Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, March 1, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, March 1, 2007
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KLAS-TV
March 01, 2007

Yucca Mountain Project Not Completely Dead Yet

Jonathan Humbert, Legislative Reporter

Opponents of the proposed Yucca Mountain Project believe the project is dead. Nevada is still fighting it, but the state may be running out of options and the nuclear waste repository may be moving forward after all.

A recent budget battle gave a sense of cautious optimism to Wednesday's meeting of the Commission on Nuclear Projects.

Former U.S. senator and governor Richard Bryan chairs the commission, he worries about opponents saying the project is dead. "My concern is declaring victory prematurely."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "Yucca Mountain, after 25 years, it's history. They can keep spending money there, but Yucca Mountain is not going to happen."

U.S. Senator Reid promised Yucca's demise to the legislature, and Bob Loux, the head of Nevada's nuclear agency fighting the project says Senator Reid's support can help regulators kill it.

"Their strategy is to starve the project by cutting the budget further and further every year making it almost impossible for them to proceed," Loux said.

But Yucca Mountain is far from starved. In fact, it's setting up a David versus Goliath situation with the state. The White House has asked for nearly half-a-billion dollars to keep the project on schedule. Nevada is fighting back with only $20 million.

Former Gov. Bryan said, "If they saw an opportunity they'd move on it quickly. My own view is that it's not over until the fat lady sings, and the fat lady has not yet sung."

And the stakes couldn't be higher.

The current plan opens the possibility of using transport trucks to fill Yucca Mountain, but that means high-level nuclear waste could be just a lane over. So as budgets are finalized on Capitol Hill and in Carson City, the war of words goes on.

Bob Loux, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said, "It's kind of a mixed message, we know. It's kind of a tightrope, but that's kind of where we're at."

The Department of Energy will apply for an operating license in June of 2008. That's expected to be the final make or break decision in the future of the Yucca Mountain Project.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 01, 2007

Yucca Mountain: Nuclear waste dump still alive

Panel hears warning about rail shipping routes

By Brendan Riley
The Associated Press

CARSON CITY -- A Nevada panel fighting a proposed Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste was told Wednesday that project backers face big obstacles but are still seeking approval of the facility and of rail shipping routes, including one through downtown Reno and Sparks.

The warning to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects prompted its chairman, Richard Bryan, a former state governor and U.S. senator, to say, "This is no time to sit back and assume everything will unfold ... in our favor."

Bob Halstead, a transportation adviser to the commission, said rail shipments through the Reno-Sparks area would have a huge impact on commercial and residential properties near the route, possibly lowering their combined value by well over $1 billion.

Asked after the commission meeting why Nevada must press its fight against the repository, Halstead said, "We've driven a stake through this vampire's heart three or four times, and each time he stands up and says, 'Yucca Mountain.' "

Halstead said while U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has promised to block the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain Project, which already has cost at least $9 billion, Nevada remains the No. 1 target because no other states want to take high-level radioactive waste.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Feb. 5 that his department will prepare an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license for the repository, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by June 2008.

The project has been set back repeatedly by lawsuits, money shortfalls and scientific controversies.

In his remarks to the commission, Halstead said some trains from waste-producing power plants would run on tracks parallel to Interstate 80 in Northern Nevada, coming from the east and west. Trains from the west would run through downtown Reno and Sparks.

The trains would then run south to Yucca Mountain along a route near U.S. 95, which goes through several towns including Schurz, Hawthorne, Mina, Tonopah and Goldfield. Halstead said the Energy Department's estimated cost of upgrading rail routes and laying new track is $1.6 billion, but he called that "a made-up number."

Also speaking at the commission meeting was Sparks City Manager Shaun Carey, who said Energy Department officials rejected a request for a hearing on the rail route. He said the route is of particular concern for his city, since it's home to a major rail operations yard.

Bob Loux, head of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said it looks like the Energy Department wants to "deliberately keep people in Northern Nevada out of the process."

Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said a preliminary hearing on rail routes was held at the University of Nevada, Reno in late November, adding, "I don't know much closer we could get to Sparks City Hall."

Benson said additional hearings will be held in Northern Nevada in the future.

"We're years away from routes. We haven't settled on any routes. Our focus is on completing and submitting the licensing application."

Benson also said the federal government has been hauling nuclear waste by truck for half a century with no problems, and "we're quite confident we can continue our safety record."

Benson said waste headed for Yucca Mountain would be in solid form and security guards would accompany the trains, which would run about twice a week over a 24-year period.

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Pittsburgh Post Gazette
March 01, 2007

Green energy could leave coal in the dust

Elwin Green
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For decades, Western Pennsylvania and much of the nation's coal industry saw their fortunes twist in the wind, as mines shut down and younger workers skipped the industry for more stable, less risky jobs elsewhere. But that changed this decade, as economic growth and a push to lessen the country's reliance on foreign sources of energy made coal king again.

But just as the industry appears poised for a new round of prosperity, with more than 150 new coal-fired plants on the drawing board and industry plans to hire thousands of new miners, comes a move by one of the nation's largest energy company's to scale back its use of coal.

This week's proposed $32 billion buyout of Dallas-based utility giant TXU came with a big win for environmentalists: The buyers, KKR and Texas Pacific Group, said they would not pursue plans to build eight of 11 coal-fired plants. But the deal, if it clears regulators, also came with a big worry sign for the coal industry.

Some observers believe it not only will deal a short-term blow to coal, but possibly could serve as a turning point that will lead other energy companies to pursue alternatives to coal, the source for more than half of this nation's electricity.

Share prices of coal companies, including Upper St. Clair-based Consol Energy, initially plunged on Monday's news, though they recovered somewhat with yesterday's rebound from Tuesday's massive, broad-based sell-off of stocks around the world.

Still, the question remains: Will the push to 'green' energy leave coal in the dust?

Jim Owen doesn't think so.

The spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group whose membership includes 60 utility companies, said that while "coal-based generation would have some vulnerability in a carbon-constrained environment ... coal will continue to be the main workhorse of our generation mix."

One reason for that is that coal's chief competitor for electricity generation, nuclear power, has its own challenges that will not be easily resolved, beginning with the storage of radioactive nuclear waste.

Waste storage was a point of contention between President Bush and challenger John Kerry during the last presidential campaign, when Mr. Kerry famously promised that if elected, the Bush administration's plan to store nuclear waste in an underground facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., would be scuttled. Mr. Kerry lost that election, but the Democrats won the Senate last fall, making Senator Harry Reid of Nevada the majority leader. In that role, he has promised to kill the Yucca Mountain project.

Nuclear power fuels some 20 percent of the nation's electricity production; natural gas, 15 percent. Beyond those fuels, "alternative technologies have a long way to go to become competitive with either coal or nuclear energy," said Consol Vice President Tom Hoffman.

Still, some observers view the TXU deal as a watershed event.

On the day of the unveiling of the proposed buyout, which was done with input from environmental groups that only months before were protesting TXU's plans for more coal-fired plants, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune called it "the beginning of the end of big coal's dominance over America's energy future."

On the same day, a leading scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration called for an end to building coal-fired power plants altogether. "There should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants," James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told journalists gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

While burning oil and natural gas also release carbon dioxide, Mr. Hansen said coal is the major culprit. "Until we have that clean coal power plant, we should not be building them. It is as clear as a bell."

Henry Lee, lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, offered a more moderate view. He said that he expects most coal plants built after 2012 to be equipped with technology for capturing and storing carbon emissions so that they will not pollute.

In the meantime, he said, "we have more coal than most of the countries in the world and we're not going to walk away from it."

(Elwin Green can be reached at egreen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1969.)

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Reno Gazette-Journal
February 28, 2007

Berkley working against Yucca plan

Brendan Riley

U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, now on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, told state lawmakers Monday that the budget proposed by President Bush makes "asinine" cuts in federal funds that will hurt Nevada and other states.

But Berkley, D-Las Vegas, said there's one federal budget account that she'd like to see disappear completely -- the nearly $500 million that Bush put into his $2.9 trillion budget plan for a high-level nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Berkley said she's working with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is "hellbent on eliminating" the Yucca Mountain funding. She also urged legislators to continue their opposition to the dump until it's "nothing but a very, very bad memory."

In comments to the lawmakers and to reporters at an earlier news conference, Berkley highlighted numerous problems created for Nevada by the proposed federal budget, including a 64 percent cut in the state's homeland security grant funds.

There's also inadequate funding to fully carry out terms of the federal No Child Left Behind Act or properly run Head Start or anti-drug programs, Berkley said.

In Nevada, about 425,000 people lack health insurance but the proposed federal budget makes cuts in critical programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Berkley said, adding that a slight increase in federal funds for a health insurance program for children is far below what's actually needed.

The proposed budget also cuts funding for Nevada's environmental programs, cuts job training and employment assistance and revives an attack on the Social Security system, Berkley said.

Berkley also said she's working with other Democrats in the Democrat-controlled Congress to revise the federally mandated Real ID program, which will require Nevadans to apply for new, tamper-proof driver's licenses.

The congresswoman told reporters the federal government will have to "pony up" additional money rather than force Nevada and other states to spend billions of dollars complying with the law.

She said because of all the funding problems with the proposed budget, the hopes of adequate dollars for such pressing needs as highway construction are "becoming dimmer and dimmer." Nevada's projected shortfall for road funds is about

$3.8 billion.

Berkley also repeated her opposition to the Bush administration's troop "surge" in Iraq, and said a political rather than military solution is the best tactic.

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KRNV
February 28, 2007

State Panel Warned About Effort to License Nuclear Dump in Nevada

A Nevada panel fighting a proposed Yucca Mountain dump for nuclear waste has been told that project backers face big obstacles but are still seeking approval of the dump and of rail shipping routes -- including one through downtown Reno and Sparks.

The warning to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects prompted its chairman, Richard Bryan, to say it's "no time to sit back" given the federal Department of Energy's efforts to open the dump.

Bob Halstead, a transportation adviser to the commission, says rail shipments through the Reno-Sparks area would have a huge impact on commercial and residential properties near the route -- possibly lowering their combined value by well over one billion dollars.

DOE spokesman Allen Benson says the agency is years away from settling on routes. He also says the federal government has been hauling nuclear waste by truck for half a century with no safety problems.

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Pahrump Valley Times
February 28, 2007

Infiltration is focus of panel studying Yucca Mountain

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board's panel on Postclosure Performance will meet in Berkeley, Calif., March 14. The meeting agenda will focus on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) infiltration estimates for the proposed repository site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The board will review the results of new infiltration studies undertaken by DOE because of quality assurance questions that were raised about DOE's previous infiltration analyses.

Information from the meeting will be used by the board to evaluate effects of the new analysis on the technical validity of DOE infiltration estimates.

The board is charged by Congress with reviewing the technical and scientific validity of activities undertaken by DOE related to nuclear waste disposal, as stipulated in the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987.

Presentation will be made by technical and scientific investigators from the University of Nevada, Reno, the U.S. Geological Survey and DOE and its contractors.

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

Interested parties also will have the opportunity to submit questions in writing to the board. As time permits, submitted questions relevant to the discussion may be asked by board members.

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CounterPunch
February 28, 2007

Patrick Moore's Deadly Con Game

The Sham of Nuclear Power

By Harvey Wasserman

Vermont, like too many other places with nuke reactors, was recently disgraced by an industry-sponsored visit from Patrick Moore, who claims to be a "founder" of Greenpeace, and who is out selling nuclear power as a "green" technology.

The two claims are roughly equal in the baldness of their falsehood.

But the impacts of the lies about Vermont Yankee---like so many other reactors---are far more serious. Vermont is now at a crossroads in its energy and environmental future. The reactor is old and infirm. Every day it operates heightens the odds on a major accident.

In a world beset by terror, there is no more vulnerable target than an aged reactor like Vermont Yankee. Its core is laden with builtup radiation accumulated over the decades. Its environs are stacked with supremely radioactive spent fuel. Its elderly core and containment are among the most fragile that exist.

Despite industry claims, VY's high-level nuke waste is going nowhere. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Edward McGaffigan has told the New York Times he believes the Yucca Mountain waste repository cannot open for at least another 17-20 years, if ever. At current production levels, it will by then require yet another repository at least that size to handle the spent fuel that will by then be stacked at reactors like VY. In short: the dry casks stacked at Vermont Yankee comprise what amounts to a permanent high level nuke dump, on the shores of the Connecticut River.

The Better Business Bureau recently recommended that the Nuclear Energy Institute pull its advertising that claims atomic reactors are clean and nonpolluting. The NEI is an industry front group. The BBB says that reactors cause thermal pollution in their outtake pipes and cooling towers, and also create substantial amounts of greenhouse gases in uranium production. In short, the Better Business Bureau has punctured the industry's claim the Vermont Yankee and other reactors are any kind of solution for climate chaos. The idea that VY is a "green" facility is utter nonsense.

Indeed, all nuclear power plants produce huge quantities of global warming gases as they are wrapped up in the mining of the uranium ore that goes into the fuel, and in the milling of that ore into fuel rods. The American West is littered with gargantuan piles of mill tailings that pour thousands of curies of radioactive radon into the atmosphere.

Fabricating fuel rods is one of the most electricity-intensive industries on earth, consuming millions of tons of coal in the process, emitting untold quantities of greenhouse gases. The radioactive emissions from the plants themselves also unbalance the atmosphere, and the heat they dump into the air and water directly heats the planet.

The alleged "renaissance" of nuclear power is nothing more than heavily funded industry hype. Wall Street financiers are not lining up to invest in these dinosaurs, and numerous utility executives have publicly doubted the wisdom of building them.

One reason is the explosive take-off of the renewable energy industry. Wind power is now very substantially cheaper than nukes. The production of photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, can barely meet demand. Investments in biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are soaring, as are those in the cheapest form of recovered energy, increased efficiency. Shutting VY would open Vermont to the revolution that is reshaping the future. Keeping it open locks Vermont into a sorry past.

Nuclear power is a 50-year experiment that has failed. Extending the operations of Vermont Yankee will only leave the state with more radioactive waste, a Connecticut River increasingly threatened by heat and radioactive emissions, and an increasingly radioactive relic despoiling the region. Nukes cannot compete in the market, and would all cease to operate overnight if the huge subsidy of federal liability insurance was removed.

It is fitting, therefore, that the industry has insulted Vermont by sending in a spokesman of the caliber of Patrick Moore. Moore has claimed for years to be a founder of Greenpeace, an exaggeration of his actual role. Moore sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign, but he did not actually found the organization. According to Dorothy Stowe, an American Quaker, who immigrated to Canada in 1966 and founded Greenpeace with her husband Irving Stowe and other Canadian pacifists and ecologists, "Technically, Patrick Moore cannot be described as a founder of Greenpeace. He was there in early stages with a lot of others. But what he is doing now is unconscionable."

In "Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World," author Rex Weyler writes "Greenpeace was founded by Quakers Dorothy and Irving Stowe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, and journalists Ben Metcalfe, Dorothy Metcalfe, and Bob Hunter. This group organized the first campaign to sail a boat into the U.S. nuclear test zone on Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea.

"Canadian ecologist and carpenter Bill Darnell coined the name "Greenpeace" in February 1970. A year later, Moore wrote to the organization, applying for a crew position on the boat and was accepted."

Moore wrote his letter on March 16, 1971, two years after the group was founded, describing himself as a graduate student "in the field of resource ecology." Clearly, then, Moore was not a founder of Greenpeace. Founders don't write letters applying to join. After the Stowes, Metcalfes and Bob Hunter left the organization, Moore briefly served as president, from 1977 to 1979. Former members recall that his bullyism nearly scuttled Greenpeace. He launched an internal lawsuit against his rivals in other Greenpeace offices, was replaced as president in 1979, and eventually drummed out of the organization as a troublemaker.

According to Steve Sawyer, who still works with Greenpeace in Amsterdam, "Moore harbored hopes of regaining his throne. Those hopes were dashed when he was chucked off the board in 1985." Moore started a fish farm, but did not succeed. He then did public relations for the Canadian forestry industry, absurdly defending massive clearcuts as an ecologically viable logging practice.

In a newspaper column in 1993, authentic Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter, called Moore "The Judas of the ecology movement." According to Hunter, Moore "burned off his old buddies because of his hubris. He was always a Green Tory at heart."

Moore says he is the "head scientist" of his public relations firm, but has never published a peer-reviewed scientific study. Moore exaggerates his role in Greenpeace and his credentials as a scientist to serve as a public relations hack for hire.

Moore now gets big money defending the indefensible, posing as a reformed environmentalist who has seen the light ... any light he is paid to see. He has hyped genetically modified crops, PVCs, and brominated flame retardants. He has soft-pedaled dioxins and toxic mine tailings dumped by Newmont mines into Indonesia bays.

Now he wants to sell Vermont on its nuke power plant. In exchange for a paycheck, he portrays Three Mile Island as a "success story." But if a melt-down turned Vermont Yankee into a TMI-type, billion-dollar liability, would he pitch in his pitch man's paychecks to help you underwrite this "success?"

Years ago, when he worked for Greenpeace, Moore wrote: "Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on this planet."

Greenpeace agrees. The "revival" of nuke power is a hype being perpetrated by phony experts. Wall Street is not exactly lining up to invest in a failed technology with fifty years of proven failure. Vermont Yankee must be shut, dismantled and buried. Closing it now will narrow the burden of its permanent waste dump and open the door on the booming revolution in the real energy of the future: renewables and efficiency.

Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA since 1990, is author of "Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030,"

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Detroit Metro Times
February 28, 2007

Nukes and NIMBY

by Jack Lessenberry

So ... do you think our area needs a new nuclear power plant?

You may have missed this little item, what with all the hot Anna Nicole news and all. But DTE Energy (the company that sends all of us those cheery little letters every month asking for money to keep the lights on) wants to build a new nuclear power plant in Monroe.

Don't they already have one there? Yes, but good old Fermi 2, its twin towers plainly visible as you whiz along I-75, is wearing out. Nuclear plants are only made to last 40 to 60 years at most, and you can't build them overnight.

Matter of fact, it can take five years just to get a license. If things go smoothly, any new plant might be able to start emitting steam around 2013. If it does get built, this would actually be the third generation of nuclear plants on the site, the first being the infamous one which suffered a near-meltdown in 1966, an episode immortalized in the book We Almost Lost Detroit.

Twenty years ago, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, building any new nuclear plant would have been politically impossible. Even now, the mention of anything nuclear is apt to upset a lot of people. Proposing to build a new plant in Michigan may indeed spark demonstrations, at least once the media move on from the far more important question of when to take Anna Nicole's body out of the refrigerator.

Yet the level of noisy opposition is far less than it used to be. Nuclear plants have actually had a pretty good safety record. Last week I talked to David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer now with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has been highly critical of the industry for years, but even he is not flatly against building a new plant in Monroe.

What is not in doubt is that we will need more energy.

State regulators recently said Michigan needs some kind of new primary power plant by 2015, and nuclear seems the most likely candidate. Yes, you can talk about conservation, and you should. Still, this has been a month when people would have cracked plutonium in their basements to stay warm if they had to.

But there is one major drawback we haven't yet discussed.

What do we do — what do all the nation's nuclear plants do — with the spent nuclear fuel? This is especially a problem for DTE Energy. The stuff remains radioactive and highly dangerous for thousands of years.

Within three years, they will run out of room to store the rods in the huge fuel storage pool they now maintain on the site. Then, they will have no alternative but to store it in heavy steel containers known as "dry casks."

Then the casks will pile up. And up and up and up. Something similar is happening at nuclear power plants across the country. Michigan's first nuclear plant, Big Rock, near Charlevoix, was torn down years ago. Not a brick remains.

Except, that is, for a building holding the spent fuel rods. There are pools and piles of these things all over the nation. The most logical thing — especially in the age of terror — would be to have one central site where all this stuff is to be safely stored and guarded.

And there is supposed to be one — the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada. The federal government agreed on this as the place years ago. After numerous delays, it is now on course to start accepting nuclear waste ... 10 years from now, on March 31, 2017, Al Gore's 69th birthday. Except that ... it probably won't happen. Why? For one thing, the new Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is from Nevada, and doesn't want his peeps irradiated.

"Yucca Mountain is dead. It will never happen," he says. Nevada, while small in population, also has become a closely fought swing state in presidential elections. Had Our Al carried it in 2000, it would have been impossible to steal the election from him.

The trouble with any other proposed site is the same: Where to store nuclear waste is the ultimate NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard — issue. Nevada makes a lot of sense; it is sparsely populated, and the federal government owns 87 percent of the state's land.

Except that Nevadans don't want it there. But we have to find a central storage location somewhere, and soon, or we are courting disaster.

And no, Melvindale would not be an appropriate site. By the way, guess what other site was in contention before they settled on Yucca Mountain? Deaf Smith County, Texas.

Somehow I don't think Dubya would go for that.

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Columbus Free Press

The sham of nuke power & Patrick Moore

Harvey Wasserman

The two claims are roughly equal in the baldness of their falsehood.

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Rutland Herald
February 28, 2007

Lawmakers, NRC clash over Yankee waste

February 28, 2007

By Daniel Barlow
Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER — Lawmakers criticized federal energy policy for a lack of planning for long-term storage of nuclear waste Tuesday during a meeting with nuclear regulatory officials regarding Vermont Yankee's relicensing.

Rep. Virgina Milkey, D-Brattleboro, decried the "mumbo-jumbo" of Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials for not addressing the lack of a national storage facility for the waste in the federal agency's environmental review of Yankee's request to extend its operating license.

Milkey, who lives one town away from the 34-year-old Vernon reactor, said continued storage at the plant for 30 more years, which NRC officials have deemed safe, is unacceptable to the tens of thousands of people living nearby.

"I'm not convinced that facility will ever be open," Milkey said about the federal government's long-proposed national radioactive waste storage facility. "And I wonder why we're not talking about a moratorium until we have one."

Tuesday's special session was intended to inform southern Vermont legislators on the process of Yankee's request to continue operating for 20 years beyond 2012, when its license now expires.

Richard Emch, the NRC's senior project manager for Yankee's relicensing, repeated a slideshow presentation shown last month at a Brattleboro meeting on how the agency decided to give preliminary approval on its environmental review of the possible effects of Yankee operating until 2032.

"The preliminary review has found that the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal are not so great that preserving the option would be unreasonable," Emch said.

But the meeting in Montpelier quickly degenerated into a back-and-forth between legislators and NRC officials regarding the lack of a long-term storage facility for nuclear waste. A plan to build such a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been delayed and now its fate appears in doubt.

Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro, said it's irresponsible for the federal government to consider license extensions for nuclear power plants while "not having a fallback plan" for off-site storage on the highly radioactive waste.

"I wonder how you are so confident that we will overcome these problems," Edwards said.

NRC representatives said they are operating under the agency's policy that storage of the waste on site, which at Yankee will be stored in steel containers surrounded by concrete, is safe for 30 years.

Beyond that, NRC officials are operating under the belief that a permanent home for the waste will be built in the "first quarter of this century."

"We've got some time," one official said.

Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, also found fault with part of the NRC's equation in determining if the license extension should be approved.

The 430-page draft Environmental Impact Statement used a calculation of 650 megawatts, the total energy output of the facility, in calculating how much energy from other sources would be required to replace Yankee.

But White pointed out that the state of Vermont only uses half of that energy from Yankee. The true cost of replacing that source of energy for Vermonters would be much lower, she said.

David Miller, a scientist with Argon National Laboratories, a group of consultants that participated in the NRC review, replied that the calculation is not site-specific, meaning the NRC sees Yankee as a regional power plant that sells energy to nearby states.

"That doesn't make me feel better," White said of his answer.

The Department of Energy began studying Yucca Mountain as a possible storage facility for spent nuclear waste in 1978. The facility is now scheduled to open in March 2017, but that date assumes there are no continued delays.

Building the facility would also require congressional approval. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who has opposed the plan to store the waste there, told state legislators recently in that state that the project was "dead."

Contact Daniel Barlow at Daniel.Barlow@rutlandherald.com.

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Nevada Appeal
February 27, 2007

Berkley briefs lawmakers on federal budget

Brendan Riley
Associated Press Writer

Rep. Shelley Berkley, now on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, told state lawmakers on Monday that the budget proposed by President Bush makes "asinine" cuts in federal funds that will hurt Nevada and other states.

But Berkley, D-Nev., said there's one federal budget account that she'd like to see disappear completely - the nearly $500 million that Bush put into his $2.9 trillion budget plan for a high-level nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

In comments to the lawmakers and to reporters at an earlier news conference, Berkley highlighted numerous problems created for this state by the proposed federal budget, including a 64 percent cut in the state's homeland security grant funds.

There's also inadequate funding to fully carry out terms of the federal No Child Left Behind Act or properly run Head Start or anti-drug programs, Berkley said.

The proposed budget also cuts funding for Nevada's environmental programs, cuts job training and employment assistance and revives an attack on the Social Security system, Berkley said.

Berkley also said she's working with other Democrats in the Democrat-controlled Congress to revise the federally mandated Real ID program which will require Nevadans to apply for new, tamper-proof driver's licenses.

The congresswoman told reporters that the federal government will have to "pony up" with additional funding rather than force Nevada and other states to spend billions of dollars complying with the law.

She added that because of all the funding problems with the proposed budget the hopes of adequate dollars for such pressing needs as highway construction are "becoming dimmer and dimmer." Nevada's projected shortfall for road funds is about $3.8 billion.

Berkley also repeated her opposition to the Bush administration's troop "surge" in Iraq, and said a political rather than military solution is the best tactic.

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Atlanta Journal Constitution
February 26, 2007

Nuclear waste could be routed through Ga.

By Stacy Shelton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thousands of Truckloads of Nuclear Waste Through Metro Atlanta.

Proponents of the plan say it's safe and that nuclear materials have been transported through the state before without incident.

Nuclear activists who oppose President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

They are more concerned about what will happen if Savannah River Site, a federal facility near Augusta that made nuclear weapons materials during the Cold War, or a landfill for low-level radioactive waste next door in Barnwell, S.C., are chosen for the nuclear initiative.

If the U.S. Department of Energy selects one or both, opponents fear they will become the de facto Yucca Mountain. The Nevada depository is the only long-term solution for the country's nuclear waste, but it's at least 10 years away from opening and is gaining opposition.

Robert Guild of the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club warned that his state "will become the world's nuclear waste dumping ground."

But backers of moving the materials to South Carolina say the concerns are overblown. Many are people who have lived close to SRS and its nuclear materials for decades, and they say there have been comparatively few problems.

Local supporters also estimate the initiative could bring 7,000 jobs.

"The nuclear industry is the most highly regulated industry in the world and is one of the safest," said Carl Gooding, a council member from nearby Allendale County, S.C.

The Energy Department is considering 13 locations nationwide for one or more components of the president's global nuclear initiative, which is still years from reality.

Details of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership still need to be worked out — including taxpayers' cost — but the first phase of the plan calls for collecting used nuclear fuel, or spent nuclear rods, from commercial reactors and shipping it to a reprocessing facility where it would be converted into fuel for a commercial reactor.

The spent fuel, which would be shipped in stainless steel and lead casks, could come from any of the 65 nuclear reactor sites in the United States. most of them east of the Mississippi River.

Eventually the program would help U.S. companies sell the reprocessed nuclear fuel abroad for electricity.

The Department of Energy is scheduled to narrow its choices of sites for the program, and which companies could run it, by the summer of 2008.

Radioactive tanks leak

Savannah River Site already has about 37 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste in large tanks, some of which are more than 50 years old and leaking. Every year, the federal government spends more than $1 billion a year on cleanup at SRS.

But at a Department of Energy public hearing this month, federal officials heard many positive comments about the proposal for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership from elected representatives and business leaders eager for the economic boost. Jobs and the tax base in the region have eroded since SRS started ramping down in the 1980s.

Scott MacGregor, vice president of the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce, said the partnership is "the type of forward-thinking Augusta is proud of ... together we can meet the needs of the future."

Residents of Augusta and, just over the state line, the South Carolina communities of Aiken, North Augusta and Jackson, are accustomed to the 198,000-acre nuclear facility, which has operated in their backyard for more than 50 years.

Several generations of families have gotten their paychecks from SRS and no major accident has occurred. A report by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently predicted a minimal risk of cancer for people living nearby.

Proponents and opponents of Bush's plan agree the adjacent South Carolina sites both have a good chance for two reasons. The location is close to many of the nation's nuclear reactors that will provide the waste for reprocessing, and to major ports. Second, a reprocessing facility was built in Barnwell, near SRS, in the 1970s, but never opened.

Much will depend on congressional support. Congress sliced this year's proposed funding from $380 million to $120 million.

Jim Hardeman, manager of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division's Environmental Radiation Program, said if a South Carolina site is chosen, there's a good possibility most of the shipments of spent nuclear rods would either be trucked around I-285 or railed through downtown Atlanta, winding past Philips Arena and the state Capitol.

"Some of the maps they've put together to show nuclear waste transportation to Yucca, flip around and show them going to Savannah River Site," Hardeman said. "That's kind of what it would look like."

Government officials say the transportation of spent nuclear rods poses minimal risks to the public. According to the Department of Energy, a person standing 6 feet from a truck carrying casks full of spent nuclear fuel for one hour would receive a radiation dose equivalent to a chest x-ray.

They also say terrorism risks are minimized by keeping shipment routes and schedules secret. Only a designee in the governor's office of each state on the route is notified, officials said. Some shipments get law enforcement escorts.

Train and traffic accidents are always possible, but in 50 years of shipping radioactive material in the United States, there have been fewer than a dozen traffic accidents and no release of radioactive material, said James Giusti, spokesman for the Department of Energy.

When the Department of Energy studied transportation routes for Yucca Mountain, it concluded a release of radioactive material is likely to occur twice in 10 million years. Such an event would not cause even one cancer death, the government said.

Hardeman, with Georgia's EPD, said his office is monitoring the latest proposal for the Savannah River Site.

The plutonium route

If the South Carolina sites are chosen, it won't be the first time radioactive material has traveled over Georgia roads and rails.

Starting in 2002, about six tons of bomb-grade plutonium was trucked through Georgia from a Colorado nuclear weapons plant to Savannah River Site. South Carolina's governor at the time, Jim Hodges, protested the shipments. He unsuccessfully sued the federal government over concerns that it did not have a plan for permanently storing the material.

In a separate plan already approved and in the works at Savannah River Site, many more plutonium shipments are slated to begin once the government completes construction of a new plant there: the fuel facility.

The plant will convert weapons-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel to produce electricity. The $1 billion facility will bring thousands of radioactive truck shipments to and from SRS and over Georgia roads.

Among the proponents of South Carolina's sites are Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). In a joint letter read at a February hearing before the DOE, they said nuclear energy is "safe, affordable and environmentally friendly."

"Be careful what you ask for," says Glenn Carroll, coordinator for Nuclear Watch South in Atlanta, formerly Georgians Against Nuclear Energy. "We already have 35 million gallons of high-level waste [at Savannah River Site], and we don't know what to do with it."

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Carlsbad Current Argus
February 25, 2007

Leaders want big turnout at GNEP meeting
By Stella Davis

CARLSBAD — Carlsbad and Eddy County leaders are hoping for a large community turnout at a public meeting Tuesday where federal and local officials will explain the current effort to bring a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to the area.

The proposed facility is tied to President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative, and backers of the project hope that GNEP will one day become as much a part of the local scene as WIPP.A site between Hobbs and Carlsbad is one of 11 potential locations for the proposed center, which could include an advanced burner reactor in addition to the reprocessing center.

A period for public comment will follow the presentation. The public scoping meeting is a requirement for developing an Environmental Impact Statement. A similar meeting will be held in Hobbs Monday.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy called for proposals from entities wanting to compete in a full-scale basis for site consideration, and Carlsbad and Hobbs answered the call.

In order to better their chances to be one of the sites selected, the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs and Eddy and Lea counties formed the Eddy-Lea Alliance, a limited liability company. The alliance filed an application suggesting a site located halfway between Carlsbad and Hobbs. The energy department selected the site as one of 11 potential locations. A site near Roswell was also selected.

The alliance found out Jan. 31 that it had received $1.59 million in DOE funds and that it has 90 days to complete the suitability study.

The Alliance has secured an option for 960 acres of vacant land midway between Carlsbad and Hobbs as the potential site for a nuclear fuel recycling center, which would separate spent nuclear fuel into reusable fuel and waste components, and then manufacture new nuclear fast-reactor fuel from the reusable components. The center could also include an advanced recycling reactor, which would destroy long-lived radioactive elements in the new fuel while generating electricity.

On Feb. 12, the Alliance met in Carlsbad and approved a memorandum of understanding between the Alliance and its business partners, Washington Group International, Areva — a French company and world leader in nuclear power — and several subcontractors that include Albuquerque communications company Shoats and Weaks, and Gordon Environmental, also from Albuquerque, and two accounting firms from Carlsbad and Hobbs that will provide financial oversight and audits.

"Washington Group International has provided general management and oversight for the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad since 1985 and has expertise in construction of nuclear facilities," said Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest, who serves as vice chairman of the Eddy-Lea Alliance. "The Washington Group and Areva are our two major contractors for this project."

Forrest said he believes the Eddy-Lea Alliance has an advantage over the other 10 sites competing for the facility in that it has already maneuvered through the selection process when it successfully bid for the WIPP site, a nuclear waste repository in salt beds located about 27 miles east of Carlsbad.

He said WIPP's proximity to the site proposed for the nuclear fuel reprocessing facility is a plus. He also pointed out that the community demonstrated 30 years ago that it is willing to partner with the DOE when it welcomed it to build WIPP in Eddy County.

Forrest said although location is important in the DOE's consideration of a site for the nuclear reprocessing site, he strongly believes community support is a key factor.

"You hear realtors say location, location,' but I say community, community.' I don't care how much money you put into a project. It won't work unless you have community support," Forrest said.

David Moody, DOE Carlsbad Field Office manager, said he applauds the DOE leap into the next generation of recycling nuclear fuel.

"I clearly support the department's position. My message to the department is, don't wait so long.' It's important that they find a site quickly and start recycling nuclear fuel," Moody said. "As a private citizen, I believe the site chosen by the Eddy-Lea Alliance is ideal. It has rail availability, and it has the advantage of being a commercial site. Having WIPP here, we have already established a nuclear corridor."

The U.S. is considering a new approach to the recycling of spent nuclear fuel with advanced technologies to increase proliferation resistance and recover waste materials that require permanent geological disposal.

Moody said GNEP will build on recent administration accomplishments to encourage more nuclear power in the United States.

These include the Nuclear Power 2010 program, a public-private partnership aimed at demonstrating the streamlined regulatory processes associated with licensing new plants, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which included federal risk insurance for the new nuclear power plants to be built.

Moody noted that the United States is pursuing the transition from a once-through fuel cycle to a new approach that includes recycling of spent nuclear fuel without separating out pure plutonium. Specifically, recycling would be comprised of uranium extraction plus.

He explained that research has shown it is possible to separate uranium from the spent fuel at a very high level of purification that would allow it to be recycled for re-enrichment, stored in an unshielded facility, or simply buried as a low-level waste.

"The geology at the site chosen by the Eddy-Lea Alliance is well suited. It has the same salt as in WIPP. It has the same characteristics. There were lessons learned from WIPP. We know we could move next door if we needed a potential site to bury the low-level waste after it is separated," Moody said.

Moody said the choice of the Eddy-Lea site for the recycling facility would not affect WIPP operation.

"WIPP is WIPP. It has its mission and that mission will not change."

He said recycling spent fuel rods is not new. Britain and France have been doing it since the early 1970s. However, the United States chose not to do it until now.

He said the process is safe, and the facility would be designed to avoid critical accidents.

According to the DOE, a basic goal of GNEP is to make it nearly impossible to divert nuclear materials or modify systems without immediate detection, thus, a program of international safeguards is key to every element of its implementation.

Having a nuclear fuel-recycling center in the region will also bring benefits to Hobbs and Carlsbad, Moody noted.

Employment aside, GNEP would call for a program to design, build and export nuclear reactors that are cost-effective, well-suited to conditions in developing nations and scaled for small electricity grids. Moody said a benefit to the region would be that the communities with next-generation reactors would be given some energy from the facility for their power grid.

A new concept to the DOE is commercialization. The recycled and reprocessed fuel rods will probably be sold to foreign markets, putting this area on the world map.

Addressing the issue of water and whether Eddy and Lea Counties have enough fresh water to fulfill the needs of reprocessing spent fuel, Moody said, "We have more water availability than one might think."

Ned Elkins, who heads Los Alamos National Laboratory's Carlsbad Field Office, said rapidly changing technology needs less water in the cooling process.

"The next generation and design may not even require water cooling," Elkins said.

Although the proposals for site selection were fast-tracked by the DOE, it could take 10 years before the proposed facility is operational once the site has been chosen.

Site studies are underway in 11 locations around the country. The DOE will narrow the field to three and from those three select the one it believes most suitable.

"The site selection alone will take two years. That's the easy part," Moody said. "Then the facility has to be built, which is a minimum of three years, and it has to go through the regulatory and permitting process."

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Chillicothe Gazette
February 25, 2007

Public input sought on new nuke facility in Pike

By Lori McNelly
Gazette City Editor

PIKETON - A series of public meetings will give locals the opportunity to voice opinions on the siting process for a proposed GNEP facility in Pike County.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership site is being considered for one of 11 sites in the United States, and would reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods for use in the energy industry. A group representing the Piketon site has received a grant to pay for a siting study to determine regulatory, legal and permit impediments and to seek public comment.

Greg Simonton, executive director of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, said the four meetings will be conducted at The Ohio State University South Centers in Piketon. The first of these meetings will be Tuesday, March 20.

The first three meetings will provide information and a forum in which to learn about and discuss GNEP. The last will be after the siting analysis is finished, and will be a report to the community of what was discovered.

"We want to provide answers to the questions that are raised," Simonton said.

The reprocessing would allow for use of the remaining energy in used fuel rods, sometimes up to 90 percent, and would extend the life of Yucca Mountain Repository, a nuclear storage facility in Nevada.

The nuclear fuel would be sold to Third World or other nations with electricity needs.

"The NRC will regulate the facility, and the DOE will own it," Simonton said. The Department of Transportation would regulate transport of any materials.

"These laws are there to protect so you don't release into the atmosphere, so you don't release into the water."

Simonton said supporters of a Pike County project have sent 8,000 letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said that speaks to the community's willingness to have a GNEP facility in the neighborhood, and also to the awareness and knowledge of the locals as far as nuclear energy.

Simonton also referred to a reprocessing facility in France, which has a dairy farm next to it, saying the thousands of tests there over the years have shown no adverse affect to the environment.

He also pointed to a facility in Japan that cost $15 billion to bring online. If brought to the Buckeye State, such a project would be the largest ever in Ohio, and could bring thousands of jobs.

"You would have to assume it would be large," Simonton said.

But for Simonton, it's also a question of the United States being at the top when it comes to nuclear energy and keeping arms out of the hands of terrorists. Selling fuel to Third World nations through GNEP would keep them from selling to terrorist organizations.

"Is the United States of America going to be a leader on the world stage? ... Are we going to be a part of the solution? That's the goal, that we would do something beneficial."

The project, if located in Piketon, also would provide jobs for the future, Simonton said. Southern Ohio students wouldn't have to relocate to be able to support themselves.

"My goal is to create opportunity," he said.

(McNelly can be reached at 772-9366 or via e-mail at lmcnelly@nncogannett.com)

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Lansdale Reporter
February 25, 2007

How temporary will storage be?

Evan Brandt

“Interim” and “temporary” may be synonyms‚ but when it comes to the storage of spent nuclear fuel‚ they mean very different things to Don Read.

Read is the chairman of Pottstown’s environmental advisory committee.

He told the borough council this week that a change in language by Exelon Nuclear – from calling its project to store spent nuclear fuel in dry casks outside the reactor building in Limerick an “interim solution” to a “temporary solution” – is something to watch.

Had the project been permanent‚ it might have drawn more scrutiny from local officials and residents‚ Read said.

But calling it a “temporary solution” probably convinced many people that it was not something they needed to worry about‚ said Read.

The recent change in the party controlling Congress has led to a new Senate Majority Leader‚ Harry Reid‚ D-Nev.‚ who has long opposed the federal government’s plan to permanently store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel beneath Yucca Mountain in his home state.

That combined with the cost overruns‚ scientific conflicts and delays associated with the project have led many to theorize that the repository at Yucca Mountain will never open.

When these elements are considered in light of the fact that “Exelon has changed the official designation of this project to an ‘interim solution‚’” the project deserves new scrutiny‚ Read said.

“For all intents and purposes‚ at least for our lifetimes‚ this is going to be a permanent storage facility‚” Read said of the project‚ approved in July by the Limerick supervisors.

“If we can’t ship this fuel to Nevada‚ where is it likely to end up?” Borough Council President Jack Wolf asked Read.

“Most likely we’ll end up with regional depositories around the country; hopefully Limerick doesn’t end up as one of those‚” Read said.

Beth Rapczynski‚ a spokeswoman for Exelon‚ disputed that conclusion.

“Our ultimate goal is to have all our spent fuel taken to the federal repository at Yucca Mountain‚” she said.

“Our (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) permit does not allow us to take fuel from other facilities‚” Rapczynski added.

Those permits‚ one for each of the two nuclear reactors‚ expire in 2024 and 2029.

Also important to consider‚ Read said‚ “if this project has been designed as a ’temporary solution‚’ what happens when it becomes the permanent solution?

“Nothing man has ever built is 100 percent reliable‚ particularly not something that was designed to be temporary. What we should be doing now is prepare for the time when it fails‚” Read said.

Which is why Read said his committee is so disappointed Exelon rebuffed Pottstown’s request for additional radiation and temperature monitoring outside the casks. The fuel inside them will remain radioactive for thousands of years.

Read said his group is also “disappointed other municipalities near the plant didn’t have some concerns. You know‚ it seems that until someone bangs the gong‚ there isn’t always a lot of support for people who are trying to make a difference.”

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Nevada Appeal
February 23, 2007

Ensign gives basin good news

Andrew Pridgen
Bonanza News Editor

Tahoe basin residents whose curiosity was piqued about what U.S. Sen. John Ensign had to say about conservation and fuels reduction efforts were not disappointed Wednesday.

Those looking for a continued bi-partisan approach from the senator were also pleased.

Ensign was the second U.S. Senator to speak to members of the Assembly and Senate. He pointed to his relationship with Reid as an example of bipartisanship, saying both members of Congress and of Nevada's Legislature "must commit themselves to crossing the greater political divide."

He said reaching across the aisle to the other party will require hard work in Washington.

"Washington, D.C., is very very partisan - we all know that," he said.

Ensign said Nevada's delegation has never before had as much power with Reid leading the Senate, Ensign in charge of the GOP's Senate campaign efforts next year and two of the state's three representatives holding seats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

"Nevada is in the best position ever to shut down Yucca Mountain and finally put an end to that money pit of deceitful management and bad science," he said. "The facts are on our side, the momentum is on our side and the tide is turning in Washington, D.C."

Ensign continued his sentiment of bi-partisanship touting the White Pine County Lands Bill, which basin residents should recognize as the one which "allows 45,000 acres of BLM land to be privatized."

"Land sale proceeds will go to funding White Pine County law enforcement, fire protection, transportation, and natural resource planning," Ensign said. "The White Pine measure also includes 10-year comprehensive hazardous fuels reduction plans at Lake Tahoe, the eastern Sierra, and the Spring Mountains, funds to acquire and protect portions of the Ballardini Ranch in Washoe County."

That the funds go to fuels reduction have been met with eager anticipation by North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District officials as well as local fuels reduction advocates; taxpayer moneys for Ballardini Ranch, however, have not been greeted with such enthusiasm.

News of the tentative $13.5 million Ballardini Ranch settlement Washoe County commissioners approved last summer stung for some Incline residents.

"Any time the community looks towards Reno and Sparks and sees what they feel is an inappropriate use of money it starts the process again," said IVGID General Manager Bill Horn at the time of the announcement. "This time people are saying 'gee, $13.5 million isn't a good decision'."

County Manager Katy Singlaub put a more positive light on the settlement and ensuing potential acquisition of a portion of the Ballardini Ranch.

"The Washoe commissioners had to make a decision and do what was best for all the taxpayers," Singlaub said. "We are now looking for ways to pay for a portion of the ranch to protect and keep as open space using Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (money)."

The county is also eligible to buy the remainder of a separate 222-acre parcel still owned by the Ballardini family.

Ensign also said that among the challenges Nevada faces is finding funding for badly needed highway construction, warning that the states can no longer look to the federal government for a "blank check." He said the Highway Trust Fund is now paying out all the revenues it takes in, which will force the states to look for innovative solutions because that revenue source won't grow as fast in the future as it has in the past.

Ensign said he is increasing his efforts to bring scientific and research firms to the Silver State and to prepare both Nevada businesses and Nevada's students for competition not just with their peers in other states but other nations such as China and India.

He said his National Competitiveness Investment Act will focus efforts on increasing research investment, fostering science, engineering and mathematics talent and developing infrastructure to support those industries.

- Bonanza News Service's Geoff Dornan contributed to this report.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 23, 2007

TEST SITE EXPLOSION: Divine Strake blast dead

Opposition to bunker-buster experiment strong

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Fears that a mushroom cloud from the massive non-nuclear Divine Strake blast would carry dust laced with radioactive particles off the Nevada Test Site were laid to rest Thursday when a Pentagon agency canceled its plans for the bunker-buster experiment amid opposition from downwinders, politicians and environmentalists.

"I have become convinced that it's time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test," James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said in a one-page statement.

Members of Nevada's congressional delegation who were contacted by the Review-Journal said they were relieved that the blast was finally canceled. They said Defense Department planners failed to quell fears expressed by Nevadans and their neighbors in Utah and Idaho.

"I think we should be grateful that it was canceled," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after a meeting with educators in Las Vegas. "It could have been the safest thing in the world, (but) they did nothing to alleviate the fears of the people of Nevada."

The blast was to be the last and largest in a series of bunker-buster experiments using conventional chemical explosives designed to crush tunnels deep in limestone where an enemy could store weapons of mass destruction.

Miners had dug a 36-foot-deep pit near the top of Syncline Ridge at the test site, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to hold an explosive slurry that when detonated would send shock waves through a 100-foot-thick block of bedded limestone to crumble a tunnel in the ridge.

A lawsuit filed by Reno attorney Robert Hager representing downwinders and Western Shoshones from the Winnemucca Indian Colony and concerns voiced by some elected officials in Nevada and Utah prompted a series of postponements of the test originally scheduled for June 2, 2006.

Tegnelia apologized last year for saying the blast from a 700-ton slurry of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil would send a "mushroom cloud over Las Vegas." But his statement Thursday stopped short of saying public outcry and thousands of comments made at public meetings opposing the Divine Strake detonation convinced him to cancel the test.

Instead, an amended statement issued two hours after the first one from the agency's headquarters in Fort Belvoir, Va., adds the sentence: "This decision was not based on any technical information that indicates the test would produce harm to workers, the general public, or the environment."

Asked what did convince Tegnelia to cancel the test, agency spokesman Don Kerr said, "As for his reasoning, I don't have anything more."

Kerr said delays spurred by a lawsuit and the need to prepare an environmental assessment added $2 million to $3 million more to the initial cost of $23 million for the proposed Divine Strake experiment.

The agency's statement concludes there is "a national consensus on the need to improve conventional capabilities to defeat underground targets that pose a threat to the United States."

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency "will attempt to develop alternative scientific means for obtaining the important data that this experiment would have provided," the statement reads, adding that "confirmatory experiments at a much smaller scale" will be conducted.

Instead of conventional explosives, the U.S. military could use a nuclear earth-penetrator bomb to destroy a deeply buried cache of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but more than a million people would be killed or seriously injured from fallout, radiation and the blast itself, a National Academy of Sciences report concluded in 2005.

Hager said his lawsuit dealt the final blow to Divine Strake and stopped it from spreading contamination left from historic nuclear blasts at the test site.

"Absolutely. There is no doubt that litigation killed this boondoggle," he said by telephone. "This was an ill-conceived idea from the beginning. There is no way that you can safely detonate a huge bomb on the surface of the Nevada Test Site and not spread deadly radioactivity for hundreds or thousands of miles."

Despite the lack of a judge's final decision, Hager said, the lawsuit was successful because "this bomb will never be detonated. And the big news is we have finally evolved as a society to the point where we can stop our own government from nuking its own citizens.

"Obviously, that was not the case in the '50s and '60s. If it had been, tens of thousands of families would have been saved of the horrible effects of fallout that were perpetrated on them by our government by atmospheric testing at the Nevada Test Site," he said.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., agreed that Divine Strake was felled by public outcry. Another likely factor, she said, was an inability by the Pentagon to guarantee there would be no health dangers from the test.

"They could not provide to the appropriate state agencies the information on environmental safeguards," she said.

Berkley said she was not notified by the Defense Department the test was being shelved, nor given a reason for the cancellation.

"We were never told they were going to do it, and they never told us when they weren't going to do it; but we sure made their lives miserable in the meantime," she said.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he is glad the Defense Threat Reduction Agency chose not to set off the Divine Strake blast but part of the agency's job is to "send a message to the terrorists and rogue nations that we have this type of equipment."

Porter said he thinks the agency should continue developing a conventional bunker-buster bomb for deeply buried targets.

"I would prefer they try it in Iraq and not Nevada," he said prior to meeting with reporters at the Review-Journal.

Nevada Environmental Protection Division scientists had asked the National Nuclear Security Administration, which was hosting the experiment, to show that the blast would comply with the test site's air permit.

Specifically, calculations must demonstrate that the blast's mushroom-shaped dust cloud would not carry off any radioactive or toxic contaminants from the soil as the cloud rose 10,000 feet into the atmosphere.

NNSA spokesman Darwin Morgan said with the cancellation "we have stopped all activities associated with the environmental assessment."

Porter said the Divine Strake cancellation is another example of how the community can get involved and express opposition in hopes of thwarting a project such as the government's effort to entomb deadly nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Yucca Mountain program is plagued by "multiple broken systems," Porter said. "It's the biggest waste of money in the history of the country."

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group, said Defense Threat Reduction Agency officials should admit that the thousands of comments opposing Divine Strake made by residents in Nevada, Utah and Idaho "means there is a level of concern out there that they can't ignore."

"I think our government needs to acknowledge that," Maze Johnson said. "Between people saying Yucca Mountain is dead and with Divine Strake being canceled, I'm going to Disneyland."

Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault and Review-Journal writer Lawrence Mower contributed to this report.

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Pahrump Valley Times
February 23, 2007

ROADS WORKSHOP

County dusts off a chip at a time

By Mark Waite
PVT

Ed Simons figures at the rate of chip-sealing 25 miles per year, it may take 20 years to finish all the streets in Pahrump Valley.

He and Pat Simons said Indole Street was paved in the 2004 program, but crews didn't finish the last 680 feet, which passes four houses including their own.

The Simonses were part of a group of 30 people attending the annual roads workshop at the Bob Ruud Community Center Wednesday night. The Nye County Roads Department is proposing the chip-sealing of 25.5 miles of road in the program this year. There's been no decision yet on whether any streets will be paved.

Robert Bales proposed 15 residents of his area get together and pay for chip-sealing about a mile and a half of streets north of Harris Farm Road and west of Linda Street, including Faust Place, Annie Avenue and Atoll Drive.

Bales said he formerly tried to circulate a petition among his neighbors for chip-sealing without luck. But Bales said if they find out that they'll have to wait until at least 2009 to get the roads chip-sealed, they may reconsider.

When Bales asked if they could be reimbursed for it, Nye County Public Works Director Samson Yao said he didn't know. "I've never seen anybody do that," Yao said.

Nye County Commissioner Roberta "Midge" Carver, a liaison to the Regional Transportation, said residents could form a general improvement district, with a special tax on residents of that district to pay for road improvements.

Yao explained the real impetus to chip-sealing roads in Pahrump Valley came a few years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency threatened Nye County with strict restrictions on development due to dust problems from PM 10, the small particulate matter measuring 10 microns or less. At that time, the county targeted as much as 70 miles of streets for paving and chip-sealing in one year.

"Some people may be wondering why we're only doing 25 miles (this year). When we started, we had to go crazy," Yao said.

Last year the county proposed chip-sealing 50 miles but had to cut that back to 25 miles, Yao said.

Some of the roads that were chip-sealed before have to be redone to protect the county's investment and build up a thicker seal, Yao said. The chip-seal is only one-quarter to one-half inch thick, as opposed to paving which can be five inches thick, he said.

When asked the weight limit on chip-sealed roads, Fanning replied, "zero."

He said the county is trying to catch construction crews who may be tearing up chip-sealed roads.

While Pahrump residents visiting Las Vegas casinos could formerly be identified by their dusty cars in the parking lot, the valley roads are gradually being all paved or chip-sealed. Nye County Road Foreman Dave Fanning said about 265 miles of roads were chip-sealed in the last five years, for a total of about 1,100 miles. Another 260 miles of road are paved. He estimated there's about 500 miles left to pave or chip-seal, which led Simons to complain about the pace of the program.

Simons also remarked while he's waiting for the street in front of his house to be paved, there's some streets in town that are paved, with no houses on them. Fanning said some of those streets are connector streets between main thoroughfares. In one case, Honeysuckle Street, which winds around east of Dandelion Road to Calvada Boulevard, is paved because attendees at sporting events at Honeysuckle Park would often park in the gravel area, stirring up dust.

Yao said he's amazed at how many miles of streets the county has paved in the last few years.

Sam Musselman, an engineering technician for the road department, gave some clues as to which petitioners may get priority. Besides the petitions filed by residents, the county looks at the width of right-of-way; any encroachments on the right-of-way the county may have to remove, like trees, walls or fences; the number of businesses and residences on the street; any drainage issues; school bus routes; volume and type of traffic.

Nye County has had to go to court over road dedications and easements in the past. In a case dating back to the year 2000, while paving Irene Street, the road department skipped a 660 feet of road in front of a residence and left it gravel while the owners were engaged in a legal dispute over the prescriptive easement. That strip was later paved.

Nye County Democratic Party Chairman Loyal Watkins was in court with Nye County recently over the removal of trees in front of his property for road work.

The county uses revenue from the four and a half cent per gallon gas tax for the chip-sealing. After that Yao said, "the funding for the chip-seal is purely at the discretion of commissioners."

Nye County uses Payment Equal to Taxes, money it receives from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of Yucca Mountain, to make up the cost of the rest of the program.

Fanning told one audience member it can cost $20,000 per mile to chip-seal a road. Paving costs five times as much. Carver noted the cost of oil can drive up that price.

Fanning told another audience member the county tries to grade gravel roads twice each year.

The petition system is designed to prevent accusations of favoritism in the chip-seal program, he said.

Carver expects the chip-sealing list presented Wednesday to be up for discussion when the Nye County Regional Transportation Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. March 19, in the administration building at 1501 E. Basin Ave. Their recommendations will be sent to the Nye County Commission for ratification.

Carver told interested audience members, "You won't know until probably May or the first meeting in June" which streets will make the final list.

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Oak Ridger
February 23, 2007

Alexander will follow Oak Ridge opinions on waste processing

Duncan Mansfield
Associated Press

KNOXVILLE — Sen. Lamar Alexander supports nuclear power as a clean-air alternative to coal-burning power plants, but he said Thursday that he wouldn’t want the nuclear waste processed in Oak Ridge without the community’s support or limits on how much waste is handled.

“Oak Ridge would be a logical place because of the technical expertise there,” the Tennessee Republican said after addressing a conference on national parks.

“(But) I am waiting to see how the community feels about it. If the community is comfortable with it, then I will support it. If they are not, then I won’t.”

A 7,000-acre Department of Energy site near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is one of 11 locations being studied as part of the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The Bush administration strategy would reverse the country’s long-held policy banning the reuse of spent nuclear fuel, which is now stored at nuclear power plants around the country awaiting the long-stalled opening of a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The plan envisions U.S. companies selling reactors and fuel to developing countries, with the fuel returning to the United States for reprocessing.

The project would require a fuel recycling center, a nuclear reactor to burn the recycled fuel and a nuclear research center. Oak Ridge, associated with nuclear power since helping create the first atomic bomb in World War II, is being considered for all three facilities.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican who represents Oak Ridge, worries about bringing more waste to Oak Ridge, which continues to clean up radioactive and hazardous wastes created decades ago.

A community forum last week drew support from people touting Oak Ridge’s nuclear credentials and the economic benefits of winning the facilities. Others said Oak Ridge’s relatively wet climate wasn’t suitable and some said the proposed site contained “irreplaceable assets” for wildlife.

Alexander said the amount of waste coming to Oak Ridge for reprocessing could be limited “as part of the arrangement that is made with the government” if the city is selected. “Oak Ridge or any other site doesn’t have to be the site for waste from all over the country,” he said.

The former Tennessee governor said there probably was “no place in the country (that) has more technical expertise for dealing with these sorts of issues than the Oak Ridge community.”

“On the other hand, Oak Ridge was burned during the Cold War and before the Cold War by assurances that it was safe to handle dangerous materials, and many people got sick from it,” he said.

“So I think before Oak Ridge takes this step, the community will want to assure itself of exactly what it is getting into. That it can be handled safely and that there will be a limit to the amount of waste they would be expected to handle,” Alexander said.

Studies on each of the sites will be submitted to DOE in about 90 days.

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Hampton Union
February 23, 2007

Work at nuke plant

By Susan Morse
smorse@seacoastonline.com

SEABROOK -- FPL Energy Seabrook Station will bring two to three large pieces of equipment by barge to the nuclear power plant on Seabrook Harbor, the Board of Selectmen said Wednesday.

The pieces will be the dry cask storage to house spent fuel rods on site, according to Seabrook Station spokesman David Barr. The earliest they will be brought in is this fall, he said.

Spent fuel rods are being stored on site at nuclear power plants nationwide as the central federal depository planned at Yucca Mountain is held up by lawsuits.

Seabrook Station has excavated an area the size of a football field down to bedrock for the casks, Barr said. By next year, the site will be a concrete slab to hold the pre-cast concrete modules coming in by barge. Each piece is about the size of a small garage, he said.

The move will be similar to the removal of four large steam generators from Seabrook Station 10 years ago, Barr said. The generators were taken out because a second reactor never went online.

One of the companies handling transportation for the dry casks was involved in moving the steam generators, Barr said.

Before the barges can come in, selectmen need to give permission for the contractors to remove 50 to 60 feet of new fence at the Yankee Fisherman's Cooperative on Seabrook Harbor.

The power plant will rebuild the fence after the equipment is brought in.

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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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