Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, March 22, 2007
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Senator Harry Reid
March 22, 2007

Nevada News

Yucca Mountain

I refuse to let Nevada become the nation's nuclear dumping ground.  That is why I joined with Sen. John Ensign to introduce Senate S. 784, the Federal Accountability for Nuclear Waste Storage Act of 2007, which would require nuclear waste to be stored at the facilities where it is produced.

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Tri-City Herald
March 21, 2007

Vitrification pretreatment test plant in works

Annette Cary
Herald Staff Writer

The Department of Energy and Bechtel National are starting a $42 million project to make sure Hanford's vitrification plant is correctly designed to efficiently separate radioactive waste for treatment.

A year ago an independent review team found 28 technical issues needed to be addressed at the massive plant to prevent "a protracted start-up and arduous operations."

Two of the biggest issues involved separating nonradioactive aluminum from other solids that are high-level radioactive waste.

"One of the criticisms of the experts was that it was tested on a very small scale," said John Eschenberg, DOE manager of the vitrification plant project.

The aluminum separations process planned for the plant has worked in the laboratory. But testing was done on cupfuls of radioactive waste and that process must be scaled up to 80,000 gallon tanks of radioactive waste.

An Engineered Scale Pretreatment System, which will cover space about the size of a basketball court, is planned to make sure the process works as well at the production scale as it does at the laboratory scale.

The $12.2 billion vitrification plant is being built to turn waste left from the past production of plutonium for the nation's weapons program into a solid glass form for permanent disposal.

A pretreatment plant with a footprint the size of four football fields will separate the waste to capture high-level radioactive waste in glass logs to be sent to a national repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

Low-activity radioactive waste, including the aluminum, also will be glassified, then buried at a lined landfill at Hanford at a far lower cost.

To remove aluminum from radioactive solids, Bechtel National plans to add sodium hydroxide to the waste to dissolve it into the liquid. Then the slurry would be sent through filters that would concentrate the solids but not capture the aluminum dissolved in the liquid.

The test project will look at the best way to get the aluminum into solution and whether the filtering system is large enough for efficient operations.

Bechtel National is looking at when and how to add the sodium hydroxide for the most efficient mixing. It's also looking at increasing the length of the filters. A year ago, waste was planned to be sent through a series of three eight-foot filters. Now adding two longer filters is being considered to bring the total length to 46 feet.

Increasing the temperature also might make the aluminum go into solution faster with less sodium hydroxide added, said Reid Peterson, an engineer for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Anything added to the waste, such as the sodium hydroxide, increases the volume of waste that will have to be turned into glass.

Heating the waste also could make it move through the filters faster and more efficiently, just as heating syrup from the refrigerator makes it pour faster, he said.

Bechtel National, which is responsible for solving the design issue, is having the equipment for the test plant with full-size filters built in New Mexico. It will be set up in the Tri-Cities, possibly at the Applied Process Engineering Laboratory in Richland if space is available. The test plant will cost about $16.5 million.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will operate the plant.

It initially plans to test the design on one type of mock waste to make sure the scale up of the plant from the laboratory to the production size works as anticipated, Peterson said.

Then it will try using the plant on mockups of different types of waste that the plant is expected to treat.

Hanford has 53 million gallons of waste left from a variety of different production processes, each with different hazardous chemical and radioactive components.

The test plant will be valuable not just to prove the vitrification plant process now, but also as the plant operates, Eschenberg said. It will be able to perform experiments to optimize separations as production moves to more challenging batches of waste, he said.

The plant, which will only use mock waste, should be assembled near Hanford in early 2008. Initial test results should be available in the spring and results on more types of waste should be available later that year.

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Chicago Daily Southtown
March 21, 2007

Applause for Lang column

Thanks very much to Marlene Lang for writing one of the best articles I have seen lately on Yucca Mountain (March 11, Insight) -- and I see lots of them. I have been working full time on this issue for more than 20 years.

One of the ironic things Lang mentioned is that Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman says Yucca Mountain is essential "in order to ensure (the expansion of nuclear power), the nation must have a repository for disposal of spent nuclear fuel (that's the industry's term) and high-level radioactive waste."

In other words, Yucca Mountain only gets you much more waste.

Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, I think, recommended the building of many more nuclear power plants, but fortunately that has not happened.

The Energy Department has expressed, many times, its concern over lawsuits.

There are studies showing that waste could remain at or close to the site of generation until a sane policy is established, which would be less expensive than proceeding with Yucca Mountain.

Yucca Mountain has very serious flaws and will not adequately contain the waste. Just because the nuclear industry wants to build new plants does not make Yucca Mountain a better site. We believe the nation really needs to have a discussion about what sort of power people prefer, what the costs and risks are and how and where those costs and risks will be borne.

It is our opinion that first there must be publicly accepted safety regulations in place (no final radiation safety standard has yet been issued), then a site found that can contain the waste for its dangerous lifetime (up to 1 million years) with community acceptance and, finally, a program that has full public participation and is not subject to pressure from government and industry.

It appears the United States is not ready for such a policy.

Judy Treichel
Executive director
Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force
Las Vegas

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Rutland Herald
March 20, 2007

Vt. AG weighs in on Yankee spent fuel

By Susan Smallheer
Herald Staff

MONTPELIER — The Vermont Attorney General's office has added its voice to six other states asking federal regulators to take into account the safety of on-site storage for high-level radioactive waste when they consider a license extension at Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, among other reactors.

Monday was the deadline for public comment on the petition originally filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office, according to Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.

Rep. Richard Marek, D-Newfane, said he had been told by Attorney General William Sorrell that the state had joined Massachusetts, asking that the NRC change its own rules on the issue. Marek had written a letter on behalf of fellow House members seeking the state's involvement.

The Massachusetts petition seeks an assessment of the vulnerability of the spent fuel pool, and whether it is a natural target of terrorists, and it also wants the NRC to change its rules about whether the regulators can consider this issue in relicensing dockets.

Sorrell, and a deputy attorney general also working on the case, didn't return telephone calls Monday.

Marek said that he had received the letter from Sorrell last week, alerting him and other Windham County legislators that the state had already joined the debate. Windham County legislators and anti-nuclear activists had asked for the state to join Massachusetts on the issue.

The Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts, which is also owned by Entergy Nuclear, is also seeking a 20-year extension of its original 40-year license. In the case of Vermont Yankee, that license to operate expires in 2012.

Sheehan said that his office hadn't tallied all the public comments that had been submitted on the issue, but he said the state of California had submitted a very similar petition to the Massachusetts argument. The other states already on record with Massachusetts are New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Kentucky and Louisiana.

At issue is the safety of the highly-radioactive spent fuel, which in Vermont's case is still kept in a deep water pool on the fifth floor of the reactor building. Entergy Nuclear is in the process of building an on-site storage facility next to the Vernon reactor, where the oldest and coolest of the old fuel will be transferred into steel and concrete casks.

Sen. Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, president pro tempore of the state Senate, said the news that Sorrell's office had joined the debate was welcome.

Shumlin said when NRC officials met with legislators in Montpelier a couple of weeks ago, legislators were "astounded" to learn that the NRC was not considering the issue of storage of high-level radioactive waste when making a decision about extending Vermont Yankee's license.

Shumlin said he would consider approving a 20-year extension, but only if there was an independent safety assessment of the aging reactor, as well as the issue of disposal of high-level radioactive fuel.

"Vermont would never have taken that plant if they knew that high-level waste would be stored on the banks of the Connecticut River," Shumlin said.

If Vermont Yankee does get a license extension, he said, it should be conditioned on different areas of the state hosting some of the high-level waste since it will be mobile in the concrete and steel casks.

"We've had it all in Windham County now for almost 40 years," Shumlin said, noting the entire state benefited from Yankee and should share in its liabilities.

"If we're going to create the waste, we should share in its storage and Windham County has done its share," he said, adding that storage should start in the state's most populous areas.

"It is appropriate that the issue be addressed at the commission level. We believe that the plant is protected by its very strong design and also by a comprehensive security program on site, but also by the resources of the federal government," said Robert Williams, Entergy spokesman.

Sheehan said the Massachusetts attorney general's office has been rebuffed by the NRC and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on several related issues regarding the relicensing of Pilgrim and Vermont Yankee, which is only a few miles from the Massachusetts border.

Marek said federal regulators told the Vermont legislators a federal waste site would be available to nuclear plant operators by 2025, but Marek said that was unlikely, given the problems encountered at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

--Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.

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Advertiser Adelaide
March 20, 2007

Reactors to become 'nuclear storage sites'

Reactor plants will become defacto waste storage sites if Australia adopts nuclear power, a US anti-nuclear campaigner claims.

Washington-based Kevin Kamps, who is on a national tour with the Wilderness Society, said today the public's primary concern should be where the governments planned to store nuclear waste.

He said US experience showed reactors, generally located near cities, had been forced to store toxic waste while the argument of where to build a national dump continued.

American nuclear reactors produced up to 30 metric tonnes of waste each year, which posed serious health and environmental risks, he said.

''Nuclear power is still a very contentious issue in the US with most people asking where do we put the waste,'' he said.

''If reactors are built, they will serve as waste storage sites for many years in the future and there is a massive risk for accidents.''

Mr Kamps pointed to the Yucca Mountain proposed dump in Nevada that had now been delayed as a groundswell of opposition grew.

He said nearby residents and environmentalists did not want the dump because of the site's location on a fault line, near drinking water supplies and on volcanic land.

He argued that the same problem would happen in Australia if nuclear energy was developed.

Last month the South Australian city of Port Augusta, north of Adelaide, was named the most likely location for Australia's first nuclear power plant by The Australia Institute thinktank.

Mr Kamps dismissed the argument put by Prime Minister John Howard that nuclear energy was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions produced by coal.

''The creation of a nuclear power industry to decrease emissions trades one ecological disaster for another,'' he claimed.

The government should concentrate on improving energy efficiency and renewable energies to solve global warning, he said.

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NucNews
March 19, 2007

Letter from Kristi Hodges to Ward Sproat, OCRWM, Re: Quality Assurance problems at Yucca Mountain

March 14, 2007
Edward F. Sproat, Director
U. S. Department of Energy, OCRWM
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington DC 20585

Dear Mr. Sproat:

We have never met, but you have probably heard my name, and read my most recent statements in Ben Lando's March 9th United Press International article.  You appear to be attempting to change the quality culture at Yucca.  I support honest initiatives, but as a quality professional I look for evidence.  The evidence so far is mixed.  Let's look at some recent press statements:

Ed McGaffigan, a veteran member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that [T]he Yucca Mountain program is deeply flawed and . . . should be scrapped.  Speaking to a group of reporters, the official said the Nevada site probably could be licensed "if it had been handled properly through the years."  But he said it has been doomed by failures in Congress to correct flaws in nuclear waste laws and by Energy Department missteps, including appointment of some directors "who really weren't cut out for the job."  I think Yucca Mountain has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy through its history, McGaffigan said. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 01/23/07)

Ward Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management . . . agreed with some of McGaffigan's assertions about past leadership problems tied to politics and setbacks that could have been avoided with quality assurance and the cultural mind-set. . . "Commissioner McGaffigan had a lot of valid points.  Some of those will need to be addressed for long-term success. . . . My approach is working within the legalities and organization that exists and to make sure the program has the right people, right skills set, right processes and right culture to make it work right," Sproat said" (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 01/25/07)

. . . McGaffigan has said that Sproat was the most capable administrator he has seen in his ten years at the NRC. (World Nuclear News, 01/29/07)

First, I was impressed by your response to Mr. McGaffigan.  You personally redeemed what otherwise was a disturbing DOE response to a respectable man; one whose health situation leaves no personal advantage for stating what he believes to be true.  You not only appear to be a capable administrator, you appear to be a statesman received well by all sides.  That, itself, is a positive change for the Yucca project.

With that said, there are areas of concern that I believe must be addressed.  If you were quoted correctly, and I have no reason to believe you weren't, you acknowledge past leadership problems, although you don't go so far as to say, as Mr. McGaffigan did, that some former directors really weren't cut out for the job.

In the UPI article you are quoted as follows:

"There's a fundamentally different approach by the senior management team than this program has ever had before," said Sproat, who's been on the job less than a year. "And we recognize that behaviors of managers below us have in the past been major contributors to some of these problems and we have made changes in those management teams."

This, Sir, is what I find troubling.  You refer to the behaviors of managers "below us" as though you have replaced those responsible for those behaviors.  You, yourself, replaced one former OCRWM director (not cut out for the job), and you filled empty positions once held by "major contributors" to problems, but former senior managers and advisors are still incredulously positioned in your senior management team; those indicative of the bad "personnel policy" that Mr. McGaffigan so insightfully noted.

So what "different approach" would the senior managers and/or advisors take that asserted "push back on QA" and "push back on the NRC" and participated in (and covered up for) the railroading of the former QA management team?  This was the very team that the NRC praised in the Federal Register for successfully identifying the major QA program deficiencies while slamming the line organization's inability to correct those deficiencies.  The DOE's calculated response, rather than improve its own performance, was to slam the QA oversight into oblivion.  So while attempting to bring it back to life, keep in mind that there is a man too low in your organization that paid the price for doing his job too well; his name is Bob Clark, the former Office of Quality Assurance (OQA) Director, and the Department owes him much more than an apology.

For several years a dark cloud; much darker than any outside opposition, has hovered over Yucca Mountain because no one was willing to come clean of actions the U.S. Department of Labor determined "extraordinarily egregious."  Instead, the QA program was systematically dismantled by your predecessor (and members of your senior management team) who executed a plan put into motion by her predecessor (and members of your senior management team); thereby destroying years of work that you now seek to rebuild.  My question is, since that plan failed as predicted, what makes those complicit in its execution capable and trustworthy in rebuilding what they previously destroyed?

Also, your stated approach is to work within the organization that exists ". . . to make sure the program has the right people, right skills set, right processes and right culture to make it work right."  Your problem, and no secret, is that you can't change the organization that exists; you can only work with what you've got.  You may have recruited a new OQA Director, but he inherited staff members exceptionally skilled in manufacturing legal crises.  In fact, he inherited them and their attorney, who often feeds at the Yucca trough.  I wish him luck.

To demonstrate the trouble you are in, recently you awarded a contract for conducting an "independent" review of Yucca engineering processes and procedures.  Senator Reid issued a condemning statement timed with the release of a Las Vegas SUN news article.  The opposition was outraged over the contractor's conflicts of interest; easily verifiable as a longtime insider.  But despite the familiar names listed on the company's roster, they, your opposition, missed the big one; that is, not only is that contractor conflicted due to its two-decade Yucca history, it is conflicted because of its current Yucca work.

Yes, the contractor provides QA support to your Lead Laboratory - Sandia National Laboratories - their offices located nearby your new OQA Director.  It appears that someone forget to inform you when, in a recent message to the Yucca Project, you referred to them as an "outside firm."  They are not outsiders and they certainly are not independent.  My assumption is that you did not intentionally misrepresent their status, but rather you trusted your senior management team's "different approach" to reporting the truth.  My advice is not to trust them again.  My other advice is to select truly "outside firms" for your remaining "independent" evaluations.

In closing, I've been adding the final touches to my Yucca Mountain Railroaded first edition, but there still is time to change the final chapter.  It won't change anything from the past because I'm telling the story as it happened, but any evidence supporting a change in the current quality culture will be favorably noted.  If anything I am fair.

Sincerely,

Original Signed
Kristi Hodges

cc:
Senator Harry Reid
Senator John Ensign
William Belke, U.S. NRC (retired)
Robert Clark, U.S. DOE
Robert Latta, U.S. NRC
James Matttimoe, Nevada Citizen
Steve Tetreault, Stephens Washington Bureau
Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Robert Loux, Agency for Nuclear Projects
Lisa Mascaro, Las Vegas SUN

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Reno Gazette-Journal
March 19, 2007

Nevada voters negative on war

Guy Clifton
Reno Gazette-Journal

Nevada voters have an overwhelmingly negative view of the war in Iraq, and a majority think Congress should block funding for additional troops to be sent to the war zone.

A Reno Gazette-Journal/News 4 poll also showed that voters are critical of the government's handling of global warming, slightly in favor of universal health care even if it means paying more taxes and largely unsure as to how important a role the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will have in the 2008 presidential election.

The Research 2000 poll was conducted March 6-8 and surveyed 600 voters statewide who vote regularly in state elections. The poll consisted of 240 Democrats, 246 Republicans and 114 independents. Of those surveyed, 306 were women and 294 were men. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

By a better than 2-to-1 margin, voters said going to war in Iraq for regime change was not worth it. Sixty-three percent of voters surveyed said it was not worth it, while 31 percent said it was and 6 percent said they were not sure.

Of that total, 90 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independent voters said the regime change was not worth it. Republicans were in favor of regime change by a 57-34 margin with 9 percent unsure.

Leonard Weinberg, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and a national expert on terrorism and the Middle East, said he was not surprised that Nevada voters are echoing the sentiments of the rest of the country.

"The war in Iraq was justified as kind of an extension of the war on terrorism out of a belief that Saddam had some connection with al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks," Weinberg said. "Now that doesn't appear to be the case.

"Because of the American effort to get rid of Saddam Hussein, we have unintentionally manufactured more terrorists than there were at the start of the game."

As far as funding the war, 47 percent of voters said Congress should block additional funding for troops to be sent to Iraq while continuing to fund troops currently there. Twenty percent said all funding should be blocked, while 19 percent said all funding should be allowed and 14 percent said they were not sure.

Those numbers don't surprise Weinberg either.

"I obviously don't support cutting off funding for troops in the field," he said.

Weinberg said the surge in troops by the Bush administration "might have a short-term cosmetic effect," but that long-term effects on Iraq and the region "are still yet to be calculated."

In other poll questions:

On the topic of global warming, voters in the poll responded to the question: Do you think the U.S. government is doing enough to counteract the phenomenon known as global warming?

Fifty-four percent said not enough is being done, while 17 percent said enough is being done and 14 percent said they don't believe global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed. Fifteen percent were unsure.

On the topic of universal health care, 54 percent of voters said they would be willing to pay more in taxes if the money would guarantee improved and expanded health care coverage in Nevada.

Thirty-five percent of those polled were against the question and 11 percent said they were unsure.

A plurality of voters polled said the Yucca Mountain issue would be either important or very important.

Eight percent said it would be very important, and 36 percent said it would be important. Twenty-six percent said it would be not very important and 6 percent said it would play no factor at all. Twenty-one percent of voters said they were unsure.

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Las Vegas SUN
March 18, 2007

Turning out the lights on Yucca Mountain

Project may be dead, but how will we know?

By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON - One mile deep into Yucca Mountain, lights are being turned off. The train that carries visitors into the cavernous hole in the mountain will run no more. Layoffs are possible.

The Energy Department says it is merely cutting back on unneeded costs. But the moment the lights went out and the train went quiet may one day be remembered as the beginning of the end of the nation's nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Yucca Mountain's leading critics, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, have begun saying that the project is dead. Nearly 20 years behind schedule, it can look that way at times.

Yet Washington continues to spend a half-billion dollars a year on Yucca. That's not the balance sheet of something gone dead.

So if Yucca Mountain is indeed now dead, if "it's history," as Reid told the state Legislature last month, how would we know it? What will the end look like?

The answer is still unclear, but month by month, it's coming into focus.

Three clear indicators are just around the corner.

First are potentially crippling budget cuts this summer from Congress.

Next is whether the Energy Department can meet its June 2008 deadline to submit the project to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval.

A final indicator is the November 2008 presidential election, which could put an anti-Yucca president in the White House.

Action on any one of those could deliver a fatal blow, say lawmakers, Energy officials and industry insiders interviewed by the Sun.

Or, despite reports of its death, Yucca could continue along as it has for another 20 years.

"There may not be the eureka moment here, but I think it's going to be pretty obvious by the middle to end of next summer," said Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state agency fighting Yucca Mountain.

Budget hearings are to begin soon in Washington and Reid has vowed to cut the project back "as best we can," which is a modest way of describing what has happened in past years. President Bush's $900 million request for fiscal 2005 essentially was halved and has stayed at that level.

But that still leaves $494 million in Bush's proposed budget. The Energy Department's project manager, Edward Sproat, insists he needs the full amount to meet the 2008 deadline to forward the project to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for review.

Convincing Congress that Yucca is still a worthy investment could prove difficult, given Reid's new clout and waning patience on a project for which 60 percent of the current budget is being spent on do-overs. About $260 million is going to fix shoddy science.

The Energy Department has missed this particular application deadline before, which is partly why the dump that was supposed to open in 1998 is now penciled in for 2017.

But missing the deadline again, said Michelle Boyd, a nuclear policy analyst at the watchdog group Public Citizen, "is going to be the death knell."

Or maybe not. Last week outgoing Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Jeffrey S. Merrifield said that if the deadline is missed again, the time may have come to turn management over to a public-private partnership. But in Merrifield's view, that means "Yucca Mountain is not dead ... What I'm talking about is Plan B."

By the time voters choose a new president in November 2008, nuclear waste could stand as the national issue it was when Yucca was being considered years ago. Nuclear energy is gaining popularity as a power source that doesn't spew global warming pollutants, and Nevada's early Democratic caucus means candidates are being grilled about Yucca Mountain. Democratic candidates are mostly opposed. Republican contenders offer mixed opinions.

Veteran nuclear policy expert Daniel Hirsch of the California-based Committee to Bridge the Gap believes Yucca will not truly die until the White House gives the order.

Others, including Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, say that even White House opposition might not be enough. But it might set in motion Yucca's demise.

"The way I envision the end of Yucca Mountain is when the nuclear industry is so frustrated by the lack of progress ... and comes to Congress and asks us to make a settlement with them."

Utility companies desperately need a dump for the waste that is mounting at nuclear power plants nationwide. Congress promised to take it off their hands by 1998, and lawsuits have left taxpayers with a $7 billion liability. If the companies have any hope of building new power plants, they need to assure the public the waste problem is solved.

The industry's lobby arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute, believes Yucca remains viable, even as it considers the promise of temporary waste sites being planned for 11 communities nationwide under the government's proposed recycling plan.

The institute's Steve Kraft said, "the only thing that would stop it is we discover something about Yucca Mountain that we didn't know before," which, he adds, he "can't imagine."

Science remains a wild card. Will water seep through and corrode the waste canisters, sending radioactive toxins into the Nevada ground water? Will standards for protecting residents from cancer be considered good enough?

Some answers could start becoming known as the commission review begins.

Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, perhaps the leading nuclear energy advocate on Capitol Hill, is not worried. "I do not believe that Yucca Mountain is dead," he said in a statement to the Sun. "I don't doubt that additional delays will occur, but the Yucca program is resilient."

Recently the Energy Department decided to turn off some lights at Yucca and skip upgrades to the rail line, relying on computers rather than humans to retrieve data deep in the mountain. Savings of $100 million are expected over several years. Layoffs can happen as work ebbs and flows.

So how will anyone know Yucca is gone, done, dead, fini?

Reid and others who have watched the project for years say they see the writing on the wall. They sense the momentum shift on Capitol Hill. Saying it's dead will make it so, they say. Or as Reid's office asks: How can you prove it's alive?

Longtime nuclear industry observer Paul Craig, a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of California, Davis, doesn't believe anyone will know when it dies - at least not immediately.

Nobody will want to fess up, he said, because then someone will have to tackle the thorny issue of what happens to the waste.

Craig, who served on an independent Yucca Mountain technical review board until 2004, believes the project will simply go the way of the late war hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"My guess is Yucca will never die ... It will fade away."

--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.

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Chicago Daily Southtown
March 18, 2007

The mountain that will spit poison

Marlene Lang
Mother Earth is not for sale.

That's what the Western Shoshone National Council has told the U.S. government.

The Nation was offered pennies per acre for their land in parts of Nevada, Utah, Idaho and into California, but the Nation's council said: No deal.

The U.S. government said, "Yes deal," and moved in. We needed a radioactive waste dump there, and a place to test nukes.

In 2005, the Western Shoshone council filed a lawsuit claiming the land is theirs under an 1863 treaty. They further claim that the Bush administration's 2002 approval of one tract of the land -- Yucca Mountain -- for a nuclear waste repository, violates both the treaty and, in turn, the U.S. Constitution, which their lawsuit points out makes treaties "supreme."

I keep my little copy of the Constitution handy when I write. Let me check that. Yup. It does say that, in Article 6. "All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby."

The treaty made with the Western Shoshone allows only five uses of the land by the U.S. government; settlements, mines, ranches, railroads and roads. Any use beyond the five listed must be approved by both the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone National Council, the treaty states.

And to add intrigue, there's gold in them thar hills.

Ten percent of the world's supply and 64 percent of U.S. gold comes from this desert site, where mountainsides are blasted up tract by tract and the rubble treated with cyanide-laced water, to get the gold out.

No one anticipated, back in the days of cowboys and Indians and dirty gold miners, that we would need a place to hide radioactive waste for 10,000 years, lest it poison and deform us all. But that day has come, thanks to science and the ethical deficiencies of mankind.

After years of scouting out the best reservation property to use for the really big nuke-dump-to-end-all-nuke-dumps, the Bush administration picked Yucca Mountain in 2002. This was after the U.S. military had already established a nuclear test site nearby, on land included in the 1863 treaty -- a spread the size of Maine, with its own volcano and fault lines.

Last's week's column was not long enough to explain this travesty.

Nevada's governor in 2002 immediately vetoed the generous approval of a nuke dump in Nevada, only to have the U.S. Congress override that veto. Nevada last week protested the legislation that a sweat-soaked Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman was again pressing urgently along.

Nevada is resisting, as is the Western Shoshone Nation.

How, then, does the U.S. government explain or justify its violation of an apparently legitimate treaty, authorized by Ulysses S. Grant in 1863?

That's what the United Nations wanted to know, after the Western Shoshone Nation's council in 2005 filed an urgent action request with the U.N. Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Several excuses have been floated. The first and most predictable is that the treaty was merely a friendly agreement. The old, "just kidding," defense.

That's the least obscene reason. The Earth Island Institute reports that when the Western Shoshone National Council refused to give up the land for a radioactive waste dump in exchange for money, politicians said the takeover was legitimate because -- pause here and perhaps be seated -- POLLS showed many of the tribe's members want the deal. Never mind letting the Nation settle its own disagreement. Never mind dealing with its rightful representatives.

Need I point out the irony of this whopper to my readers? For slow folks, this is a case of convenient governing: We can toss out the representative form when it suits us in mowing over native peoples, but we can use the representative system to mow over the people of Nevada.

And why should Chicago's Southland readers care? The official state Web site reports that Illinois stores more radioactive waste at its eight temporary sites than any other state, with a heap in Grundy County.

Lemont and Morris were on the radar for industry expansion projects when the Department of Energy visited less than one month ago. ComEd's Zion plant has shut down, but its LaSalle reactors are still pumping out the power and the "spent fuel." It's piling up, and once a home for the big dump is finagled, all that radioactive garbage will be moving around.

If that doesn't scare you, maybe this will: To the Western Shoshone, Yucca Mountain is Snake Mountain, a place of prayer and of reputed powerful spiritual energy.

One of the Nation's traditional stories is that Snake Mountain will one day be awakened and will split open and spit out poison.

Before you sneer, think about that radioactive waste, sleeping safely in its giant tube beneath Snake Mountain, and think of that volcano across the valley, and the nuclear test site not so far away, and the unusual subterranean river system below this part of the desert.

What we put in the mountain may not stay in the mountain.

--Daily Southtown columnist Marlene Lang can be reached at blackbirdlang@yahoo.com">blackbirdlang@yahoo.com.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 17, 2007

Yucca cost projections outlined

By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Over the next 16 years, the cost of building and operating a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will be almost $27 billion, the project's director said Friday.

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said it would cost $18.5 billion to open the repository by 2017 and finish transportation routes to the facility.

Another $8.4 billion would be needed to operate the repository through 2023, Sproat said. "We have an 80 percent confidence level that these numbers are correct," he told reporters in a conference call.

Sproat noted that the figures do not reflect the amount needed to operate the Yucca Mountain repository until it is closed. He said the Department of Energy plans to release those numbers in May.

The estimates released Friday came in response to a request in July from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee, which oversees the Yucca Mountain Project, asked Sproat to provide new cost projections after he said the opening of the repository would have to be delayed from 2010 to 2017.

In 2001, the Energy Department said it would cost $57.6 billion to open the repository by 2010.

Nevada lawmakers said the new cost estimates demonstrate why nuclear waste should remain at the reactors that produce it.

"The DOE's new partial budget estimate is sheer fantasy based on legislation that will never pass and a timetable that is about as realistic as the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the ghost of Elvis," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in a prepared statement.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., issued a statement saying the cost projections show why Congress and the Bush administration "need to put and end to this reckless waste of taxpayer funds now."

Last week, the Energy Department reintroduced the "fix Yucca Mountain" bill aimed at expediting the licensing of the repository, which would be located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., on the same day countered with legislation requiring nuclear waste to stay at reactor sites.

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AlterNet
March 16, 2007

How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups

By Diane Farsetta
Center for Media and Democracy

We're having a lopsided discussion on energy issues in America because the nuclear industry has funded it that way.

"We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press," concluded the Columbia Journalism Review in an editorial in its July / August 2006 issue.

The magazine was rightly bemoaning the tendency of news outlets to present former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman as environmentalists who support nuclear power, without noting that both are paid spokespeople for a group bankrolled by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI represents nuclear power plant operators, plant designers, fuel suppliers and other sectors of the nuclear power industry. Hill & Knowlton is NEI's public relations firm, though it's not the only firm working to build support for nuclear power.

Thanks in part to an ongoing, multifaceted PR push -- along with very real concerns about energy prices, rising energy demand, aging infrastructure, sustainability and global warming -- nuclear power is attracting serious attention from reporters and policymakers alike. The question is whether a vital public debate over energy choices is being skewed by deep-pocketed interests with a dog in the fight.

The dangers of such distortions are especially acute at the state and local levels. That's where efforts to extend the licenses of existing nuclear power plants, to maintain or expand nuclear waste storage facilities, and to site new proposed nuclear power plants, are made or broken. And that's where pro-nuclear campaigners appear to be focusing, adopting the mantle and tactics of community groups while steadfastly refusing to provide details on their operations.

Persistence Pays Off

All manner of businesses promote themselves every day, but the nuclear power industry's need for good PR is tremendous. No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States since 1979, the year of the Three Mile Island meltdown. The Yucca Mountain national repository for nuclear waste -- originally scheduled to open in 1998 -- is now slated to begin accepting waste in March 2017. Experienced nuclear engineers are becoming scarce; nearly 30 percent of the industry's workforce "will be eligible to retire within five years," the Scripps Howard News Service reported in April 2006. And even with what one Forbes columnist described as "all this corporate welfare," potential "investors remain wary of construction risks" for new nuclear power plants, explained an energy sector analyst.

The industry's future is so precarious that Exelon Nuclear's head of project development warned attendees of the Electric Power 2005 conference, "Inaction is synonymous with being phased out." That's why years of effort -- not to mention millions of dollars -- have been invested in nuclear power's PR rebirth as "clean, green and safe."

The nuclear power industry has been promoting itself as part of the solution to global warming for a decade. Industry representatives appeared en masse at a 1998 climate change conference in Buenos Aires, according to environmental consultant Alan Tate. "They inundated the international negotiators, including with what appeared to be a number of front groups like Students for Nuclear Power," he told reporter Liz Minchin. By 2005, nuclear industry spokespeople were "giving much more polished performances at climate meetings and negotiations."

Entergy, which owns and operates 10 U.S. nuclear power plants, has worked with the PR giant Burson-Marsteller for at least five years. In April 2002, Entergy's communications director told O'Dwyer's PR Daily that the firm had been hired "mainly for the Indian Point issues" -- the security and environmental concerns raised by the company's Indian Point nuclear power plant, located outside New York City -- "but its work now includes handling the overall image of the company." In 2003, Entergy created the "Coalition Against Shutting Down Vermont's Electricity Options" and spent $200,000 to oppose a citizen campaign to close the company's Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in 2012.

And then there's NEI, which exists to do PR and lobbying for the nuclear industry. In 2004, NEI was embarrassed when the Austin Chronicle outed one of its PR firms, Potomac Communications Group, for ghostwriting pro-nuclear op/ed columns. The paper described the op/ed campaign as "a decades-long, centrally orchestrated plan to defraud the nation's newspaper readers by misrepresenting the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry 'experts.'"

In January 2006, NEI signed an $8 million contract with Hill & Knowlton. The objectives included developing "a national coalition that would 'activate and expand on' existing nuclear energy supporters, engaging employees, shareholders, academics, health experts, and environmental organizations," and "'pre-empting and offsetting' criticism from opponents," wrote the Holmes Report. With the firm's help, NEI launched what is possibly its greatest PR triumph, almost exactly two years after the op/ed controversy.

Building the Nuclear CASE

The Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy) held its inaugural press conference on April 24, 2006, just two days before the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. CASEnergy is fully funded by NEI, and supported by Hill & Knowlton, along with the polling firm Penn Schoen & Berland.

CASEnergy is not the first business-funded coalition to support nuclear power. In May 2001, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce formed the Alliance for Energy & Economic Growth, "to support proposals that boost [energy] supply, promote investment in the energy infrastructure, encourage alternative energy sources and efficiency without mandates, and fund programs to help low-income energy consumers." The pro-nuclear alliance, whose steering committee includes NEI, hired former Congresswoman and Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro to lobby for the Yucca Mountain waste repository. But the alliance never received the attention that CASEnergy is now enjoying.

That's due in large part to the choice of Patrick Moore, a media-savvy and polarizing figure, as CASEnergy's co-chair and most public spokesperson. As he explained at the group's launch, Moore's role is to "speak and write to press the group's agenda, as well as to coordinate efforts," reported Nucleonics Week. His past work with Greenpeace has proved an irresistible hook for many reporters, even though his association with that group ended in 1986. Moore has now spent more time working as a PR consultant to the logging, mining, biotech, nuclear and other industries (since at least 1991, or 16 years) than he did as an environmental activist (from 1971 to 1986, or 15 years).

"Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press would peg [Moore and fellow co-chair Christie Whitman] as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders," reasoned the Columbia Journalism Review. The magazine added, "in some stories, columns and editorials, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Herald, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Rocky Mountain News, The New York Times, and CBS News all referred to Moore as either a Greenpeace founder or an environmentalist, without mentioning that he is also a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry."

Both NEI and Moore decline to say how much he's paid; Whitman won't answer that question either. Presumably, the nuclear industry feels it's getting its money's worth. A Nexis news database search on March 1, 2007 identified 302 news items about nuclear power that cite Moore, since April 2006. Only 37 of those pieces -- 12 percent of the total -- mention his financial relationship with NEI.

Industry representatives don't just showcase Moore to reporters. In response to a safety question at a public debate on nuclear power in Madison, Wis., on December 7, 2006, NEI's Lisa Stiles-Shell said, "Patrick Moore, the former co-founder of Greenpeace -- he's now very in favor of nuclear power -- often brings up an example of the Bhopal incident in India, 1986 -- a huge chemical accident. ... It was a disaster. But the response was not, 'We have to close down the chemical industry.' The response was, 'We have to make the chemical industry safer.' And that's exactly what nuclear has done, after Chernobyl and after Three Mile Island." She did not disclose Moore's paid position with NEI. When I asked about it, Stiles-Shell responded, "You can't change his mind with money."

Current Greenpeace leaders and other environmental activists have repeatedly distanced themselves from Moore and questioned his claims. Greenpeace advisor Harvey Wasserman recently wrote, "Moore exaggerates his role in Greenpeace and his credentials as a scientist to serve as a public relations hack." But these protestations have mostly been ignored. When they are raised, Moore dismisses them as further proof of the irrationality of his former colleagues.

Taking It to the States

What debate there has been about Moore's nuclear advocacy has focused on media coverage and national-level issues. Meanwhile, "a large part of CASEnergy's work" has proceeded "at the state and local level," as Nucleonics Week reported in April 2006. "The group is planning four or five 'state-level launches,'" added the trade publication, quoting a low-profile CASEnergy spokesman -- and Hill & Knowlton senior vice-president of corporate communications -- Don Meyer.

"Much of [CASEnergy's] work will be aimed at increasing public backing and winning support at the 'very local level' for plant siting and licensing," Environment & Energy News wrote the same month, also quoting Meyer. In September 2006, National Journal reported that CASEnergy "will hit the road this fall with town hall meetings, local press events, and such in New Hampshire, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan."

And hit the road they have.

In October, Patrick Moore headlined a CASEnergy event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was joined by local officials and representatives of business and labor groups at the Duane Arnold Energy Center, the state's only nuclear power plant. Moore "called on Iowans to join the CASEnergy Coalition," according to the group's press release, which referred to the event as "Iowa's CASEnergy kick-off."

Some "15 members of the Iowa House of Representatives Democratic caucus back the [CASEnergy] coalition," reported the Cedar Rapids Gazette. One legislator told the paper that "the coalition doesn't necessarily expect its efforts to yield another nuclear plant in Iowa," but the state's "first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses put the group in a position to influence a change in national energy policy." That's surprising, as federal policy already provides billions of dollars in nuclear industry subsidies, including for new nuclear power plants.

Moore was in Detroit the following month, calling on "Michigan residents to join the CASEnergy Coalition." That event was billed as CASEnergy's "Michigan kick-off" and also included a state legislator and representatives of local business and labor groups. Crain's Detroit Business noted that the pro-nuclear event came as the state's public service commission was readying its comprehensive energy plan for the governor.

Patrick Moore has been much busier than these -- the only events listed on the CASEnergy website -- suggest. He's brought his pro-nuclear road show to at least 10 other U.S. cities since last April. (See related SourceWatch article.) And CASEnergy isn't the only industry-funded group talking up nuclear power around the country.

In November 2006, Moore traveled to Yonkers, N.Y., to support extending the Indian Point nuclear power plant's license until 2035. Also appearing at the pre-Thanksgiving event were Entergy staffers, Rudy Giuliani (whose Giuliani Partners firm works for Entergy), and members of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (NY AREA). In January 2007, Moore was in Montpelier and Brattleboro, Vt., to speak with the Vermont Energy Partnership. In February, he returned to New York, to address NY AREA's "2007 Energy Day at Albany."

One Big, Happy, ProActive Family

The New York and Vermont pro-nuclear groups have more in common than Moore's attention. Both list Entergy, which operates nuclear plants in both states, as a member. And both groups' websites were registered by the same Virginia-based PR firm, ProActive Communications.

ProActive has provided other services for NY AREA, including designing the group's website, logo and newsletter, as well as a presentation template and DVD packaging (for a video titled, "The Power Behind a Growing New York"), according to the firm's website. In November, NY AREA promoted a video news release featuring Moore that credits "ProActive production services," along with the broadcast PR firm MultiVu, in its opening frames. (See video below. Around the same time, NY AREA also had an audio news release with Moore, but only MultiVu is listed on the "story summary.")

ProActive Communications provided a similar range of website and design services -- and a very similar look -- to a third pro-nuclear group, the Boston-based Massachusetts Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (Mass AREA), again according to the firm's website. Mass AREA's members also include Entergy, which runs the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass.

ProActive founder and president Mark Serrano refused to comment on his firm's work for Mass AREA, NY AREA or the Vermont Energy Partnership. After asking me to submit questions by email, he responded that my questions "relate to assumed business relationships. Discussing these matters with you or anyone else is not appropriate."

Yet the role of ProActive Communications and of Entergy is clear. ProActive lists among its specialties "coalition programs," "grassroots mobilizations," and "editorial [media] outreach." ProActive's program director, James Knubel, joined the PR firm after serving as senior vice-president for Entergy Nuclear Northeast. ProActive's Serrano does double duty as NY AREA's president, while ProActive communications director Paul Steidler also serves as NY AREA's media contact. Steidler joined the PR firm after leading the education reform project at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, an industry-funded think tank. (Steidler's name and bio were removed from the ProActive website shortly after I contacted the firm.)

NY AREA didn't respond to an interview request. Entergy spokesperson Jim Steets confirmed that the company was "instrumental in the founding of New York AREA," but said he didn't know "how much of New York AREA's funding comes from Entergy." He added, "There's no question that there's a strong association" between Entergy and NY AREA, but as "membership has grown, we've become just another dues-paying member." NY AREA is comprised of "independent-minded people, with interests of their own," he stressed.

Steets described ProActive Communications' work for NY AREA as: "If there are events or messages, things that we should attend or that people who agree with us might want to attend, ProActive is helpful in organizing the grassroots campaign that would demonstrate that there are people who subscribe to this [NY AREA's] mission. They're skilled in grassroots organizing and advocacy, very similar to what the groups who oppose us do."

Phillip Musegaas, a staff attorney at Riverkeeper, a New York-based environmental group that opposes the Indian Point plant, disagrees. NY AREA and similar groups "do the public a disservice by the fact that they're subsidized by Entergy," he said. "We're straighforward with our campaign, on the other side." Musegaas added, "Exelon, Entergy and other large companies have a lot of money to spend on PR. They do that directly with Burston-Marsteller and Giuliani Parnters, and less directly with these local groups."

Mass AREA communications director Joyce McMahon explained that her group is "not tied to NY AREA" and is "not just about nuclear issues." She verified that ProActive Communications does consulting work for Mass AREA, but declined to describe that work. McMahon also confirmed that Entergy helps fund Mass AREA, but said the group's other members also contribute, each giving an amount relative to its size.

Vermont Energy Partnership executive director Amanda Ibey also stressed that her group isn't focused solely on nuclear power. In an email, she wrote, "We have prepared a number of issue briefs on such topics as hydro power, energy efficiency, nuclear power, LICAP [incentives to keep New England-based generators], transmission infrastructure, and wind power." Ibey described the group as "member-funded" and would not comment on its relationship with ProActive Communications. She did explain that Patrick Moore "is paid by the group" as an adviser, but the "terms are proprietary. We do not work with the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition."

An Industry-Driven Grassroots

Are Vermont Energy Partnership, Mass AREA and NY AREA Entergy-funded astroturf, or fake grassroots groups? Each publicly lists its membership, including Entergy, on its website. And each counts among its members local businesses, unions and individuals that presumably don't stand to benefit directly from policies favorable to nuclear power.

Of course, all businesses, groups and individuals have the right to organize and express their views. But the negative impact of this nuclear industry-driven PR is already clear. Plans to build new nuclear power plants are inching forward, while serious questions and concerns -- not to mention alternative energy policies -- receive little attention. On March 8, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its first site approval for a new nuclear plant in over 30 years. Exelon now has 20 years to apply for a license to build a new reactor in Clinton, Ill.

Entergy and NEI spend millions of dollars doing media outreach, under their own names. Both spend millions more to lobby federal officials. From 1998 to 2004, Entergy spent $13.5 million and NEI spent $9.7 million on federal lobbying, according to the Center for Public Integrity's LobbyWatch database.

But both, while using solely their own names, failed to garner significant public support. So both formed "coalitions" and "alliances," designed to deliver essentially the same pro-nuclear message. Unlike the funders behind classic front groups, NEI and Entergy admit their role in CASEnergy or NY AREA, Mass AREA and Vermont Energy Partnership, respectively. But that disclosure is done in a whisper, with a nod and wink, and sloppy reporting takes care of the rest.

The end result is the same -- instead of a fully informed and vigorous public debate on complex energy issues, the United States is having a lopsided discussion. And the nuclear power industry isn't just dominating it; it has several seats at the table.

--Diane Farsetta is the Center for Media and Democracy's senior researcher.

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Guardian
March 16, 2007

Feds: $26.9 Billion for Yucca Mountain

By Erica Werner
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - It will cost $26.9 billion to build and operate the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump through 2023, the Energy Department said Friday in a new cost calculation.

The department did not release a new figure for the total life-cycle cost of the Nevada project, estimated several years ago at $58 billion. The department plans to recalculate that figure in May and it almost certainly will rise, said Edward F. ``Ward'' Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

The $26.9 billion figure, about in line with recent estimates, assumes that the department meets its goal of opening the repository in March 2017, Sproat told reporters on a conference call.

``It is our best estimate at this stage of the game as to what the total program's going to cost. We think it's an accurate projection,'' he said.

That 2017 opening date is a best-case scenario and Sproat cautioned it will slip if the department does not get the money it needs each year for the dump. In recent years the department's budget goals have not been met, partly because of opposition from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who now has even more power as Senate majority leader.

The nuclear waste dump planned for 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is supposed to hold at least 77,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste from civilian reactors and Defense Department activities. It's encountered a number of problems since Congress approved it in 2002, from political opposition and lawsuits to a controversy over government scientists not complying with quality control requirements.

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UPI
March 16, 2007

DOE submits spending plan to Congress
WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy submitted the $23.598 billion spending plan to Congress Friday, for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year.

The spending plan allows $45 million increase over the FY'07 request. The Continuing Resolution, signed by President Bush Feb. 15, added the new funds and required that a spending plan be submitted to Congress within 30 days of enactment.

"We intend to use that to continue our development of the scientific workforce in the United States," said Undersecretary Ray Orbach.

The department's spending plan includes $1.5 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The $300 million increase will fund biomass, solar and advanced vehicle battery projects.

"The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management will spend $445.5 million in FY '07 and will perform the critical path activities needed to produce a high quality Yucca Mountain license application for submittal to the NRC no later than June 30,2008," Spurgeon said.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will receive $100 million increase in funding for its projects as well. Increases at NREL include $20 million for its biorefinery researching ethanol; $16 million for advanced thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing equipment to reduce the cost of solar panels and $63 million to build a research facility on the campus.

An emphasis is being put on carbon capture and sequestration, with the program getting a 55 percent increase to $100 million, said DOE Acting Undersecretary Dennis Spurgeon. The funds will help to expedite the start of projects involving large scale carbon dioxide injection field tests, Spurgeon said.

The Office of Science and the Office of Environmental Management also received funding increases to follow through with the president's American Competitiveness Initiative and clean up of Cold War-era nuclear facilities.

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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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