Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, February 01, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, February 01, 2007
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 01, 2007

Yucca manager defends expense to restore project

Porter calls $25 million price tag 'throwing good money after bad'

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The top Yucca Mountain manager on Wednesday defended the Energy Department's spending of more than $25 million to restore the project in the wake of scientists' e-mails that raised questions about research quality at the nuclear waste site.

"An objective individual taking a look at this should, if nothing else, see that DOE spent a heck of a lot of effort" on corrective action, including searches to determine whether similar problems lurked elsewhere in the program, said Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Sproat confirmed a $25.6 million price tag reported by the Government Accountability Office in a study released this week. He said the numbers were generated by DOE and given to the auditors as "a best estimate of the work."

Much of the money already has been spent on investigations and corrective actions that began in 2005. About $5 million is scheduled to be spent this year to complete the tasks, the GAO said.

On Wednesday, Yucca opponent Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said the Energy Department was "throwing good money after bad" in trying to fix problems at the proposed waste repository that has been chronically delayed.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., circulated a letter to other House members calling attention to new criticism of the repository leveled last week by Edward McGaffigan, a departing member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Sproat, appointed by President Bush last year to manage the repository site, said his charge was to fix the project and move it forward.

"I can't make excuses or really talk about what went on in the past and the problems that occurred," he said. "I can talk about what I am doing now and that I am aware of the quality problems that existed."

The Energy Department launched a multipronged investigation after the discovery of e-mail messages in which several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists assigned to Yucca indicated they may not have followed quality assurance requirements for a water infiltration computer model they were building.

The messages were written between 1998 and 2000 but not discovered until 2004 and not disclosed until March 2005.

The GAO report detailed costs to sample and review more than 14 million e-mails, to provide quality assurance training, and to replace the infiltration model that had been called into question.

After reviewing that model and others the hydrologists had helped build, Energy Department officials declared scientific data had not been compromised but quality assurance standards had not been met.

Engineers from Sandia National Laboratories were brought onto the Yucca program to reconstruct the model, a key piece of research of how water might seep into the mountain and over thousands of years rust canisters of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
February 01, 2007

Nevada leaders plot strategy to fight Yucca

WASHINGTON (AP) — Funding for Yucca Mountain in 2007 would be $50 million less than in 2006 under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

The development came as the five members of Nevada’s congressional delegation met in Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office to discuss plans for the upcoming legislative session, including keeping the nuclear waste dump project in check.

“We’ll reallocate the money to something else that’s needed,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. “So that’s the good news for the day.”

The cut comes in a massive spending bill funding about one-sixth of the federal budget that Democrats pushed through the House in one batch of budget bills left undone by the Republican Congress. The measure still must pass the Senate.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
February 01, 2007

Questions still remain for Yucca Mountain

Per F. Peterson

America's 104 nuclear plants now make three quarters of our total non-fossil-fuel, non-greenhouse-gas emitting electricity. Over the last year, U.S. utilities have announced constriction-license applications for 29 new nuclear power plants that will not emit greenhouse gases.

What then for nuclear waste? We now require that our Yucca Mountain repository site meet a one million year safety standard hazardous permanently. Advanced nuclear fuel cycles -- that could be deployed over the next several decades -- could eventually destroy much nuclear waste. But, for all possible advanced approaches, some residual waste will still require a geologic repository.

The Department of Energy plans to submit a license application for Yucca Mountain in 2008 -- for disposal of 63,000 metric tons of commercial spent fuel and 7,000 tons of defense waste -- that would meet this million-year safety standard. Showing legally that a repository meets a million-year standard will be an impressive achievement, one that we may want to demand of our non-radioactive wastes as well! But it could be a mistake to then put spent fuel in this repository, because within several decades this 2008-era approach could look a lot like a Model T automobile -- interesting but completely obsolete.

Our current nuclear waste policy is to complete Yucca Mountain and then rapidly fill it with canisters of spent fuel assemblies. At the opposite end of the spectrum we could stop Yucca Mountain and start searching for a different place to bury this spent fuel. That sends us back to the 17 other states we studied in the early 1980s before Congress picked Yucca Mountain. Because neither of these options is particularly attractive, we may want to look at a third approach. This would involve completing the licensing of Yucca Mountain but would stop any further constriction at the repository beyond that needed for defense wastes, for at least several decades.

How could delaying completion of Yucca Mountain for several decades and transferring spent fuel to interim storage and processing at new consolidated fuel treatment centers bring benefits? We can imagine that instead of depositing spent fuel in Yucca Mountain, Congress would pass legislation to cap the amount of space and to direct the DOE to issue permits for this limited disposal space. Every time a utility wants to build a new reactor it would have to acquire space permits from this limited space allocation, making repository space increasingly valuable and thus spurring investments to develop new nuclear energy technologies that produce less waste and recycle existing wastes.

The U.S. needs a nuclear waste repository. But decades will pass before we will know for sure whether any spent fuel should go into Yucca Mountain, or whether smaller amounts of residual waste will need disposal. It makes sense to complete the current licensing process to see if this site can meet the million-year safety standard. But it makes little sense to allow spent fuel to go there for at least several decades as long as we make a serious effort to develop and deploy workable technologies to recycle this spent fuel.

--Per F. Peterson is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno. He is a professor and former chair of the department of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Platts
February 01, 2007

FY 2007 spending bill shortchanges science, GNEP: White House

Washington (Platts)--31Jan2007

The Bush administration on Wednesday took exception to a fiscal 2007 continuing resolution proposed by Democrats saying it shortchanged the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and science programs and set unacceptable conditions on construction of a mixed oxide nuclear fuel fabrication facility in South Carolina.

The House is set to vote on the $463.5 billion bill later Wednesday. The measure would provide funding to the federal government from February 15, when the current continuing resolution expires, until September 30, the end of the fiscal year. It includes substantial boosts compared with fiscal 2006 levels for science and energy efficiency and renewable energy. But the White House objected to some of the measure's provisions.

In a statement of administration policy, the Office of Management and Budget said the resolution "allows continued funding of oil subsidies for oil and gas research and development but fails to fully fund the president's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership."

The bill directs $120 million to GNEP, a nuclear waste recycling program intended to reduce the volume of spent fuel that would need to go to the Yucca Mountain repository, and reduce the risks of proliferation worldwide. The administration asked for $250 million for the program for fiscal 2007.

The resolution also gives DOE $3.8 billion for science, which is a $200 million boost over fiscal 2006, but the administration lamented the fact that Congress did not provide the full $4.1 billion request.

The MOX plant, which is being built at the Savannah River Site to convert weapons grade material into nuclear fuel, would see no money that could be used for construction until August.

The SAP said "the administration opposes any language in the bill that prohibits, conditions or in any way restricts the use of funds...for construction."

Several congressional Republicans have complained that they were not invited to participate in crafting the resolution. But Senator Pete Domenici, of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, said the resolution was "a huge win for clean energy. It's a win for nuclear power and it's an important victory in our push to maintain America's leading edge in science and technology."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 31, 2007

Agencies to spend $25 million retracing key Yucca research

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies plan to spend more than $25 million to retrace key Yucca Mountain research that became tainted after the discovery of scientist e-mails suggesting documents may have been falsified, according to a report made public Tuesday.

The report by the Government Accountability Office puts a price tag on an e-mail scandal that rocked the Department of Energy almost two years ago and that contributed to delays in the nuclear waste repository effort.

Costs of $25.6 million, compiled by the GAO from figures supplied by the Energy Department and other federal agencies, include replacing an important computer model of how water might infiltrate the mountain and erode canisters of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. That work is ongoing.

DOE personnel also randomly sampled and reviewed 14 million worker e-mails for evidence of deeper problems in the Yucca program.

Nevada leaders who oppose nuclear waste being shipped to the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said the 30-page GAO report will serve to remind members of Congress about turmoil surrounding the proposed repository as they contemplate future spending for the project.

"This is an admission of total embarrassment for the program and an unacceptable waste of taxpayer dollars," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released the GAO study that was undertaken at his request.

Energy Department officials were reviewing the report and planned to comment today, spokesman Allen Benson said. DOE officials previously have cited the $25 million cost of the correction in remarks to Congress, and have said their response to the controversy showed their drive to get things right.

The report was made public in an apparent coincidence on the same day that House Democrats unveiled a $463.5 billion budget bill for the remainder of fiscal 2007 that cuts $50 million from the Yucca project.

The new budget would allocate roughly $405 million to the Department of Energy for nuclear waste disposal, its smallest line item in five years. The fiscal year runs until Sept. 30.

Democrats did not disclose why the Yucca project was slashed. Most programs were frozen at 2006 levels, but leaders on the House Appropriations Committee said they forced cuts and reclaimed unspent balances in more than 60 programs to generate $10 billion that was used to boost priorities like health research and education.

"There are a few bright spots, and that is one of them," in the budget, said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Energy Department officials would not comment on how the reduced budget might impact the Yucca program as they strive to meet a June 30, 2008 deadline to complete a repository license application.

"We are confident that Congress will provide adequate funding to enable the department to complete a high-quality license application to be submitted to the NRC," spokesman Allen Benson said.

The Yucca e-mail controversy ignited on March 16, 2005, when Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced discovery of a series of e-mail messages from 1998-2000 in which several government hydrologists swapped e-mails expressing frustration with quality assurance rules and hinting that corners might have been cut in complying with the strict procedures.

Joseph Hevesi, one of the hydrologists who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, testified before Congress in June 2005 that he did not alter reports or falsify data.

DOE undertook extensive reviews of all the work he and several others had performed. Further, inspectors within the Energy and Interior departments initiated investigations of possible criminal activity that ended when the U.S. attorney in Nevada declined to prosecute.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 31, 2007

House trims Yucca Mountain budget as Nev. lawmakers plot strategy

By Erica Werner
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Funding for Yucca Mountain in 2007 would be $50 million less than in 2006 under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

The development came as the five members of Nevada's congressional delegation met in Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid's office to discuss plans for the upcoming legislative session, including keeping the nuclear waste dump project in check.

"We'll reallocate the money to something else that's needed," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "So that's the good news for the day."

It would put Yucca Mountain funding for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year ending in September at about $405 million, the lowest level in several years and significantly less than the $544 million President Bush sought in his 2007 budget request.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators released a report Wednesday saying it cost federal agencies some $25 million to respond to the 2005 controversy over falsified science on the Yucca Mountain project that emerged from e-mails exchanged by U.S. Geological Survey scientists.

The e-mails indicated scientists on the project backdated reports and fudged quality control documents. Prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges and the Energy Department concluded that the science of the project had not been compromised, but decided to redo the science anyway.

The figure, in a report by the Government Accountability Office that was requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., matches past Energy Department estimates but gives a more precise accounting.

The report said that in 2005-2006 it cost government agencies some $4.2 million to review e-mails and documents to determine the extent of the problem; $16 million to redo water infiltration analyses; and $340,000 for management and quality assurance training. The Energy Department plans to spend another $5.1 million in 2007 on redoing science work.

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KOLO
January 31, 2007

House Trims Yucca Mountain Budget

Funding for Yucca Mountain in 2007 would be $50 million less than in 2006 under legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

"We'll reallocate the money to something else that's needed," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "So that's the good news for the day."

The figure, in a report by the Government Accountability Office that was requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., matches past Energy
Department estimates but gives a more precise accounting.

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North County Times
January 31, 2007

Nuclear safety up in the air

Our view: New rules for nuke plants don't adequately address 9/11's threat from above

On Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attempted to soothe our nuclear nightmare fears. But living in the shadow of San Onofre's reactors and radioactive pools for spent fuel, we're still not resting easy. With secrecy still a vital part of any defense strategy, we're left with assurances that fail to reassure. Perhaps more hope lies with Congress, which still has a chance to demand standards that better reflect the post-9/11 world.

On Monday, the federal nuclear regulators issued new defense standards for the nation's 101 nuclear plants. This update was meant to incorporate the lessons of the 9/11 terror attacks, and it's clear the new "Design Basis Threat" does offer some modest improvements over past planning.

For instance, the commission will now require nuclear plant operators to plan for would-be attackers who would risk or even welcome their own deaths. The new guidelines also ask plant operators to prepare for coordinated attacks that could come from multiple directions, including the sea and even cyberspace. So far, so good.

And we don't pretend to know everything; our security clearances aren't that good. The details of the standards adopted Monday were kept from public scrutiny, as they must be.

But what we do know isn't all that comforting. While the new standards require protection from land, sea and Internet, they don't require nuclear-plant operators to address one very real, very 9/11 threat: that posed by a commercial airliner converted into a jet-powered weapon. For North County, especially, this is a major concern: The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is directly below one of the busiest air corridors in the nation.

The commission deferred to "other federal agencies, including the military," the responsibility for defending against such airborne attacks. Those who remember the belatedly scrambled fighter jets on 9/11 can't help but hope that our response time has vastly improved since then. Perhaps San Onofre, on the northern edge of Camp Pendleton, is better prepared to fend off aerial assaults than is readily apparent. Again, we sincerely hope so.

Among the proposals for air defense that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission dismissed Monday was something called "Beamhenge," which isn't as loopy as it sounds. Essentially a steel-and-cable cage surrounding the nuclear plant, this proposal gained the support of eight state attorneys general and promised an impact-absorbing buffer around the reactors and spent-fuel pools. We don't know if it would have worked, frankly, but an ounce of prevention -- even a very expensive ounce, in this case -- can be worth a ton of nuclear catastrophe "cure."

Still, the commission sounds too confident for our comfort in after-the-fact responses in a worst-case scenario. "Even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due to a terrorist use of a large aircraft against a nuclear power plant, the studies indicate that there would be time to implement the required onsite mitigating actions," reads the commission's unclassified summary.

It's hard to overstate this point: Any successful attack on San Onofre is not something we can afford to "mitigate."

San Onofre's primary owner, Southern California Edison, touts the significant funds it has sunk into security since 9/11 -- more than $80 million, a spokesman told reporter Gig Conaughton. You can see some results when you're driving into Orange County on Interstate 5: new fences, steel-encased guard posts and concrete barriers.

Less visible are the aboveground concrete buildings wherein lie the radioactive fuel rods generated as waste by the plant's operation. More than 1,000 metric tons of this "spent" fuel sits in pools -- which are far more vulnerable than the concrete-encased nuclear reactors themselves -- cooling before it can be stored in safer, dry casks. That waste isn't going anywhere anytime soon, as political opposition seems to have all but killed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada.

The federal regulators say the new Design Basis Threat plans are but one part of a comprehensive overhaul of nuclear power plant security; more revisions are on the way. Furthermore, the commission can expect some hard questioning from Sen. Barbara Boxer, the new chairwoman of the Senate committee that oversees the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On Friday, Boxer specifically asked the commission to require protections against threats from above. Now, she and other leaders have a chance to demand better answers.

We pray San Onofre's defenses are up to any challenge. Congress has a chance to improve upon the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's good start in helping us rest easier.

--Comments On This Story

Randy wrote on January 31, 2007 2:00 AM:"If nuclear power plants cannot protect themselves from attack, quit building new plants and quickly dismantle currently operating plants!"

Green Nuclear Butterfly wrote on January 31, 2007 4:22 AM:"As someone living within three miles of the aging, brittle, dying reactors known as Indian Point here in New York, this decision concerns me. The NRC is doing anything and everything it can to eliminate any problems that would keep these facilities up and operating. It is no longer a question of IF, but when A BIG INCIDENT wipes out one of our cities...question is, which of us will it be? Your readers might want to visit our blog today, and sign on to our letter to Greenpeace...a part of it calls for a Congressional law ordering a independent safety and security assessment of every nuclear facility in America. ..."

Bob wrote on January 31, 2007 7:18 PM:"The reactions to the article are exactly what you in the media want them to be - alarmist! Do you really think that the NRC and the labs and research organizations that they employ haven't analyzed aircraft impacts on nuclear plants and the dry spent fuel storage modules (called buildings in the article)? It is a fact that they have. And while the results of these evaluations are kept away from public view, as they should be (why should we help the terrorists identify any weak link?), unless you believe that the NRC is a corrupt organization, then you must believe that the results are not alarming and thus don't warrant an alarmist reaction. It is easy to create fear. Quit doing it solely for the sake of selling newspapers and advertising space. It is a disservice to the public!"

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Aiken Standard
January 31, 2007

'Modern Marvels' to feature waste facility

By Philip Lord
Senior writer

The History Channel's Modern Marvels series will highlight canning technology being used at the Savannah River Site tonight.

At 10 p.m., the Defense Waste Processing Facility at SRS will be highlighted as a part of an episode devoted to canning.

In addition to tonight's showing, the episode will air at 2 a.m. on Thursday and at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

After exploring the impact of canning technology on the world's food habits, the documentary looks at the way SRS applies canning techniques to the safe disposal of radioactive waste, said Angie French, a spokeswoman for the Savannah River National Laboratory.

Footage for the segment was shot at DWPF in October and includes commentary by Liquid Waste Facility Operations Manager Kim Hauer and Steve Tibrea of SRNL, French said.

"The video crew and the production crew were really enjoying their time there, because visually it is a really interesting place," French said.

DWPF was selected to be part of the show by History Channel researchers who found articles about the operation in professional journals, she said.

Since radioactive operations began in 1996, the DWPF melter has produced more than 8.5 million pounds of glass containing more than 2.6 million pounds of radioactive sludge waste, said D.T. Townsend, a spokesman for Washington Savannah River Company, which operates SRS for the U.S. Department of Energy.

So far, DWPF has produced 2,253 canisters containing radioactive waste, Townsend said. These canisters are currently being held in underground vaults at two glass waste storage buildings adjacent to the DWPF facility.

All told, a total of 12.5 million curies of radioactive material have been immobilized using DWPF.

The canisters already produced are currently awaiting shipment to a long-term repository, which is proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev.

At DWPF, the sludge drawn from SRS's underground high-level radioactive waste tanks is mixed with molten glass and poured into 10-foot-high stainless steel canisters.

By immobilizing the radioactive waste in glass "frit," the DWPF reduces the risks associated with the continued storage of radioactive wastes at SRS.

About 36 million gallons of radioactive wastes are stored in 49 underground carbon-steel tanks at SRS.

Contact Philip Lord at plord@aikenstandard.com

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Executive Intelligence Review
January 30, 2007

This article appears in the February 2, 2007 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Debunking the Myths About Nuclear Energy

by Marsha Freeman

As the U.S. Congress debates energy policy, EIR provides this summary review of the answers to frequently raised objections to the only feasible solution to the U.S. and worldwide power shortage, nuclear energy.

Q: Aren't nuclear power plants dangerous to public health?

A: In fact, there has never been any nuclear accident in the United States that has endangered the health or welfare of the public. The worst American accident, at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979, injured no one.

Q: What about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986?

A: The severity of that accident was a function of a poor reactor design, and inadequate training of plant personnel. In the United States, oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission provides the standards for reactor design and plant operation, which has contributed to our excellent nuclear power plant safety record.

The new generation of nuclear power plant designs, already being built internationally, feature passive safety systems, which simply shut the plant down if there is an operator error or equipment failure.

By comparison, during 2006, more than 5,000 miners died in China, during the production of the more than 1 billion tons of coal that power its economy. The health of the public in China's cities is also endangered, by the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

As far as vulnerability to "terrorist" attacks is concerned, there is no public infrastructure that is as well protected as nuclear power plants. There is no scenario under which a release of radiation (which effect in low dosages is, in any case, completely exaggerated), would significantly affect public health.

Q: What do we do with the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants?

A: There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal.

In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable medical and other isotopes can be extracted.

Q: What about the stalemate over burying radioactive spent fuel in the Yucca Mountain geological depository in Nevada?

A: This is an irrational program which is a result of the success of the anti-nuclear nonproliferation lobby in the 1970s. The Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposes to spend billions of dollars, and more than a decade in research and development, to develop new, "proliferation proof," reprocessing technologies, under the guise of preventing the spread of plutonium and nuclear weapons, and bury the spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, in the meantime. This delay is unnecessary. Today, Britain, France, Russia, India, Japan, and China reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and technology today can be used here in the U.S. to eliminate the "nuclear waste" problem, in the short term.

Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons?

A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.

The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which technologies are available.

Q: Isn't it the case that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil, or "alternative" fuels?

A: The radical escalation in the cost of building nuclear power plants in the late 1970s and 1980s was the result of political actions, not economics. Some plants projected to cost less than $1 billion ended up costing ten times that amount, because anti-nuclear "environmentalists," and legal intervenors were given free rein, using specious and ideological arguments, to delay plant construction for years, sometimes, for decades. Where there has been no political interference, new nuclear power plants have been built in 38 months, on schedule, and on budget, such as in Japan.

While it does require less up-front capital investment to build a gas-fired power plant than a nuclear plant, the operational cost over the 30-or-more-year lifetime of the gas plant swings heavily in favor of nuclear power. And compared to coal, the overall economy is not taxed to transport millions of tons of fuel.

In 2002, faced with increasing demand, and after careful economic analysis, the Tennessee Valley Authority decided that it was more economical to spend $1.8 billion to refurbish its Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which had been shut down since 1986, than build a gas-fired unit.

So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability.

It was determined in the 1970s, that alternative, "soft" energy sources would only be competitive with fossil and nuclear plants, when energy costs reached a $100/barrel oil-equivalent price. To bring these uneconomical sources on line before then, political decisions were made to spend $20 billion in Federal subsidies for alternative energy, while Federal expenditures for advanced nuclear technologies came to a screeching halt. It has been this irrational investment policy that has made nuclear power "expensive."

Q: How can the large capital cost of new nuclear power plants be financed?

A: There must be a sea-change in economic policy, where Lyndon LaRouche's comprehensive approach of fiscal reorganization, and the reconceptualization of the Federal budget on the basis of needed capital investment, are the guidelines.

The provision of reliable and affordable electricity, as recognized by President Franklin Roosevelt more than 50 years ago, is not a luxury, but a necessity. For this reason, in the 1930s, the electric utility industry was regulated by Federal and state governments, to protect consumers from financial manipulation and fraud, and to ensure that affordable power would be available to every home, farm, and factory.

The deregulation of the U.S. utility industry, beginning in the early 1990s, has nearly destroyed an electrical energy system that was the envy of the world. Utility companies must have access to low-interest, long-term credit, assurance from government regulators and policy-makers that "environmental" sabotage and delay will not be tolerated; and that a crash effort will be made to rebuild the nuclear manufacturing industry, which has nearly disappeared. These must be approached as a national policy, not dependent upon Wall Street financiers, but by directing resources into infrastructure through fiscal policy.

Q: But the immediate energy crisis is our dependence upon petroleum. How does nuclear energy alleviate that problem?

A: In two ways. In the long term, the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen. When next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors (which are under development now in South Africa and China) come on line, splitting water into its constituents elements will make hydrogen available as a versatile and universally available transportation fuel.

In the near term, petroleum consumption could be dramatically reduced through large-scale investment in mass transit and rail. Our decrepit diesel-fueled rail system should be electrified. Half of the nation's truck-hauled freight should be taken off the road and put on the rails. Millions of miles, and hours, of commuters driving automobiles should be eliminated, by using public transportation. A crash program to build conventional intra-city commuter trains, and magnetic levitation (maglev) systems for inter-city transport, would replace finite and polluting fossil fuel-based transport with nuclear power.

Q: But isn't it the case that there is broad opposition to new nuclear plants, and that citizens do not want plants built in "their backyard?"

A: The opposite is the case. Over the past two years, as utilities have indicated they will be applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licenses to build new nuclear plants, communities have been competing with each other, to offer attractive packages to companies, in order to encourage them to build plants in their "backyard."

Last year, resolutions were passed by communities in Louisiana; Oswego, New York; and Fort Gibson, Mississippi, to support the addition of new nuclear reactors to existing nuclear sites. The states of Georgia, Utah, South Carolina, and South Dakota have passed resolutions supporting the building of new nuclear power plants.

At the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, just a stone's throw from Washington, D.C., the Board of County Commissioners voted last August to offer $300 million in tax breaks to the Constellation Energy Group to add a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs site. The plant is the largest employer in that Maryland county, and the $16 million it pays in taxes each year contributes 9% of the county's total tax revenue.

In September 2006, Bisconti Research Inc. released the results of a telephone survey, of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, about nuclear energy. The survey found that nearly 70% of those queried support nuclear power, and 68% of those who live near an operating plant, support building a new nuclear reactor at the existing site.

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Salt Lake Tribune
January 30, 2007

Goshutes, PFS press their battle for a nuke dump

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

The battle over high-level nuclear waste in Utah is not over yet.

The Skull Valley Goshutes and their business partners, a group of nuclear-power companies called Private Fuel Storage, filed papers in a Washington, D.C., appeals court Monday to defend their license to store used reactor fuel on the Goshutes' reservation.

"The bottom line is: This is not a dead project," said Jay Silberg, an attorney for the nuclear companies.

In September, many of the project's critics applauded its demise after a pair of rulings by the U.S. Interior Department that, in effect, blocked waste shipments to the site and invalidated the lease between the companies and the tribe. Silberg said the legal paperwork filed Monday disputes assertions that the project cannot go forward.

"Those rulings are still subject to appeal," he said.

Silberg added: "We are defending the license."

The tiny tribe and the companies forged their agreement a decade ago. Their plan was to use a patch of the Tooele County reservation to build a 100-acre long-term parking lot for nuclear rods until the federal government built a permanent disposal site. Although project proponents said it would bring badly needed economic development to Skull Valley and would be only temporary, opponents, led by the state of Utah, said the plan was unsafe.

The state's appeal of Nuclear Regulatory Commission's license was filed in the District of Columbia appeals court Nov. 8. It asserts federal regulators were wrong to approve the license because they miscalculated the risk of a military aircraft crash at the site, the need for stronger protections against terrorists and the certainty that the federal government will take the waste from PFS.

The news that the Goshutes and PFS were pressing forward was not a surprise, said Denise Chancellor, an assistant attorney general handling the state's challenge to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's license for the Skull Valley project. But one of the project's fiercest opponents, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, said once again that the project will not go forward.

"Unlike Mark Twain, the reports of PFS' demise have not been greatly exaggerated," said the Utah Republican senator.

"With the [Interior Department's] decision last September, the company's plan to store spent nuclear fuel in Skull Valley went up in flames. We might still need to sort through the ashes and put out a few embers, but apart from that, PFS is finished."

The Goshutes and their attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

--fahys@sltrib.com

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World Nuclear News
January 29, 2007

McGaffigan speaks out on Yucca

Management of the Yucca Mountain respository project should be reorganised, according to Edward McGaffigan of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In personal views expressed at a Platts Energy Podium event on 22 January, Commissioner McGaffigan said management should transfer from the Department of Energy's (DoE's) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) to a government-owned company, and that it could be a good idea to "go back to the beginning" with the Yucca Mountain project.

Edward Sproat, the current director of the OCRWM, accepted that there were problems with Yucca but that these were being addressed. McGaffigan has said that Sproat was the most capable administrator he has seen in his ten years at the NRC.

One of the problems Sproat admitted was the selection of Yucca Mountain in Nevada by legislation. That had led to vehement opposition by local residents, many of whom feel they are having the nation's high-level radioactive wastes dumped on them. In other countries, such as Sweden, communities are invited to offer to host facilities in exchange for development packages. That has led to the situation where there is actually competition between towns that want nuclear waste storage facilities.

Pragmatically, Sproat said: "The site is Yucca Mountain. That decision was made in 2002. The next step is, can you licence a repository at that site? That's where we are now."

The DoE is currently completing its application for a licence to construct Yucca Mountain and possess the waste to be stored there. That is scheduled to be submitted to the NRC in June 2008, with the site entering operation by 2020 at the earliest. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 legislated that DoE have a final repository for used nuclear fuel ready by 1998.

McGaffian also highlighted another problem with the traditional management of Yucca Mountain: that the director of the OCRWM has been a presidential appointee. "Things nuclear have to be stable across presidencies and across Congresses because they take so long. Having a rotating set of leaders doesn't work well."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 29, 2007

Reigning Women

Miss Nevada sidesteps controversy, keeps eye squarely on the prize

By Corey Levitan
Review-Journal

Miss Nevada seems eager to cast off her title, mainly so she can reign as Miss America.

"Nevada's never had a Miss America," says Caydi Cole, a 22-year-old Las Vegas native. "So we're going strong for it this year."

The pageant returns tonight to the Aladdin, where it took place last year for the first time outside its longtime home of Atlantic City. It starts at 5 p.m. and will air locally from 8 to 10 p.m. on CMT. Tickets are $95.24 through Ticketmaster, and guests should be seated by 4:30 p.m.

Cole also is looking forward to never having to answer another question about Katie Rees. The former Miss USA pageant's Miss Nevada was stripped of her title in December after Internet photos showed the 22-year-old undressing and kissing women.

"She has the same first name as me," at least in regard to pronunciation, Cole says, explaining the extent to which her world was upended when the news broke.

"I was averaging 18 phone calls an hour from people saying, 'Oh, my gosh! Are you OK?' " she says.

Cole promises that her closet contains only clothes and shoes, not racy photos.

"I don't have anything like that," she says, and she doesn't condemn the decision to replace Rees.

"I think that, in my case, I know that I have a very big responsibility," she says. "I'm in schools every day speaking with children. And I'm a role model."

Cole says that just being a beauty contestant is risque enough for someone with her strict Mormon upbringing.

"My dad is very religious," says Cole, adding that her mother is "a little bit of a feminist."

"Since I was little, she's said, 'You're beautiful because of what you are on the inside,' " Cole remembers. "So she didn't necessarily believe in me doing anything that put myself in a swimsuit onstage."

Cole, who calls herself "just Christian now," says supporting her pageant career was "something that I had to talk both of my parents into."

Cole also comes off as noncontroversial when compared to last year's Miss Nevada, Crystal Wosik, who supported the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, saying Nevada would "just have to take one for the team."

"All my family lives here, so I'm not in favor of Yucca Mountain," Cole says. "There are too many risks, too many things we don't know."

Cole says her pageant success began as a fluke in 2003 when she was a senior at the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Visual and Performing Arts.

"A girlfriend of mine had won America's Junior Miss the year before and said I really should do it," Cole says. "So I agreed and I ended up winning."

Afterward, Cole hung up her sash and moved to Orange, Calif., to attend Chapman University, where she began preparing for a career in corporate public relations. (She got more than halfway through her junior year.)

"I called it quits and said I was done with it, I'm not a beauty queen," she says. "But about a year ago, the same girlfriend decided to compete in a local preliminary, and she talked me into it again at the last minute."

Cole won Miss Clark County, then Miss Nevada -- both on her first try. To fulfill her state obligation, she took a year off from college, although she recently registered at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Education is very important to me," she says. (Her platform tonight is civic education.)

"My brother just got back from Iraq," Cole says, "so I'm big on learning about our country, having our youth really pay attention to social studies issues and learning current events."

Tonight might be nerve-racking for Cole, but she's no stranger to big events. As a sophomore in 2001, Cole sang for Pope John Paul II.

"Our advanced choral department went to Rome and sang Verdi's 'Requiem' for the 100th anniversary of his death," Cole says. "It was a huge celebration, and the pope was there. We also sang at the Vatican at his private cathedral."

After the second performance, Cole recalls, the pope jokingly asked, "Can I trade these guys out for my choir?"

"It was one of those surreal, unbelievable moments," she says, "kind of what it's like now."

If she advances far enough tonight, Cole will get to showcase that singing talent by fronting a big band.

"I started training classically when I was 12," she says, "and when I started high school, I really started to get into the jazz there."

Cole says she feels "incredibly prepared" to do her best tonight.

"I'm proud of where I come from, and I'm ready to bring it home," she says.

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Chattanooga Times Free Press
January 29, 2007

Pools, canisters are a temporary fix

By Pam Sohn
Staff Writer

TVA nuclear plants currently produce about 82 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel waste each year, according to TVA spokesman John Moulton.

Two of those plants, Sequoyah in Soddy-Daisy and Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala., already have run out of storage space in the pools built with the plants. Nuclear waste now is stored in aboveground concrete and steel canisters outside the plants. Browns Ferry is among the nation’s leaders in spent nuclear fuel stored on site, a situation that a member of an area watchdog group last year called "a recipe for disaster." "This waste is being piled up on the (Tennessee) river banks, and the river is the drinking water source for thousands of people," said Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "Couple that with the known terrorists’ threats, and it’s very discomforting."

TVA’s storage of spent fuel, both in plant storage pools and in the above-ground dry casks, is safe, Mr. Moulton said. As of Dec. 31, 2006, the utility had 2,574 metric tons of spent fuel stored at the three nuclear plants in water-filled spent fuel storage pools and in the dry casks, he said.

The original storage pools inside the plants were designed to store the spent fuel until a permanent repository can be built. In the face of public opposition, a repository proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been put on hold until at least 2017. TVA and many other utilities sued the U.S. Department of Energy in 2001 over failure to move spent fuel to a permanent storage place as contracted in 1998. A federal court ruled in favor of TVA and awarded the utility $34.9 million to help defray the cost of onsite storage through 2005. In the meantime, TVA has paid about $758 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund for the building of the eventual permanent repository, Mr. Moulton said.

In 2002, Browns Ferry had more stored waste onsite than any other nuclear plant in the nation, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

Records show most of the nation’s 63 other commercial operating nuclear power plants and 103 reactors have a similar growing radioactive waste problem.

Nationally in 2006, more than 55,000 metric tons of spent fuel waste sat in and alongside those plants waiting to be moved to permanent storage or disposal, according to David McIntyre with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. He said the nation’s stockpile of nuclear waste grows by about 2,000 metric tons a year.

TVA’s Mr. Moulton said 58 reactors at 34 sites in the United States have been forced by April 2006 to resort to dry storage casks to house 8,500 metric tons of spent fuel.

--E-mail Pam Sohn at psohn@timesfreepress.com MONEY MATTERS Utilities have paid $16 billion from the 0.1-centper-kilowatt-hour tax on nuclear plants into a nuclear waste disposal fund. TVA ratepayers have paid more than $758 million into the federal fund for a permanent repository. Source: TVA

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Chattanooga Times Free Press
January 29, 2007

Handling nuclear waste

Oak Ridge process offers hope, but some worry about transportation

By Pam Sohn
Staff Writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: Video is available with this story at www.timesfreepress.com. OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Oak Ridge nuclear scientists say they believe they can remove and recycle the 2,574 metric tons of highly radioactive fuel waste now stored at nuclear plants in Tennessee at Soddy-Daisy and Spring City and in Athens, Ala.

"I feel a personal responsibility to my children.

I think about the world they are going to inherit.

... We have got to solve this problem, and this is an approach that we can take,"said Sherrell R.

Greene, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s nuclear technology programs.

But the science, now being demonstrated on a lab scale in the very town where nuclear energy and the weapons it spawned were created, also could involve moving the local nuclear waste — and more from the 103 commercial reactors around the country — along Tennessee roads to Oak Ridge.

That has some people worried.

"It would mean a dramatic increase of highly radioactive waste on interstates and rail lines in Tennessee," said Stephen Smith, an East Tennessee veterinarian who also is executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "I think Oak Ridge would become a bull’s-eye on the map with all radioactive waste being shipped" here.

Mr. Smith, a nuclear energy opponent, criticizes nuclear and government officials for the plan. He said he believes the $16 million in grants to study Oak Ridge or any of the 11 possible sites is "an absolute waste" of taxpayer money.

"This administration has not been forward thinking on global warming, and to use global warming now as a excuse to build nuclear power plants is ridiculous," Mr. Smith said.

Nuclear waste tends to stay in the last place it was put because government officials and the public long have known it is a terrorist and proliferation risk, he said.

"Now they want to bring it to Oak Ridge, crack it open, separate it into different classifications of radioactive waste and quickly move it to Yucca Mountain and other places, but there’s no guarantee Yucca Mountain will ever open," Mr. Smith said. "Oak Ridge could become the defacto repository of the country."

Yucca Mountain in Nevada is the proposed site of a longterm nuclear waste storage site, but the project has faced strident public opposition that has stalled it.

Last week, Edward McGaffigan, the senior member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, suggested the Department of Energy begin looking for alternatives to Yucca Mountain. He said the government should look for a site where there is local cooperation, according to a report in The New York Times.

Mr. Greene and other nuclear energy proponents say recycling the waste is a better strategy than storing it.

Jack Bailey, TVA vice president of nuclear generation, said reprocessing technologies could reduce the country’s stored nuclear spent fuel waste dramatically.

"All the spent fuel generated up to now could be contained in a football field-sized space 10 to 15 feet deep, but if we could reprocess it, it could be buried in one end zone of that field, 10 to 15 feet deep," Mr. Bailey said. THE PLAN With the U.S. government’s new push to encourage and license new nuclear power plants around the country, Oak Ridge, an East Tennessee city 100 miles northeast of Chattanooga, is one of 11 sites that will receive up to $16 million in grants for detailed siting plans of a nuclear fuel reprocessing and/or recycling center.

A National Laboratory site such as Oak Ridge also could be designated an advanced fuel cycle research facility.

The plan is part of President Bush’s GNEP proposal. GNEP is the acronym for Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Its stated mission is to expand the use of nuclear power while reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Although the Yucca Mountain destination is delayed until at least 2017, the president’s $20 billion-to-$40 billion reprocessing and recycling proposal, supported by U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., seems to be on a fast track. Once the siting grants are released in a few weeks, communities have 90 days to submit their proposals, according to DOE officials. Oak Ridge officials say the state will have to OK the local plan, and Congress will have to fund it.

In the plan, DOE intends to site three separate facilities: A recycling center that would separate spent nuclear fuel into reusable and waste components and then manufacture new nuclear fast reactor fuel using the reusable components, according to DOE announcements.

An advanced recycling reactor that would destroy longlived radioactive elements in the new fuel while generating electricity.

An advanced fuel cycle research facility that would have to be sited on a national laboratory property and would perform research and development into spent nuclear fuel recycling processes and other advanced nuclear fuel cycles.

Tim Frazier with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy said the money for the siting studies will be awarded in the next few weeks, probably mid-February.

That’s about the time the public will get its first chance to discuss the idea.

The first of 11 scheduled public meetings is set in Oak Ridge on Feb. 13. The remaining meetings are scattered across the country from South Carolina to Idaho. LONG-TERM CONCERNS Sen. Alexander said he thinks the benefits of the GNEP plan outweigh the risks.

"We can’t have a zero-risk society and still go about our lives," he said. "Do we risk global warming and dirty air that shortens our lives, or do we take a technology we’ve used safely for 40 years and that other countries are already using?" Dr. Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., said his group is very opposed to the GNEP plan, and he warned that any community accepting a recycling reactor "is asking for trouble."

Dr. Lyman said a recycling reactor is a renamed plutonium reactor similar to the fast breeder reactor proposed on the Clinch River in Tennessee decades ago.

The Ford and Carter administrations scrapped that plan, he said, because they realized the increased proliferation and pollution dangers of a reactor that would in theory produce more plutonium — the ingredient of bombs — than it used as fuel.

Dr. Lyman said the newly proposed recycling reactor would be even more dangerous because, in addition to plutonium, it also would burn other "more exotic elements" from the byproducts of nuclear energy.

Although France and Japan currently have reprocessing reactors for nuclear waste, both Mr. Greene and Dr. Lyman said the GNEP technology has never been tried.

"There is no experience for this in the world," Dr. Lyman said. "The community that gets this reactor is going to be guinea pigs."

He also said with the Yucca Mountain storage proposal, the waste would be on highways only once, but with this proposal, radioactive waste will be traveling several times.

"It would be logistically a nightmare," said Dr. Lyman, who has worked with issues associated with nuclear weapons and nuclear waste for well over a decade.

--E-mail Pam Sohn at psohn@timesfreepress.com ON THE WEB To read about Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which is aimed at expanding the use of nuclear power while reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation, go to http://www.gnep.energy.gov /default.html.

--To read the GNEP strategic plan, go to http://www.gnep.energy.gov/pdfs/gnepStrategicPlanJanuary2007.pdfhttp : // www. gnep. energy. gov / pdfs www.gnep.energy.gov/pdfs / gnepStrategicPlanJanuary 2 gnepStrategicPlanJanuary2 007. pdf To read the Federal Register announcement, go to http://www.gnep.energy.gov/pdfs/gnepNOI010407.pdf.http : // www. gnep. energy www.gnep.energy. gov / pdfs / gnepNOI 010407 gnepNOI010407. pdf.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 28, 2007

Richardson makes first campaign stop

Carla Roccapriore
Reno Gazette-Journal

Acknowledging the importance of Nevada's role in the 2008 presidential election, New Mexico governor and Democratic hopeful Bill Richardson made Reno his first official campaign stop Saturday since announcing he was creating an exploratory committee.

"I want to be the first candidate for president who has accepted invitations to Nevada's two debates; the first one (Feb. 21) in Carson City and the health care forum in Las Vegas" on March 24, Richardson told a crowd of about 50 supporters at Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

Richardson, 59, a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was elected New Mexico governor in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. He served as U.S. energy secretary under former President Clinton after representing New Mexico's third district for 14 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Richardson also served as United Nations ambassador and worked with world leaders to build alliances and help prevent development of nuclear weapons in North Korea.

Issues that Richardson cited included getting out of the Iraq war honorably, restoring America's standing in the world, energy independence, a positive economy for the middle class, health care, ending the Yucca Mountain project and uniting the nation.

Lemmon Valley resident Sean McHaney, an Iraq war veteran who returned to town several days ago, said he thinks Richardson is the best candidate in the field.

"He strongly supports the war as much as I do -- which is not at all," said McHaney, 24, who served in the Navy. "He's qualified, he's against the war, and he matches my political beliefs."

Richardson, who announced his exploratory committee a week ago, is planning a grass-roots campaign and expects to visit all of Nevada's 17 counties.

"I'm not after big-name endorsements, just votes," Richardson said.

Nevada's 2008 caucus is scheduled for Jan. 19. It's second in the nation behind the Iowa caucus, planned for Jan. 14. Following Nevada is the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 22.

The Democratic National Committee voted in August to move Nevada's caucus from February to January because the Silver State has a diverse population that better reflects the makeup of party voters.

The candidates who typically emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire often attain frontrunner status and gain throughout the rest the party's primary.

Richardson was the keynote speaker on Saturday night at the Douglas County Democratic Party's "Turn Nevada Blue" dinner in Minden.

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Nevada Appeal
January 28, 2007

Richardson makes early campaign stop in Minden

Kurt Hildebrand
Nevada Appeal News Service

In one of his first campaign appearances since he declared he was running for president, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson landed in Minden to speak to a full house of Douglas County Democrats.

Richardson announced his candidacy on Sunday and less than a week later he was in the Silver State creating an organization to take advantage of Nevada's new primary date.

"This is the first political appearance I've made outside of New Mexico since I announced my candidacy," he said. "Nevada is an important state in the West. I want to especially spend time in the rural areas, which is why I began my campaign in Northern Nevada."

Richardson served more than 14 years in the House of Representatives before being named ambassador to the United Nations in 1997. A year later, President Bill Clinton appointed him secretary of energy. Richardson ran for governor of New Mexico in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006.

He said he believes that in order to win the Democratic nomination, he will have to do well in Nevada's Jan 19, 2008, caucus.

"I don't have the money that some candidates do," he said. "But I will outwork them. Money won't determine the outcome of the election, votes will."

Richardson pointed out several times that he was a fellow Westerner and understood the challenges faced by Western states.

"I blocked the nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain when I was secretary of energy and insisted the location be based on science not politics."

Richardson was born in Pasadena, Calif., and was raised in Mexico City until he was 13. He was first elected to Congress in 1982. He was the first Hispanic to be elected governor of a state.

"I'm not running as a Hispanic, I'm running as an American who's proud of his Hispanic heritage," he said.

Richardson said he thinks Americans are ready for a Hispanic president, just as they are ready for a woman president or a black president.

"This race shouldn't be about the person's ethnicity, it should be about their qualifications."

Richardson and Gen. Wesley Clark spoke to more than 240 Douglas Democrats on Saturday night.

Clark told reporters before the dinner that while he won't say if he'll run for president, he hasn't ruled out a run either.

Clark said he ran in 2004 at the insistence of supporters and felt it was a worthwhile experience.

He said he opposed President Bush's plan for a troop surge in Iraq.

"We don't need a surge in troops, we need a surge in diplomacy," he said.

Clark campaigned for Carson Valley resident Jill Derby's bid for Congress and said he had many friends in Nevada, though he believes it was only his second trip to Carson Valley.

He said he felt party labels have lost some of their importance and felt that more people are voting for the best people.

Democratic co-chairman Bud Orange said they had been receiving calls all day from people interested in coming.

"They kept calling even after we told them we were sold out," he said.

Orange acknowledged that Douglas County Republicans have a 2-1 majority over Democrats, but pointed out that statewide, Democrats enjoyed a slight margin over the GOP.

"We've worked hard to make some inroads in the majority and statewide we've managed to get some constitutional officers elected," he said.

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Denver Post
January 28, 2007

Perspective:

Uranium boom in the West

New rush gains steam

By Dusty Horwitt

Late last year, the Bush administration delivered two big gifts to the nuclear power industry, signing deals to help India produce more energy from nuclear reactors and for Westinghouse to build four new reactors in China.

Those countries are half a world away from Colorado, but the worldwide resurgence of interest in nuclear power runs risks for the state's public lands, health and safety.

The nuclear industry's efforts to recast itself as a supposedly clean source of energy - a spin echoed by the administration - has helped spark a uranium boom in the American West. Interior Department records show a sharp increase in mining claims on Western public lands since 2002, driven by a seven-fold increase in the price of uranium.

As recently as 2004, no uranium interests were among the largest mineral claimholders in the West. Now, government data show that uranium interests are among the biggest claimholders across the region - in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

According to Interior records, mining interests staked just 300 claims for uranium in Colorado in fiscal year 2004. But in the two years since, uranium interests have staked almost 3,500 claims in the state. The new claims are concentrated near the historic uranium towns of Nucla and Naturita in Montrose County, and in Rio Blanco and Moffat counties in the state's northwestern corner.

The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety says several older uranium mines in the state could be producing soon.

The Cotter Corp. has four mines near Naturita that were active until about a year ago. The mines closed in part due to rising fuel prices for transporting the ore to Colorado's lone uranium mill in Cañon City.

International Uranium also has about three or four mines in Disappointment Valley in southwestern Colorado. The mines have permits and are being readied for production.

Beyond Colorado, public land snatched up in this new land rush includes 365 claims staked within 5 miles of the Grand Canyon, many for uranium. A company that has staked dozens of these claims, Quaterra Resources of Canada, has already proposed to drill exploratory holes for uranium just north of the canyon. The operation would include a helicopter pad to carry mining supplies and ore in and out.

The idea of helicopter flights of radioactive material near America's greatest natural treasure, already crisscrossed by dozens of tourist flyovers a day, is disconcerting. But there are broader impacts from uranium mining. Colorado and other Western states are littered with radioactive waste sites that are legacies of previous uranium booms during the 1950s and the 1970s, when nuclear power plants sprouted across the nation and the price of uranium soared.

The Department of Energy has begun a decade-long project to clean up 12 million tons of radioactive uranium mine waste near Moab, Utah, that have contaminated land near the Colorado River.

The waste is a threat that could pollute drinking water for millions. Cleanup estimates range between $412 million and $697 million.

In a recent series, the Los Angeles Times found that abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners have led to deaths from lung cancer and a degenerative disease that's come to be called Navajo neuropathy. Among other routes of exposure, the Navajo had unknowingly drunk water from abandoned mine pits and had constructed some of their homes from the radioactive mine waste.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel recently reported that residents of Monticello, Utah, have unusually high rates of cancer they believe were caused by a now-closed uranium mill.

Residents recalled replacing their screen doors because the metal mesh would become yellow and corroded. Schools used ground-up uranium waste in kids' sandboxes.

Also complicating the matter is the antiquated federal mining law, written in 1872, that governs much of the new uranium mining. Under the law, filing a claim for as little as $1 an acre allows companies to mine on federal land - a right the government has rarely challenged despite the fact that metals mining is the nation's leading source of toxic pollution.

Mining interests routinely leave behind multimillion-dollar cleanups, yet - unlike timber, oil and gas and every other extractive industry operating on public land - they pay no royalties to taxpayers. There is no federal fund to clean up abandoned metal mines.

Mining uranium is not the only concern heightened by the nuclear resurgence. We still have no answer to the problems of disposing of the waste from nuclear reactors.

Even if the government's designated national nuclear waste dumpsite at Nevada's Yucca Mountain is opened, storing waste there will mean 50 years of cross-country nuclear waste shipments through major cities. We should ask if spending billions of dollars to subsidize the nuclear industry is a better choice than investing our tax dollars in clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Mining is a necessary part of a modern economy. But before permanently scarring some of our most treasured places to feed the nuclear industry, we should first dig deeper into the empty promise of nuclear power.

EWG's recent report on mining in the West is available at http:// www.ewg.org/sites/mining_google/US/.

--Dusty Horwitt is an energy and public lands analyst with the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C.

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Chillicothe Gazette
January 28, 2007

Future of GNEP site in Piketon still in question

By David Kohl
The Associated Press

PIKETON -To Greg Simonton and other civic leaders in this town, 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 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 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 never has 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 the Piketon group was among the grant recipients.

The area's congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Miami Township, 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 USEC 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 material, doubts that nuclear "have-not" nations will submit to a Western fuel and technology cabal and tepid support and a lack of Congressional funding.

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 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," Stevens said. "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 reprocessing - which the nuclear industry and the DOE 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 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 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," said 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 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 by GNEP backers insist new reprocessing techniques can extract all 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 "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 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 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 the Bush administration is rushing GNEP along so it can't easily be undone by future administrations and Congresses.

Not so, said Stevens.

"It's a serious project," he said. "We have staffed up the office" and recruited Spurgeon, a retired USEC executive, the operator of the Piketon plant, 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."

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 the 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 the Energy Department 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 the Energy Department to turn the old Piketon 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 the project will never happen.

"It's very clear that the new Congress is going to kill GNEP," he said.

But Simonton, a 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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Pahrump Valley Times
January 27, 2007

NRC Candidates

Reid won't insist on opposition to Yucca project

By Steve Tetreault
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-person 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.

Although President Bush makes the formal nomination, 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 eventually will play a key role in licensing a nuclear waste site that Reid and most Nevada elected leaders argue 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.

Despite initial opposition from Senate Republicans and the nuclear industry, Jaczko has served without controversy and was reconfirmed last May.

Regarding Reid's current activity, "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."

In the end, Herzik said, "the person selected likely will be one that Harry Reid is quite comfortable with."

The Senate is expected to debate NRC nominees later this year. It is expected that McGaffigan's replacement will be considered at the same time as a successor to outgoing NRC commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield, who occupies a Republican seat.

Nucleonics Week, a publication of the Platts energy information group, reported earlier this month that industry officials and others were circulating the names of possible McGaffigan successors including Michael Ryan, a health physicist who is chairman of the NRC nuclear waste advisory board; NRC general counsel Karen Cyr; and Madelyn Creedon, a Democratic counsel on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to the publication, possible Republican nominees include Martin Hall, chief of staff on the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Kristine Svinicki, a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer and former aide to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Gail Marcus, deputy director of the nuclear energy branch of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 27, 2007

Nuke lobby will use care with Reid

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Mindful of the powers wielded by new 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 Sen. 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."

Speaking to reporters later, 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 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 afterwards 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, and we need to deliver, that is the bottom line."

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 afterwards 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 that would 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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Albuquerque Tribune
January 27, 2007

Richardson hopes for early votes in Nevada

By Kate Nash

RENO, Nev. — Amid the casinos, the clubs and the craziness, the downtown of this Las Vegas-esque town has a calm outpost: the Pneumatic Diner, a vegetarian restaurant and hotspot for progressives.

It may come as a surprise that this conservative state, where Republicans have dominated every level of government for years, has enclaves that seem to cater more to Democrats than the GOP.

But the West - including Nevada - is changing. As Democratic presidential contenders including Gov. Bill Richardson flow into the Silver State in hopes of winning hearts, minds and votes, this small eatery with falafel and fake meat on the menu could become an important stop.

Richardson lands in Reno today, and while he may not stop at the Pneumatic Diner, making a connection with Nevada's Democrats like the regulars here won't be far from his mind.

Nevada is No. 2 on the 2008 presidential calendar. Its Democratic caucus is Jan. 19, just after Iowa, and the state is widely seen as one of four crucial contests for winning the Democratic nod in the national convention later in the year in Denver.

Like this diner tucked above the parking lot of an apartment complex, you could drive right past the Silver State's most progressive voters if you aren't looking for them.

But they're here, like waitress Frances Arnold, with a list of issues they want to share with the Democratic contenders.

"Yucca Mountain is really big. Water. The environment," said Arnold, a 25-year-old nutrition student. "Education. Keeping Lake Tahoe clean."

Richardson isn't as well known as some Democrats. When told he was in Nevada this weekend, Arnold said, "The governor of New Mexico?"

Whoever wins the Democratic caucus here will have to sway voters like Arnold.

Nevada's Democrats are growing in number and power. In the 2006 election, Democrats wrested four of six state government offices from Republicans and state Sen. Dina Titus came within four percentage points of winning the governor's seat.

"It's certainly not a Republican-only territory," said Titus, the state Senate minority leader and a political science professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

That would be good news for Richardson, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards, all sure to visit here in the coming months.

Who among the candidates can capture voters' support is a question that won't be answered until next year, but Richardson makes it clear he wants to be the man. He lands here today for two events.

This afternoon, in Washoe County, he'll speak to a group of minority voters at a small, private event, his Nevada campaign said.

Tonight, he's expected to speak in Minden, a town of about 3,000 an hour from Reno, to Douglas County Democrats who want to meet him and retired Gen. Wesley Clark. For $60, attendees get dinner and cocktails. For $150, they can get preferred seating.

Richardson's visit to this state where Bush won in 2004 isn't a first by any means. The 59-year-old, two-term governor watches boxing matches here. He's been here several times in the past year, including working to get Titus elected. He also helped register Hispanic voters as part of his now-defunct Moving America Forward political action committee.

Shortly after he announced his candidacy, Richardson named the members of his Nevada campaign team. He has yet to name team members in other early primary states.

Richardson already knows most of the issues here, which are similar to those found any day in New Mexico newspapers. Residents say the environment, immigration, tourism and growth are among the most pressing issues.

As the January caucus gets closer, Richardson and other candidates will probably drop in on Nevada on a weekly basis.

Many undecided Democrats who haven't met Richardson are looking forward to tonight's event, said Joann Orange, public relations chairwoman for the Douglas County Central Committee.

"It's about time we had a president from the West," Orange said.

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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 26, 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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MarketWatch
January 26, 2007

Exelon CEO says market competition, carbon rules key in 2007

By Matthew Dalton

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Advocating for electricity market competition and new rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions will be top priorities for Exelon Corp. (EXC) in 2007, the company's chief executive said Wednesday.

The two issues are linked and will be key to expanding the company's profitability in the coming years, CEO John Rowe said during a conference call with investors and analysts.

"Competition is crucial to addressing climate change," Rowe said. "Exelon is uniquely positioned with our large nuclear fleet to continue our earnings performance in a carbon constrained world."

European countries' experience with regulatory schemes to cap carbon dioxide emissions shows that in countries with competitive electricity markets, the price of carbon dioxide is almost completely passed through into the price of electricity. This means nuclear power plants can sell their product at this higher price but pay none of the corresponding cost of carbon regulations, because nuclear plants emit almost no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

Chicago-based Exelon owns the largest fleet of nuclear plants in the U.S., with all the plants located in states that have adopted competitive electricity markets. That may mean fatter margins for Exelon's plants if some of those states or the federal government create penalties for emitting carbon dioxide.

Despite the appeal of owning nuclear plants, Rowe said the prospect of building new ones doesn't make sense without a plan from the federal or state government to store the radioactive waste. Now that Democrats control both houses of Congress, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is majority leader in the Senate, congressional approval for a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada could be difficult, Rowe said.

"The election has made it virtually impossible for there to be a project (at) Yucca Mountain in the near future," Rowe said.

Exelon has proposed building a nuclear plant in Texas. Asked if he was worried about losing out to other companies that are proceeding with new nuclear plants in the state while Exelon waits to resolve the waste issue, Rowe said: "I would stand by with great cheer if there are those who are braver than I."

While public sentiment is shifting strongly in favor of regulating carbon dioxide emissions, it's arguably moving the other way on the issue of electricity market competition.

"Increasingly, we hear a chorus of naysayers," Rowe acknowledged, but he pledged to defend the competitive model against action by states and potentially by courts to overturn laws and regulations that make the competitive markets possible.

"We will redouble our advocacy for the competitive model, both at the federal level and at the states," he said.

The issue of whether there ought to be a competitive market for electricity became controversial in 2006. Soaring electricity prices in states that recently completed their transition to deregulated electricity service caused a public outcry and legislative action to block these increases.

The concern over competition came to a head in September when Exelon abandoned its plan to buy Newark, N.J.-based Public Service Enterprise Group (PEG) after an impasse with New Jersey regulators. State officials worried that the combined company would own so many power plants in and around New Jersey that it could raise prices without fear of competition. This concern has been reflected in deregulated states across the country by critics who say that a true competitive market for electricity hasn't developed.

Now that Democrats control Congress, they may be more inclined to take action to address these concerns. Consumer advocacy groups that are critical of deregulation say they are discussing the issue with congressional committees. In addition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is set to hear a legal challenge by several states and the group Public Citizen about whether the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been adequately overseeing the nation's power markets.

--Contact: 201-938-5400

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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