts next month that might make it possible to take far more perishable packages into orbit.
"I can't talk about that yet," he said.
Fiske stressed that the company is a long way from building a magnetic-levitation launch system at the Test Site or anywhere else. The Nevada site has been mentioned only because it meets some of the basic requirements for the technology.
"What we need for the launch ring is a big, flat, open area that is a long ways from people," Fiske said. Dry lake beds such as the kind found at the Test Site or elsewhere in the Mojave Desert fit the bill, but so does Edwards Air Force Base. The Test Site also comes with the requisite security.
He said the hypersonic speed of the projectile to be fired from the launch ring would create a sonic boom, but the effect of the boom would probably be limited.
"Our projectiles will leave the atmosphere so fast that even the sonic boom probably won't travel far," Fiske said. "In Las Vegas, they probably won't hear our launches at all."
He said the goal of the company now is to get the Defense Department, NASA or even another commercial investor to support the effort.
"Ultimately, assuming that we are successful, this is going to change our relationship to space," Fiske said.
The cost of taking something into orbit is now about $5,000 a pound. He said the goal would be to lower the cost to $100 a pound. That would make launching satellites or supporting manned space missions a lot cheaper.
This isn't the first time the Test Site, which has been home to above- and below-ground nuclear test explosions and where federal officials hope to store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, has been discussed as a site for orbital launches.
In 1999 a company called Kistler Aerospace went as far as gaining a permit from Test Site managers at the Energy Department for launching the company's two-stage rocket. But the company never launched a rocket from the Test Site and according to its most recent statements has moved operations to Australia.
Still, there is a history there. Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, a state agency battling the Yucca Mountain waste dump, noted that the state supported the Kistler Aerospace effort.
"The state has always been supportive of non-nuclear related activities at the Test Site," Loux said.
Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of the group Citizen Alert, which has battled the federal government's weapons and waste-related projects at the Test Site, said an orbital launch system would be a good project for the site.
"Anything except bombs," said Johnson, who is protesting federal plans to detonate a huge, non-nuclear explosive on the Test Site. "And not nuclear waste. We have to look at different alternative uses at the Test Site."
Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency that runs the Test Site, said the proposal is one that the government would consider.
But first, the federal government would have to ensure that such a project would not interfere with any of the ongoing national security projects at the Test Site, Morgan said. Typically, projects slated for the Test Site also have a sponsor from another government agency, he added.
Launce Rake can be reached at 259-4127 or at lrake@lasvegassun.com.
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MSNBC
New nuclear power ‘wave’ — or just a ripple?
How millions for lobbying, campaigns helped fuel U.S. industry's big plans
By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
MSNBC
Buoyed by billions of dollars in subsidies pushed through Congress by the Bush administration, the U.S. nuclear power industry says 2007 is the year its plans for a “renaissance” will reach critical mass.
“We see a wave,” said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s chief lobbying arm, pointing to letters of intent by a dozen firms to seek licenses for as many as 31 new nuclear power reactors. “We definitely believe it’s going to be a whole new era of new plant construction in this country.”
Kerekes credits improvements in plant design and efficiency and the ability to operate without spewing carbon into the air — a key advantage amid mounting concern about global warming — as chief reasons for the resurgence.
But critics say the real catalyst has been well-funded lobbying by the industry. They believe tax dollars spent to jump-start the dormant industry would be better devoted to alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.
"If this were a renaissance, you wouldn’t need to be enticing giant corporations with subsidies in order to get them to build reactors they claim are economically viable,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for the environmental group Greenpeace, a staunch foe of nuclear energy.
A remarkable turnaround
Regardless of which side is eventually proved correct, the mere discussion of building dozens of new reactors is a remarkable turnaround for an industry that less than 10 years ago was widely viewed as the energy sector’s unsafe and expensive also-ran. And it’s a textbook case of how the wheels of government can change direction quickly when enough money, influence and political will are applied.
Nuclear power proponents say the interest in new plants is just one sign that the technology may finally be on the verge of achieving the widespread acceptance and use they have long envisioned. Among them:
* The relicensing of four dozen U.S. commercial reactors.
* The emergence of well-known environmentalists as supporters of nuclear technology.
* Groundbreaking for a new uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico.
A breathtakingly ambitious Bush administration plan for a global nuclear fuel cartel to light up the developing world with electricity while avoiding the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Ardent foes of nuclear energy like Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resources Service respond that these actions all are the result of pro-nuclear work by industry supporters in Congress and the Bush administration, not a genuine watershed in how investors and the public view nuclear power.
“There’s a big difference between a letter of intent and the filing of an application,” he said of the new plants, predicting that problems with waste disposal, safety and security will ultimately stall what he refers to as a nuclear power “relapse.”
And while key committee chairmanships will remain in the hands of strong pro-nuclear lawmakers, the retaking of Congress by the Democrats could also present some roadblocks, especially on the central issue of waste, he said.
That lawmakers are once more considering such issues shows how far the nuclear energy needle has moved since the mid-1990s.
Three Mile Island: The last straw
After its birth as an outgrowth of weapons programs in World War II, the nuclear energy industry battled design problems, cost overruns, safety issues and environmental foes for years to wind up with the 103 U.S. reactors that remain in commercial operation today from California to New Hampshire.
As construction delays and costs escalated, the meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the spring of 1979 was the last straw for those who held the purse strings to new reactor construction. No new commercial reactors have been ordered since, although previously ordered plants continued to be built and come online until 1996.
The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union, which is blamed for about 60 deaths by the World Health Organization, further tarnished the technology’s image. At that point, “any talk about a new plant (in the U.S.) would have been dismissed as childish optimism,” admits nuclear power’s chief congressional cheerleader, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.
While accidents and economics halted nuclear expansion in the U.S., they did not have the same impact elsewhere. Of the 322 operating electricity-generating reactors currently in operation outside the United States, 171 began operating in the 1980s, 48 in the 1990s and 28 so far this century, according to the NEI. Twenty-nine more reactors are under construction outside the country, and 10 nations get more than 40 percent of their electricity from nuclear reactors, led by France at 78.5 percent.
In the U.S., chastened nuclear operators focused on improving safety and efficiency at existing plants. They were successful: There have been no notable U.S. accidents since Three Mile Island and the U.S. reactor fleet has produced at about 90 percent of licensed capacity since 2001, up considerably from efficiency figures of the early 1980s. Nuclear plants today produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States.
Industry improvements are “an outgrowth, in all honesty, of the Three Mile Island accident," NEI's Kerekes said, "because the steps that were taken after that do a better job of sharing information in our industry and applying best practices.”
Industry gets a second wind
The industry’s first big step in its transformation from bastard stepchild to energy panacea and clean air savior came in 1997. That’s when Domenici delivered what he calls a “storied speech on nuclear power” at Harvard. The veteran senator was well-acquainted with nuclear issues by virtue of representing New Mexico, the birthplace of nuclear weapons and the home of two of the nation’s nuclear laboratories.
Long fascinated by “gee-whiz-bang technical stuff,” in the words of one acquaintance, and mindful of the nuclear industry’s improving efficiency record, Domenici became convinced the technology was not getting a fair shake. Urged on by a number of true believer aides that included Alex Flint, now the industry’s chief lobbyist, and Pete Lyons, now a Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, Domenici urged U.S. policy-makers to undo “bad decisions” of the past and harness “the full potential of the nucleus.”
The Domenici speech was followed up by a 1998 forum that gathered 60 participants from industry, government and academia to draft a plan to put nuclear power back on the nation’s energy agenda.
With those talking points in hand, the industry saw its best opening in years in the 2000 presidential election and backed the Bush-Cheney ticket with nearly $270,000 in contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The victorious Republicans welcomed industry representatives to their energy transition team and later private discussions by Vice President Dick Cheney’s task force on energy.
Familiar names from the 1998 forum popped up on the energy transition team: Flint, Domenici's former aide who was in between Senate staff jobs and working as a lobbyist for the industry; Flint’s new boss, former Louisiana Sen. Bennett Johnston, a strong ally of the nuclear industry while in Congress; and Joe Colvin, then president of NEI. At least another half-dozen of their industry colleagues also were involved.
Bush administration ties
But nuclear interests had long had the attention of Bush and Cheney, themselves major players in the oil and gas industry.
One of the biggest names on the Bush energy transition team was Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents the electric power industry and its nuclear reactor owners. Not only was Kuhn the president’s Yale classmate and longtime friend, he was one of Bush’s biggest fund-raisers. A study by Common Cause found that in the six years that bracketed the 2000 election, Kuhn’s organization and its members gave $41 million to political campaigns, three-fourths of it to Republicans.
Cheney also had close ties to players with stakes in the nuclear sector. When the vice president was CEO of Halliburton, the company’s portfolio included Nuclear Utility Services. His close friend, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, another big Republican fund-raiser, worked as a lobbyist on nuclear issues. And Cheney’s wife, Lynne, had served on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin, which earned millions from the federal government managing the Sandia Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico.
Once in office, Cheney’s energy task force worked quickly and behind closed doors. Kuhn had regular input, though he was not a member of the group.
As the administration’s energy policy began to emerge in the spring of 2001, its support for the nuclear power industry was beyond “my wildest dreams,” Christian H. Poindexter, chairman of the Constellation Energy Group, later told the New York Times. A number of the policy’s final recommendations, including broad administration support for “the expansion of nuclear energy,” streamlining the regulatory process and opening the way to reprocessing spent fuel, had been included in the action plan drafted by the 1998 forum that followed Domenici’s Harvard speech.
At a press conference in the spring of 2001 to herald the administration’s energy plan, Domenici congratulated Bush and Cheney for “being courageous and realistic” on the nuclear front and embarked on a four-year effort to turn the plan into law.
Task force records remain secret
Cheney's conduct of the task force sessions in secret angered journalists and others. Groups at opposite ends of the political spectrum sued over what Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch, one of the plaintiffs, called an "unprecedented assertion of executive branch supremacy," but were largely unsuccessful in forcing the release of records they sought.
Six months after unveiling its energy plan, the administration forged ahead with the “Nuclear Power 2010 program,” which the Department of Energy described as a cost-sharing demonstration project by government and industry to get a new generation of nuclear reactors up and running by “early in the next decade.”
On Capitol Hill, however, energy legislation languished until Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2003, giving Domenici the chairmanship of the Senate Energy Committee. He hired back Flint, his former aide, from the nuclear lobbying ranks to direct the committee’s work and after 2½ years of horse-trading, parliamentary maneuvering and secret conference committee meetings, the bill finally became law in August 2005.
Flint has since returned to work for the industry as its chief lobbyist. Domenici, meanwhile, led the fight to build a new uranium enrichment plant in his state to help fuel the presumed nuclear resurgence. On June 23, 2006, it became the first nuclear facility to win a new NRC license in 30 years. Both have declined repeated requests to be interviewed by MSNBC.com.
The senator also has become a strong supporter of the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a futuristic and controversial plan for the United States and other nuclear “haves” to supply technology to “have-nots.” The plan envisions the reprocessing of spent fuel, banned for decades by previous administrations because it was feared it could lead to the spread of nuclear weapons.
Billions pour into ‘renaissance’
Nuclear industry perks in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 were spotlighted when President Bush signed the bill at Sandia National Lab in Domenci's home state of New Mexico. With his signature, billions in federal assistance flowed from Bush’s pen into the nuclear “renaissance,” including:
* $3 billion in research subsidies.
* More than $3 billion in construction subsidies for new nuclear power plants.
* Nearly $6 billion in operating tax credits.
* More than $1 billion in subsidies to decommission old plants.
* A 20-year extension of liability caps for accidents at nuclear plants.
* Federal loan guarantees for the construction of new power plants.
* Critics say the energy bill amply rewarded the industry for years of investment in campaign contributions and lobbying.
“There no question that the utility industry lobbying and campaign contributions has had a huge influence,” said Tyson Slocum of the anti-nuclear group Public Citizen. “... These are business people and business people do not part with money easily unless they are making investments. Politics is not a charity, it’s not tax deductible. The return on that investment dwarfs anything that they could get on Wall Street.”
But NEI's Kerekes said the legislation reflects the energy realities of the new century.
“That would be a wonderful myth to peddle,” he said, arguing that nuclear power found new favor on Wall Street and in Congress on its own merits. “Unless they’re going to accuse us of stoking concerns about global climate change over the past 15 or 20 years, I think that argument becomes pretty hollow pretty quickly.”
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of the vehemently anti-nuclear group Greenpeace and one of a number of well-known environmentalists who now back nuclear power, agrees that nuclear energy earned a second look.
Greenpeace founder embraces nuclear energy
“I honestly believe that the concern for emissions is why people are saying, ‘Hey we should be building more nuclear,’” said Moore, whose Vancouver, B.C.-based, consulting firm is now retained by the nuclear industry to improve its image.
While the effect of the industry's campaign contributions and lobbying efforts in the years before the energy bill's passage are debatable, the amount of money invested is remarkable by any measure.
Numerous reports from watchdog groups provide some details, but the fragmented nature of campaign finance disclosure and lobbying reports makes it difficult to determine cumulative figures. Many contributors, such as General Electric (owner of NBC Universal, which in turn is a partner with Microsoft in MSNBC.com), have numerous business concerns beyond nuclear energy. Others, like the U.S. Enrichment Corporation and NEI, are exclusively focused on nuclear energy.
But even a partial accounting is eye opening. MSNBC.com culled these statistics from campaign finance data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics via federal reports:
* Companies in the energy and natural resources sectors, which includes nuclear power, and their employees, have donated $212.2 million to the campaigns of federal candidates since 2000 alone, three-fourths of it to Republicans.
* Employees and political action committees of 23 large companies involved in efforts to build new U.S. nuclear reactors gave nearly $41 million to federal candidates from 1998 through this year. The donations accelerated as nuclear power regained favor, totaling $3.5 million in the 1998 election cycle, $4.6 million for 2000, $9.5 million for 2002, $11.3 million for 2004 and more than $12 million in 2006.
* Lobbying expenses reported by the same 23 firms from 1998 through 2005 exceeded $292.5 million.
* Four members of Congress singled out by Bush at the signing ceremony as instrumental in the energy bill's passage have been major recipients of nuclear industry largesse. Since 1989, Domenici has received $384,923 from electric utilities with big stakes in nuclear power, and his list of donors includes at least three dozen firms on the membership roster of the NEI. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who succeeded Domenici as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee in January, got $406,576 from electric utilities in the same period and five of his top seven donors are tied to the nuclear industry. Former House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, received $1 million from electric utilities and his Lone Star colleague on the panel, Republican Ralph Hall, got $536,670.
Probe of energy task force promised
While there is little expectation that the Democratic-controlled Congress will seek to substantially roll back provisions of the energy bill, which was approved by an overwhelming majority in both houses, skeptics say some elements of the onrushing "nuclear renaissance" could face new scrutiny. In particular, the new chairman of the House Energy Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., has vowed to investigate the Cheney energy task force, saying it was "carefully cooked to provide only participation by oil companies and energy companies." Dingell himself has been a favorite recipient of campaign contributions from the nuclear power industry over the years.
Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists and other critics say the industry now faces the challenge of proving its economic argument. The only way to do that, he said, is by demonstrating that the resurgence will result in the construction of more than “a small number of reactors, exactly the number that receive subsidies under the Energy Policy Act.”
But Adrian Heymer, NEI’s senior director for new plant deployment, said the extent of the rebound will soon be clear; applications to build a majority of the 30-plus new nuclear reactors are expected by year's end.
He also brushed aside complaints that the streamlined NRC review process for the new license applications shuts out important opportunities for public comment and participation.
“There’s more opportunity for public involvement, a lot more information is available earlier to the public,” he said. Besides, he added, there may be little opposition to some of the plants, slated to be built on existing nuclear sites and actively sought by community leaders who look favorably on the economic benefits of large construction projects and the permanent jobs the plants will bring.
Don’t count on it, countered Gunter. “The anti-nuclear movement has been seasoned; we’re a lot more sophisticated and far more educated now as to the hazards and folly of nuclear power," he said. "None of the concerns that brought about the anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s have disappeared. They’ve only been magnified. We have no better clue as to how to manage nuclear waste now than we did in 1975.”
Waste disposal remains key issue
All parties agree that any large-scale nuclear renaissance will depend on answering the thorny political and technical questions surrounding the handling of spent fuel. The industry and administration’s current bid to get the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada licensed are seen as dead by many observers because the new Senate majority leader, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, has always firmly opposed the facility.
But new initiatives are afoot to break the Yucca deadlock. And given long lead times for licensing and construction, “that doesn’t have to happen next year or even in the next Congress,” said Scott Peterson, another NEI spokesman.
Still the prediction that one or more new nuclear reactors will be operating “early in the next decade,” as envisioned by the Bush administration, remains open to question. And some experts are betting against the house.
Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher on nuclear issues at Harvard and a supporter of nuclear power, doubts it. Certainly, he said, “The fast pace of growth just ain’t going to happen for some number of years.”
He recalls a bet he made with a friend a couple years back that work would not begin on a single new nuclear power plant in the United States within 10 years.
"We’re now down to eight years, so I’m a little more nervous, but I still think I’ll win,” he said.
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Scoop
January 22, 2007
Auckland’s Destructive Quintuplets
At least five volcanoes were born at the same time in Auckland’s history, suggests research from The University of Auckland.
The research suggests that Auckland and some other major cities could be at risk of future simultaneous multiple eruptions.
Research published in Geophysical Research Letters shows the first ever evidence for such multiple eruptions in a volcanic field like Auckland. The research suggests at least five volcanoes in Auckland erupted within a period as short as 50 to 100 years, and possibly at the same time.
“This is the first evidence that multiple volcanic eruptions in such fields may have occurred at the same time, and could have tremendous consequences for people living in these highly active areas,” says Dr John Cassidy of the University’s School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science. “Several cities worldwide sit on volcanic fields similar to Auckland’s, including Honolulu, Mexico City and the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the US. Most hazard planning for population centres vulnerable to volcanic eruptions assumes a single eruption at any point in time, but this research shows that this is not necessarily the correct course of thinking.”
Dr Cassidy’s research was funded by the Earthquake Commission and shows that the volcanoes of Puketutu, Crater Hill and Wiri in the south west of Auckland, and Mt Richmond and Taylor Hill all erupted within the same period. The discovery was made by studying volcanic rocks which have recorded unusual disturbances in the ancient Earth’s magnetic field.
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Myrtle Beach Sun News
January 21, 2007
Nuclear Energy
Waste disposal at Yucca Mountain unsafe
By Joseph Strolin
The Jan. 6 opinion piece by State Sen. William Mescher, "Nuclear energy could ease power concerns," is just plain wrong when it states that the reason the federal government's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository program for spent nuclear fuel is on the brink of collapse is a NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) reaction on the part of the state of Nevada. In fact, it is Yucca Mountain's intrinsic and unfixable flaws and the federal government's shoddy and politically motivated science that have left the nation and Nevada with a site that is incapable of isolating deadly radioactive waste for the long time period necessary.
Another fact Mescher missed is the reality that Yucca Mountain is not needed for the so-called nuclear renaissance. Spent fuel is perfectly safe and secure at existing and new power plants, with improved dry storage technologies making such storage even safer and more economical.
It is certainly much safer than having tens of thousands of shipments of deadly radioactive waste traversing the nation's highways and railroads over a period of three decades or more to an unsafe disposal site in Nevada.
If NIMBY is, in fact, at work in this regard, the irrational push by commercial nuclear utility companies to get spent fuel out of their backyards and into an unsuitable and unsafe site in Nevada is a prime example.
--The writer lives in Carson City, Nev.
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Heartland Institute
January 19, 2007
Democrat Group Calls for More Nuclear Power
Written By: James Hoare
Published In: Environment News
Nuclear power offers a safe and economical way to meet anticipated growth in American energy demand, according to an October 2006 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
The report, "A Progressive Energy Platform," praises nuclear power as a key weapon against asserted global climate change and air quality concerns.
"Nuclear power holds great potential to be an integral part of a diversified energy portfolio for America," the report states. "It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change."
New Technological Advances
Key to the DLC's support for nuclear power are technological advances that substantially improve on an already impressive safety and environmental record.
"New plant designs promise to produce power more safely and economically than first-generation facilities," the report explains. "For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified three new designs that would use significantly fewer pumps, pipes, valves, and cables than first-generation facilities.
"That will reduce the plants' complexity, making them easier to inspect and maintain," the report continues. "From a safety perspective, the new plants rely on natural forces such as gravity, natural circulation, and condensation, assuring safe shutdown even in the event of an accident."
The report also notes further advances in nuclear plant design.
"In addition to these three new approved designs," the report adds, "at least four other designs may soon win NRC approval. Among these is the promising modular, 'pebble bed' reactor design. As the name suggests, these smaller plants would use hundreds of thousands of uranium pebbles rather than large cores to generate power. As researchers at MIT recently concluded, these pebbles burn more completely than their traditional counterparts."
Deregulation Needed
The report stresses, however, that technological advances such as pebble bed reactors require a great deal of time to navigate through regulatory processes and actually get built.
As a result, the report encourages Democrats to take action now to remove regulatory hurdles that slow the development and construction process.
"It will take time to bring these next-generation facilities online. Progressives should support efforts to expedite the process," the report urges.
"We certainly welcome the Progressive Policy Institute support," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said. "It reflects the fact that there is considerable bipartisan support for nuclear energy and there has been such support for a long time.
"We anticipate this report will have a positive impact among Democrats and among citizens as a whole," Kerekes added. "Support for clean, safe, and economical nuclear power continues to build all across America."
Political Landscape in Flux
The DLC's support for nuclear power may undermine efforts by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to block completion of the Yucca Mountain storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.
On December 7 Reid's clerk, Drew Wilson, told attendees at a nuclear power conference that Reid "is not going to change" his opposition to Yucca Mountain and that he will do whatever he can to block legislation that would assist completion of the facility.
"It won't be moving for long if the majority leader is controlling the agenda," Wilson said of any proposed Yucca Mountain legislation.
While the project "is not proceeding at the pace we would like," Kerekes said, he expects DLC support for nuclear power to minimize Reid's influence in blocking Yucca Mountain progress.
"Harry Reid has acknowledged in the past that he alone cannot kill the program," said Kerekes.
"There is broad public support for nuclear power," Kerekes continued. "And until Yucca comes online, used fuel must be stored in many places around the country, against the wishes of citizens who desire one safe, centralized storage facility."
--James Hoare (ljahoare@aol.com) is an attorney practicing in Syracuse, New York.
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Muskegon Chronicle
January 19, 2007
No way: Don't make Lake Huron a nuke dump site
In the same issue of our paper with a story headlined "Environmentalists: Stop lake damage," the story below read: "Site near lake eyed for waste." It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry anymore about the dire and often senseless threats to what is arguably America's most precious natural resource.
The lamentable idea that was the subject of the Associated Press story is Canadian in origin. In Ontario, officials are reportedly eyeing the shores of Lake Huron as a dump site for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. This is a terrible idea, fraught with extreme consequences.
Before condemning Canada out of hand, though, it must be said that our neighbor to the north is merely taking the lead from our own government in searching for the easy way out of a deadly quandary of its own making.
As a result of U.S. inaction and deliberate delay, the shores of all the Great Lakes are littered with spent stores of nuclear waste. These age menacingly next to reactors because there is no safe, nationally designated repository for this material.
Why isn't there such a safe place? The answer is that no one in Washington, D.C., of either political party has the will to carry out the only sane move on the table, namely to designate the overstudied Yucca Mountain, Nev., site as the national repository. Not helping matters is the looming presence of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, himself a serious obstacle to a national plan.
Yet Reid isn't the only bump in the road. Presidents won't push, Congresses won't act and states won't even allow the waste to be transported through them en-route to Nevada. Canada, although 100 percent wrong, is only following the silly and dangerous lead we are setting here in the states.
'Sweetheart of Swing' and the end of an era
Here's a final bow to the late Martha Tilton, whose amazing vocals and easy smile earned her the nickname "Sweetheart of Swing" during the Big Band era. Tilton's death at age 91 has now cut the last living link to the famous Benny Goodman orchestra that made jazz-swing famous throughout the world.
Its landmark 1938 Carnegie Hall concert took place 69 years ago this week. For that performance, Goodman brought together virtually every famous name in American jazz-swing on the stage of the most famous concert hall in the world. From clarinetist Goodman to Count Basie on the piano, everywhere one looked that night was an instrumental all-star -- Gene Krupa on drums, Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, Johnny Hodges on sax and many more.
This was the concert that featured the swing hit "Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)" that has become the musical anthem of those times. Even if the title doesn't ring a bell, you'll instantly recognize the basic melody, which has been cannibalized innumerable times for commercials, shows and movies. Decrepit jukeboxes in Twilight Zone-era diners and bars can still be found with "Sing" on their song lists. To hear the long version, though, you have to pump in twice as many coins.
All the stars that night, however, were upstaged when lithe, blonde Martha Tilton took her turn as vocalist, say those who were there. Captured by primitive recording devices, all these years later her performance of the jazz-swing version of "Loch Lomond" ballad still rocks. And in the Goodman Band's classic "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon," Tilton's terrific singing was a silken counterpoint to Harry James' crazed and brilliant trumpet solo during that memorable number.
After that concert, Tilton went on to become a star in her own right, and was a regular on the USO tours in war zones in Europe and the Pacific to sing for the warriors of World War II on the front lines. In Hollywood, she was often "the voice behind the curtain" for many stars, including Barbara Stanwyck, when the script called for musical roles.
It's a rarity to hear the jazz-swing bands of the 1930s and 1940s anymore on radio, or to hear the likes of Martha Tilton belt one out. As the line goes, "you don't know what you got 'till it's gone."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 18, 2007
DOE official upbeat on Yucca Mountain
He says project can proceed without legislation
By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Plans to begin storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by March 2017 should be able to proceed without legislation from Congress, a key Energy Department official said Wednesday.
Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a group of nuclear power executives the department will submit a license application for Yucca Mountain to the National Regulatory Commission no later than June 30, 2008.
"That's no ifs, ands or buts," said Sproat, who began running the program last June. "We have a firm stick in the sand about when this thing is going to go in."
After his remarks at the annual seminar sponsored by the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, Sproat was asked if he was concerned that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may derail legislation to keep the Yucca Mountain Project on schedule.
"Those strategic goals I laid out there don't require any additional legislation," Sproat said.
Reid is not convinced.
"That's wishful thinking on his part," said Reid, who has vowed to use his power as majority leader to slash funding for Yucca Mountain and block efforts to develop the repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
In November, Sproat told the National Academy of Sciences that Yucca Mountain should begin storing nuclear waste by March 2017, but later acknowledged lawsuits by Nevada probably would delay the schedule by at least three years. On Thursday, Sproat did not mention the possibility of delays.
Sproat said the department plans to begin rail construction in Nevada for Yucca Mountain in October 2009 and make the rail line operational by June 2014.
"Transportation is very complex," Sproat said. "We need to get the rail line started wherever it's going to be in Nevada."
During peak construction of the Yucca Mountain Project, which should last four to six years, the department will need to spend about $2 billion per year, Sproat said.
In recent years, Congress has approved budgets for Yucca Mountain ranging from $450 million to $500 million, and Reid has described those figures as too high.
Although he said he would not need legislation to meet schedule demands, Sproat said he will ask Congress to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to determine Yucca Mountain's capacity for nuclear waste storage.
Current law sets the capacity at 77,000 tons, an amount Sproat called "artificially low."
Within the next two years, Sproat said, he also will ask Congress to approve a second nuclear waste repository.
He did not say where a second repository would be located.
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Bay Area Indymedia
January 18, 2007
The Economics of Building a Nuclear Power Plant in Fresno
by Alan Cheah and Mark Stout
It was only seven years ago when the promise of cheap electricity through deregulation helped plunge California into a deeper budget crisis and robbed ratepayers of their hard earned money. They are poised to do it again. Nuclear proponents are grateful for our citizenry’s short memories. Now, nuclear power advocates promise cheap, clean, safe energy and jobs. This section focuses on the economic viability of nuclear versus renewable energy and conservation.
The Fresno Nuclear Energy Group LLC is proposing a 1600 megawatt nuclear power plant costing $4 billion.
History tells us that projected costs differ vastly from actual costs. Just look at the table below:
PROJECTED VS. ACTUAL COST OF SELECTED NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
(in billions of dollars)
Unit Megawatts Initial cost estimate Actual cost
Millstone III (Massachusetts and Connecticut) 1,150 .400 3.82
Limerick 1 (Pennsylvania) 1,055 .344 3.80
Wolf Creek (Kansas) 1,055 1.03 2.93
Susquehanna 1 (Pennsylvania) 1,050 .665 2.05
Susquehanna II (Pennsylvania) 1,050 .720 2.05
Source: Public Utility Commissions in the respective states
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/nuclear_power.html
As you can see, actual costs range from 3 to 11 times projected costs. Nuclear proponents argue that much of the added costs are because of unnecessary environmental and safety regulations, politics and finance issues. Whatever the reason, the reality is that the actual cost would likely exceed $12 billion. If nuclear is such a good investment, why have no nuclear power plant ever been 100% privately funded? In Dick Cheney’s Energy Policy of 2003, Title IV, subtitle B: New Nuclear Plants , it authorizes the Department of Energy to provide 50% of the costs to build new reactors and there are no guidelines regarding interest rates and repayment of these loans. In layman’s terms, we heavily subsidize the building of the plant. We do not share in the profits of the privately owned plant and there is no guarantee our financing will be paid back? If it is so safe, why does provision Title IV, subtitle A: The Price Anderson Act limit the liability of nuclear power plants to $10B. A serious nuclear accident according to Sandia National Laboratories could cost upwards of $300B. Taxpayers will pay the difference.
John Hutson, Chairman of the PUC and President/CEO of the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group LLC, claims nuclear will bring jobs. Undoubtedly, but let’s look at the job creation comparison for different energy sources:
Table 1. Jobs Involved in Producing 1000 Gigawatt-hours of Electricity Per Year
Number of jobs: 10 116 248 542
Energy source: Nuclear fission Coal Solar thermal Wind
This 1993 finding by the Worldwatch Institute should still apply today on a comparative basis. There is no doubt that job creation for renewable energy exceeds that of fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Many states are ignoring the direction of the Federal government and finding more economic benefits in pursuing green energy.
Since 1980 the cost of wind power has declined from $.30 - $.45 per kWh to $.05/kWh . The Federal Production Tax Credit, currently at 1.9 cents/kWh and indexed to inflation , further drives down the cost of wind power to ratepayers, allowing utility power purchase agreements to be signed as low as 3.5 cents. Solar photovoltaic (PV) is about $.20/kWh, and is now reduced with an expanded 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit, and the California Solar Initiative’s incentives for customer self-generation .
(Insert image: cost_curves_2002_Slide1.tif)
Nuclear power arguably costs $.03/kWh, only by ignoring large construction capital costs. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA) report $.03/kWh represents operational costs and waste and decommissioning costs. How they account for waste cost is suspect since the Yucca mountain waste site still has not been approved. If it is approved today it will not be r