Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, April 5, 2007
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Times-Standard
April 05, 2007
Nuke fuel storage effort in motion
John Driscoll
The Times-Standard
KING SALMON -- A project to store spent nuclear fuel from the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant got under way Wednesday with a ceremonial groundbreaking here, marking the end of decades of controversy over the safety of the facility.
Contractors for the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have begun to carve a pit that will be lined with 500 cubic yards of concrete and hold 390 spent fuel rods in casks secured inside the bunker. It's designed to withstand a nearly unimaginable 9.3-magnitude earthquake and shield the fuel from a terrorist attack.
"Let's move some dirt," said plant manager Roy Willis, signaling officials at the ceremony to move a few celebratory shovelfuls.
The construction should take less than six months. The spent fuel and any other radioactive waste now stored in a pool a few hundred yards away will be transferred into six stainless steel casks sheathed in carbon steel housings in 2008. They'll then be moved to the bunker, which will be fully operational in 2009.
Michael Welch, one of the many activists who campaigned to have PG&E's nuclear plant decommissioned and its fuel moved from the pool, wants the rods to stay on the site. While the company says the facility may only serve as storage until a federal repository can be built, Welch believes it's too dangerous to move the fuel rods and endanger some other community.
"That's just not fair," Welch said.
The opening of a major federal dump site is at least a decade away. The 2017 date set for the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada is probably four years or more on the optimistic side, and political and fiscal wrangling could easily set that back further.
The nuclear unit of the Humboldt Bay plant came on line in 1963. It was shut down for refueling in 1976, but concerns were raised about operating the plant after seismic investigations showed it was vulnerable to quakes. Demonstrations, vigils and lawsuits were waged, and the issue repeatedly drew hundreds to public meetings.
The nuke unit never ran again, and its fuel was submerged in a pool on site in 1988. In 1998, PG&E began taking down a 250-foot-tall smokestack that in a major earthquake could have tumbled onto the building that houses the pool.
A few years later, PG&E learned it had lost track of several pieces of fuel rods, prompting an investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a $96,000 fine. While never fully accounted for, PG&E and the commission determined the material was probably moved to a waste facility.
PG&E began talking about a dry cask storage system in 1999, and in 2005 the commission approved a license to build it on the site.
Humboldt County 1st District Supervisor Jimmy Smith said he was happy to see the fuel moved from a fragile to a safe environment.
"I want to compliment PG&E for being on top of it," Smith said.
The dry cask facility is designed to handle a mega-earthquake in which the Cascadia Subduction Zone and Little King Salmon faults ruptured at the same time. The 22,000-pound lids to the bunker will be at 44 feet above sea level, just above the height believed to be the maximum tsunami surge.
"It isn't going anywhere," said Andrew Keough with contractor American Civil Constructors from Benecia.
After the fuel is moved to the storage facility, PG&E intends to start dismantling the nuclear unit in 2010. The two fossil-fuel generators that produce most of Humboldt County's electricity are also slated for decommissioning. The 50-year-old units will be replaced by a modern, more efficient natural gas-burning plant that will generate 163 megawatts, and be able to mesh with renewable power projects in the area.
PG&E chief nuclear officer and senior vice president of generation Jack Keenan said that the effort is part of a larger one to improve facilities it owns.
"To me, this site is very important because this is our only generating facility in this area," Keenan said.
--John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com.
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Traverse City Record Eagle
April 05, 2007
Entergy to take over waste storage
By Craig McCool
cmccool@record-eagle.com
CHARLEVOIX — It's 107 acres, radioactive and soon to be someone else's problem.
The spent fuel storage area at the Big Rock nuclear power plant site near Charlevoix will be handed over this month to a New Orleans power company, said Consumers Energy spokesman Tim Petrosky.
Consumers will pay Entergy Corp. $30 million to assume responsibility for Big Rock's dry fuel storage area, where waste from 35 years of nuclear power production is kept. The transaction is tied to Entergy's previous purchase of Consumers' Palisades nuclear plant near South Haven.
To be finalized by May 1, the deal includes 107 acres surrounding a basketball-court sized pad where 441 bundles of spent fuel rods are sealed in concrete and steel casks, Petrosky said.
The remaining 400-plus acres of land, including over a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, will for now remain in Consumers' hands, though talks continue with both local land conservancy and state officials to release the property to the public, Petrosky said.
The state Department of Natural Resources in December killed a $20 million proposal to buy Big Rock after environmental groups voiced concern over the nuclear waste stored there. The federal government has since declared the bulk of the property safe for any public or private use.
"We continue to discuss the possibility of the acquisition of the property by the state, or a group of organizations working with the state, to keep it in public hands," Petrosky said.
Entergy is paying Consumers $380 million for the working Palisades plant near South Haven.
When the entire transaction is complete, Consumers will be completely out of the nuclear power business. Palisades is Consumers' last nuclear facility, Petrosky said.
"The motivation is directly tied to the Palisades property," he said. "It's very difficult to be a single nuclear plant owner. It makes great sense to have the entire nuclear operation sold."
Spent fuel from the Palisades plant is stored there, said plant spokesman Mark Savage, and there is little chance that waste from Big Rock and Palisades will be consolidated.
"State law prohibits movement of used fuel between sites in Michigan. It's highly unlikely that that will change," Savage said.
Fuel from both sites eventually could be taken to a federal repository proposed for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, though local opposition continues to stall plans to build a long-term storage facility there. Yucca Mountain is now set to receive waste no sooner than 2017, Savage said.
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American Scientist
April 05, 2007
Book: The Stuff of Bombs
Frank N. von Hippel
Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element. Jeremy Bernstein. xii + 216 pp. Joseph Henry Press, 2007. $27.95.
Our solar system was originally endowed with plutonium as well as uranium, but that plutonium is long gone. The half-life of the element's most important isotope, plutonium239, is just 24,000 years—a very long time by any human measure, but short compared with the age of the solar system. So almost all of the 2,000 metric tons or so of plutonium that exists on Earth today was made in nuclear reactors; about 250 tons of it was created for use in weapons, and the rest came into being as a by-product of the operation of civilian nuclear-power reactors.
After an atom of uranium-238 absorbs a neutron, it decays within a few days into plutonium-239. The plutonium can then be separated chemically from the uranium to make bombs. The bomb dropped at Nagasaki contained 6 kilograms of plutonium, of which 1 kilogram fissioned. The International Atomic Energy Agency assumes that, including the amount that would be lost during production, about 8 kilograms would be required to make a bomb. At that rate, 2,000 tons of plutonium would be sufficient to make a quarter of a million Nagasaki bombs!
Preventing additional states or terrorist groups from gaining the ability to use plutonium in this way is the central challenge of nuclear nonproliferation. Disposing of plutonium is very important in this regard; it also helps to make arms reductions on the part of existing nuclear powers largely irreversible.
In his short new book Plutonium, Jeremy Bernstein, a physicist and veteran science journalist, tells the story of the discovery of the element and its properties. He also sketches in the larger background of the development of atomic and nuclear physics during the first half of the 20th century and includes capsule biographies of the atomic and nuclear physicists who made the big discoveries—Henri Becquerel, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Lise Meitner, Leo Szilard, Glenn Seaborg and others. Their names are already familiar to physicists interested in nuclear matters, but Bernstein's anecdotes reveal their human sides. He also brings to life such lesser-known figures as William Zachariasen, who determined the crystal phases of plutonium and its various compounds.
Plutonium was first made for nuclear bombs during the Manhattan Project. Until late in the weapons program, the Los Alamos scientists were convinced that they were in a nuclear-arms race with their counterparts in Nazi Germany. It turned out, however, that although the Germans understood the physics, they never got very far either in making plutonium or in enriching uranium in the chain-reacting isotope U-235, which is present in natural uranium at a concentration of only 0.7 percent.
Bernstein raises—not for the first time—some interesting questions about this one-sided nuclear arms race: What if Fermi had realized that he was causing uranium fission in his neutron experiments in 1934, four years before Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch used fission to explain the puzzling chemical properties of the products of German experiments with neutron irradiation of uranium? Might World War II have been nuclear from the beginning?
Or what if the Nazis had penetrated the Manhattan Project (as the Soviets did) and learned that it had been a mistake to reject the use of graphite to slow fission neutrons? Then might Germany too have built graphite-"moderated" plutonium-production reactors instead of failing in its effort to acquire enough heavy water from Norway to make possible a chain reaction in natural uranium?
If the Germans had succeeded in making plutonium, they would still have had a large obstacle to overcome, however, in the actual design of a nuclear weapon. Spontaneous fission of the small amount of plutonium-240 contained in 6 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium emits a stream of neutrons at an average rate of one per 10 microseconds. As Bernstein points out, these neutrons make it infeasible to adapt for plutonium the simple gun-type design that brought together a supercritical mass of highly enriched uranium in the Hiroshima bomb. During the hundreds of microseconds that this assembly would be ramping up to full super-criticality, the neutrons would start the plutonium chain reaction prematurely and the device would blow itself apart with a very low explosive yield.
Designing a faster method of assembly for a plutonium explosive became the central challenge for the weapons designers at Los Alamos. Ultimately they had to turn to the implausible idea of imploding an initially subcritical mass of plutonium to a supercritical density. This was facilitated by the fact that weapons plutonium is stabilized in the delta phase with a density of about 16 grams per cubic centimeter but is converted under pressure into alpha phase, which has a density of about 20 grams per cubic centimeter.
Bernstein summarizes what happened after Nagasaki only briefly in a final chapter, titled "Now What?" This is disappointing, because "Now what?" is, of course, the question of primary concern to those who worry about how to deal with all of the plutonium that has been created.
In the year 2000, after several years of negotiations, Russia and the United States sought to make their nuclear reductions more assuredly permanent by agreeing that each would make at least 34 tons of their excess weapons plutonium largely inaccessible—primarily by making it into fuel for power reactors. Only a fraction of the plutonium would be fissioned; but inside spent fuel, plutonium is protected from easy recovery by the presence of fission products that release lethal gamma radiation. (Plutonium itself only gives off alpha particles, which are not energetic enough even to penetrate skin; hence, pure plutonium is easy to transport and manipulate inside a glove box, which provides protection against inhalation or ingestion of plutonium particles.)
The costs of the U.S. plutonium-disposition program have been escalating rapidly, and Russia has made it clear that its own program will go forward only if fully financed by the United States and other interested countries. The future of both efforts is currently in question. An alternative and potentially less costly approach that has been considered from time to time in the United States would be to mix the plutonium back into the fission-product waste from which it had earlier been separated, and then encapsulate the waste in glass for disposal.
In addition to the 250 tons of weapons plutonium that exists, another 250 tons of plutonium has been separated from irradiated civilian reactor fuel. Civilian plutonium separation began in the 1960s and 1970s in support of the huge but failed effort by the industrialized world to commercialize plutonium "breeder" reactors, so named because they make more fuel than they consume. The separated civilian plutonium was to provide start-up fuel for these reactors, which transform the abundant non-chain-reacting isotope of uranium (uranium-238) into more plutonium reactor fuel.
Civilian spent-fuel reprocessing was abandoned in the United States, however, after India conducted a "peaceful" nuclear explosion in 1974 using the first plutonium it had separated in a U.S.-supported reprocessing program. Attempts to commercialize breeder reactors have failed in Europe and Japan, but the French and Japanese nuclear establishments continue to reprocess and to talk of a second effort to build breeders some decades hence.
Reprocessing is being abandoned in some countries more slowly than are breeder reactors, in large part because nuclear utilities are being pressed to show that they know what to do with their spent fuel while not-in-my-backyard forces are blocking the establishment of centralized storage sites. Reprocessing spent fuel is much more costly than storing it but looks better than letting it accumulate indefinitely at the nuclear-power plants.
A similar impasse over the licensing of a geological repository for U.S. spent fuel under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has inspired the Bush administration's Department of Energy to propose building a huge, federally funded reprocessing plant to which U.S. utilities could ship their spent fuel. After separation, however, most of the plutonium would simply be stored until the uncertain day when reactors are commercialized that can dispose of it more efficiently than can current-generation reactors.
But it is absurd that one group in the Department of Energy is proposing to spend tens of billions of dollars to separate plutonium from spent civilian reactor fuel while another group in the same agency is proposing to spend many billions to do the opposite: dispose of excess separated plutonium in spent civilian reactor fuel!
Bernstein's book should play a useful role by helping to demystify plutonium and by encouraging interested members of the public and Congress to start constructing a more rational policy to deal with the dangers posed by this man-made element.
Reviewer Information: Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist by training, is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, where he and his colleagues in the Program on Science and Global Security analyze the technical bases for nuclear-arms control and nonproliferation initiatives. He is cochair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, whose publications may be found at www.fissilematerials.org. He is also the author of, among other books, Citizen Scientist (American Institute of Physics, 1991).
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 04, 2007
Trains open to attack, activists contend
Ray Hagar
Reno Gazette-Journal
Supporters of a bill designed to increase railroad security in Nevada painted a disastrous scenario of what terrorists could do to Reno, Sparks and Las Vegas on Tuesday at the Legislature.
Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, the son of a former railroader, said he shuddered to think what could happen if a chemical explosion occurred in the rail yards in Sparks, about 100 yards away from John Ascuaga's Nugget Casino Resort.
"It is just a target waiting to happen," said Anderson, who grew up near the Sparks rail yards. "If this happened in my community, we would lose a sizable part of the downtown area, three or four of the major economic centers."
Assembly Bill 340, sponsored by Anderson, would force railroad operators to inform state agencies of dangerous
chemicals and compounds that move through the state and require railroad yards and other installations to develop and submit security plans to state agencies.
The bill also would require background checks for railroad employees and subcontractors and demand that remote locomotive devices be secured when not in use.
The bill was heard for the first time at the Legislature just days after a report published in the Reno Gazette-Journal told of U.S Department of Energy plans to transport up to 4,500 casks of high-level nuclear waste through downtown Reno and Sparks every week for the next 24 years.
The plan is part of the DOE strategy to build a rail line to the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository just north of Las Vegas, Nevada officials said.
The Union Pacific Railroad, the only major railroad with yards in Nevada, often stores and transports dangerous substances such as chlorine and propane gas in the state, bill supporters told the Assembly Transportation Committee. With the current state of shoddy security, terrorists could easily sneak into a railroad yard in Sparks or Las Vegas and cause tankers, storage units -- or both -- to explode, they said.
If enough tankers exploded, the blast could rival that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb that helped end World War II, said Joe Carter of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. An explosion of one tanker of chlorine gas could lead to horrific results, Carter said.
"Given the level of security today in the state of Nevada, it would be child's play to explode one of these (chlorine) tank cars, which is approximately 15,000 gallons," Carter said. "And, depending on the population density and weather conditions, thousands could die before evacuation could be accomplished."
The state rail system is easy prey for terrorists, Carter said.
Carter and Anderson's concerns about railroad safety are overplayed, said Scott Hinckley, general director of safety and security for Union Pacific Railroad.
"Union Pacific takes security very seriously," Hinckley said. "I've been sitting here and listening to this -- and consider that I spend almost all of my time in security, and others don't -- and there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings of what is taking place."
The bill singles out Union Pacific for terrorism breakdowns but does not address issues with other methods of transportation, Hinckley said.
"Our disagreement with the bill deals with the fact that people are not aware," Hinckley said. "What we think we need to do is draft the ability of handling terrorist issues by gathering all the people to the table and not just the railroads."
Union Pacific also sponsors training programs, which many Nevada firefighters have attended, to help them train for chemical explosions, Hinckley said.
Some members of the committee were not comforted by Hinckley's assessment.
"It is one of those situations that, when you start peeling back the onion, you get more and more uncomfortable as you go," Assemblyman David Bobzien, D-Reno, said. "I'm not convinced that enough is happening on this very important security issue."
"You come down to the Legislature thinking that you know of all the big issues, and then somebody drops this in your lap and you say, 'Man, this is big problem'."
The committee will review the bill at a future meeting, he said.
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Albuquerque Journal
April 04, 2007
Spent Fuel Rods Are Not Waste
By Donald J. Dudziak
Nuclear Engineer
If the Bush Administration and Congress want to focus energy policies more sensibly, New Mexico is the place to begin.
Thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter put a halt to the recycling of spent fuel from nuclear power plants, on grounds that plutonium removed during the process might get into the hands of irresponsible governments or terrorists and lead to production of a nuclear weapon. Although President Reagan lifted the ban on recycling and other countries like France and Great Britain never stopped using the process, it was not resurrected in this country because recycling was considered too costly.
Now that could change, given the growing importance of nuclear power in the battle against global climate change. In the United States, 17 utilities are preparing to build as many as 33 nuclear power plants. And here in New Mexico, a new uranium enrichment facility is under construction, and one or more nuclear power plants might be built. Worldwide, the number of nuclear plants is expected to double, with at least 1,000 operating by mid-century, but the likelihood exists there might not be enough uranium.
If the spent reactor fuel now stored at nuclear power plants in the U.S.— some 50,000 tons— were recycled instead of disposed of as nuclear "waste," it could be converted into new reactor fuel and used again to provide clean electricity. This would help conserve the world's uranium resources.
Another benefit from recycling is that it significantly reduces the volume, heat and toxicity of nuclear "waste," in effect more than doubling the capacity of the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. It means that Congress would not have to decide on a second or a third site for additional repositories after the first one is built. Equally important, the new recycling technology would never isolate the plutonium, thus greatly reducing weapon proliferation concerns.
The Department of Energy (DOE) plans to spend $250 million to demonstrate and deploy technologies for recycling, along with advanced reactors that can burn the recycled spent fuel. DOE's goal is to stimulate the use of nuclear power around the world, by assuring an ample supply of nuclear fuel, while limiting the risk of weapons proliferation.
Known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), the DOE plan is to build and operate three facilities in the United States: one for recycling spent fuel and fabricating a mixed-oxide fuel for use in nuclear power plants to produce more electricity. Another facility would be an advanced "fast" reactor that would destroy long-lived radioactive elements while producing power. And a research facility would be used to develop new recycling processes and other advanced nuclear technologies.
So far, 11 sites around the country— including Hobbs and Roswell in New Mexico— have received DOE grants to conduct studies in order to determine whether they'd be suitable as locations for either the nuclear recycling center or the advanced reactor. Over the long term, the facilities are expected to require a capital investment of at least $16 billion, and bring in 8,000 jobs.
The cost of developing new recycling technology would be stretched out over many years, so it will require an assurance of long-term, predictable funding for research, development and demonstration, involving universities and national laboratories.
No question about it, the idea of recycling is ambitious. It will entail perfecting a new technology for recycling, one that reduces the risk of weapons proliferation and is affordable. Also, a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors will need to be built.
As we've learned well over the past 30 years, the absence of recycling and the unnecessary delays in opening the Yucca Mountain repository have placed nuclear power plants in the position of storing more spent fuel than expected, for longer than originally intended. In reality, this spent fuel is not waste, but rather a valuable energy resource for the future.
We need to move forward with GNEP now. Otherwise, we could seriously limit the ability of nuclear power to provide the essentially emission-free energy that the world urgently needs.
--Donald J. Dudziak is a fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at North Carolina State University.
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Grist Magazine
April 04, 2007
Rogers and Me
An interview with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers
By Amanda Griscom Little
Meet Jim Rogers, a great American paradox. He's the top gun at Duke Energy, a huge (and hugely polluting) power company; he's also one of the nation's most dogged advocates for federal regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Duke Energy operates smack in the heart of coal country in the Midwest and Southeast and derives 70 percent of its power from the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Rogers knows full well that his company has a lot at stake when it comes to cleaning up carbon emissions -- which is why, he says, he wants to be on the vanguard of those preparing for limits.
A bridge-builder between the worlds of industry and environmentalists, Rogers played a key role in launching the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an unprecedented alliance between corporate executives and green groups that launched in January and has proposed a federal cap-and-trade program that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions 10 to 30 percent over the next 15 years, then 60 to 80 percent by mid-century. These are goals nearly on par with the most ambitious climate bills in Congress, and in recent months, Rogers has been among the most active coalition members lobbying for them on Capitol Hill.
As chair of the Edison Electric Institute, an industry trade group representing companies that provide nearly 60 percent of America's electricity, Rogers has helped move the organization from staunchly rejecting federal global-warming policy to embracing a forward-thinking (if limited) set of climate-change principles. Rogers is also a board member of the Alliance to Save Energy, a D.C.-based nonprofit that lobbies for ambitious energy-efficiency regulations.
But Rogers is not in all areas an environmental angel, as everyone was reminded this week when Duke Energy got spanked by the Supreme Court. In a high-profile decision, the justices unanimously overturned a lower-court decision that let Duke off the hook for circumventing a Clean Air Act provision that requires the installation of high-tech pollution controls on aging power plants. Rogers also takes heat from critics for his avid support of nuclear power, and his contention that heavily coal-dependent utilities should be given more pollution permits than any others in a federal cap-and-trade scheme.
Rogers spoke to me recently from his office in North Carolina about the professional, political, and personal factors that fuel his concern about climate change.
Q You're running a company that's one of the nation's largest producers of CO2 emissions. You're also doing more than perhaps anyone else in your industry to try to get these emissions regulated. Can you reconcile this contradiction?
A I'm an optimist. I think there are solutions to problems -- maybe not perfect solutions today, but over time, solutions will improve. I think the probability that we'll get good solutions to climate change -- solutions that benefit both the planet and industry -- is higher if we face the problem now than if we bury our heads in denial. If you're constantly trying to define the problem, or deny it, or dispute it, it gets increasingly difficult and costly to develop a good solution.
Q Last year you were elected as chair of the Edison Electric Institute, the power industry's biggest trade group. Did this reflect a growing acceptance within your industry of climate change and the inevitability of regulations?
A There's undoubtedly a growing openness in our industry to this issue. I've seen several surveys that say 70 or 80 percent of the executives in our industry think there will be carbon regulation. In a sense, we're all building our business plans around the carbon scenario. The only issue is what the regulations will look like and when they'll be implemented.
Q You've recently tried to define one approach via the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. Tell us how that alliance formed, and the process of give-and-take that got you to the final agreement.
A Most of the executives knew each other and had had ongoing conversations with environmental groups on a range of issues, so there was a set of existing relationships that brought us all into the room. I think the pivotal moment was in December when we began to agree on how we would structure the cap-and-trade program. The really big issue was: Can coal be part of the energy equation in the future? We agreed that it will be, given the fact that 50 percent of our electricity in this country comes from coal.
The other issue was the recognition that nuclear had to play an important part in the equation. This is a tightrope that the environmental community is walking. On the one hand, they want to solve climate. On the other hand, nuclear is the best zero-carbon energy source that can reliably supply our economy, and historically they have not been supportive of it.
Q So your environmental partners came to agree that nuclear needs to be part of the solution?
A I wouldn't characterize them as 100 percent supportive of nuclear, but I've seen some movement in that direction. I think they are reluctant to embrace nuclear at this point, but in the face of climate change they view it as the lesser of two evils.
Q Most of the companies involved in U.S. CAP had already been making noise about the importance of federal action on climate change. Did you try to get other industry members -- auto companies, for instance -- to come onboard?
A It was an interesting kind of tension. On the one hand, you want enough people to have a critical mass; on the other hand, if it gets too big, you end up spending too much time sitting around the room and fine-tuning the words. Even with that fairly like-minded group [in U.S. CAP], our staff spent an incredible amount of time trying to get the right words so everybody was comfortable with them.
And now you're in a process of recruiting other corporate leaders to join the CAP alliance, as I understand it. Are there major players coming to the table?
It looks that way. It's very exciting, but it's too soon to mention names.
Q What are the chances of getting an aggressive climate bill, on par with the CAP agenda, passed in the 110th Congress?
A That's a very difficult call. What we're learning as we soak in the details of this issue is how incredibly complex it is. You're starting to see Congress members who are dealing with it for the first time saying, "Oh my goodness -- every time I get one answer, it raises five questions." The complexity, by definition, will slow down the progress.
Secondly, as you listen to very partisan Democrats and certain environmentalists, there is a sense that they would rather keep this as an issue for the 2008 election and then have a solution afterward because, one, it becomes a good issue for the campaign, and, two, they think they would get a tougher bill. I think every day that goes by, the probability is increasing that it gets done after the election, not before.
Q But you'd rather see it happen before?
A I personally think that sooner is better. It gives us more time to start to take early action and get credit for it, to know what we'll get credit for. A lot of companies like ours are making big decisions right now: "Do we build coal plants? Do we build nuclear or natural gas or renewables? How much do we depend on energy efficiency?" These are investments that last for half a century or more.
Do you think that utilities should get carbon credits based on actions they've already taken, before the regulations are implemented?
They should not. The legislation should encourage companies to go out and do things, make investments that would help their carbon footprint in the future. Retroactive credits would not achieve this. Actions taken in the past weren't taken recognizing there'd be future carbon legislation.
Q Some economists think that a carbon tax would be more effective than a cap-and-trade program. Do you agree?
A I think economists generally believe that. Here's the problem: It's not politically doable. You can't find Democrats and Republicans that want to sign on to any tax.
Q You're a strong proponent of nuclear power. The question of what to do with spent nuclear fuel hasn't been resolved. What would you propose?
A Our industry has long supported Yucca Mountain [a federal nuclear-waste repository in Nevada], but there seem to be huge impediments to Yucca Mountain at the moment. The way that the political deck is stacked today, I think we need to come up with an alternative approach to consider. I haven't really seen anything that makes sense yet from a political standpoint. But I do think that we can come up with ways to do it, most likely pursuing a more regional approach to storage. The French have come up with ways to deal with the storage issue, and we should look to them.
Q Coal has been taking a beating lately. Jim Hansen, the nation's most respected climate scientist, has called for a moratorium on building coal-burning plants. Texas utility TXU has had to scale back its plans for old-style coal plants. The North Carolina Public Utilities Commission challenged your company's plans to build two new coal-fired plants. What role do you think coal should play in a carbon-constrained future?
A There's no getting around the fact that coal is America's most abundant and affordable power source. There are 25 states in this nation that today get more than 50 percent of their electricity from burning coal. We're not going to eliminate that capacity any time soon -- in fact, there are 150 new coal plants on the books.
As for future coal development, I am optimistic and hopeful that we will solve the challenge of carbon capture and storage. There are some 30 different technologies that are being developed and are in different stages of research and development that have the potential of attacking the issue.
But the real challenge will be coming up with a technology that can eliminate carbon emissions from existing plants -- a carbon "scrubber" of sorts. Today we can put a scrubber on the back end of our plants and take out [sulfur dioxide], mercury, nitrogen oxides. We ought to be able to do that with CO2. A lot more emphasis and resources need to be devoted to that innovation.
Q Does Duke have any IGCC plants [integrated gasification combined-cycle plants, cleaner fossil-fuel plants that could be adapted to capture carbon for storage] in the works?
A We are in the process of getting authorization to build an IGCC facility in Indiana, a coal-producing state that has the right geology -- the limestone-type geology -- which allows you to pump the CO2 into underground chambers.
Q Why not make Duke's two proposed new coal plants in North Carolina IGCC?
A North Carolina has a different geology that isn't suited for underground storage. Until we find more advanced ways of storing the carbon emissions, you can't site IGCC in regions that don't have the geological capacity. So in North Carolina we proposed building a "supercritical" plant, which is 40-percent efficient -- the most advanced existing technology available. It eliminates 99 percent of the sulfur dioxide emissions, 90 to 95 percent of nitrogen oxides, virtually all particulates, and there are no thermal impacts to the water bodies. By building this plant, and retiring two older coal units, we will actually reduce our carbon footprint. Plus, our older plants that aren't retired will run less, because they're less efficient and more costly to operate.
Q In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court [this week] overturned a lower court decision that essentially exempted Duke Energy from having to install more advanced emissions-control equipment on old coal plants under the "new-source review" provision of the Clean Air Act. What's your reaction to the decision, and how will it affect your company?
A It's a big disappointment for us, certainly, but the case is now returning to the lower courts where we're going to continue to defend our position. I believe we have solid defenses against the government's claims and will prove in the lower courts that the projects we were undertaking were not subject to the NSR provision. That provision applies to what they call "major modifications" of plant facilities, not the kind of more routine upgrades that we were undertaking.
Q But if Duke is claiming to be a good corporate citizen, shouldn't you support regulations that require the use of top-notch technology to control emissions?
A Well, the problem is that NSR often keeps us from using advanced technologies to make our plants more efficient, because every time we want to modify a plant and improve it, we have to go back and upgrade it in every way. And that might not make economic sense, so it often acts as a deterrent to make technological improvements.
Q What is Duke doing in terms of its own operations to help solve the climate crisis?
A I've always viewed energy efficiency as the fifth fuel. We think that the most environmentally benign plant you can build is the one you don't build. Job one is getting our customers to implement a broad array of efficiency measures, and give them more control over their bills, which will dampen the growth in demand. Job two is trying to use our distribution system more efficiently. We lose a lot of energy just in the transmission cables, so we're working to reduce what we call "line loss." Third, we're trying to increase how much we use our nuclear units. Fourth, we've contracted up to 100 megawatts of wind [power] in Indiana, and are exploring investment in other renewable energy areas such as biomass.
Q The Edison Electric Institute has long opposed carbon caps, and under your leadership it has relented. How did you push through that change?
A I was lucky to be there when the change occurred in people's thinking. The pivotal moment was back on Jan. 10. We had a board meeting in Arizona, and as chairman I asked every person in the room -- there were 50 different CEOs -- to give their view of how as an industry we ought to move forward on climate change. It was like a snowball effect. Everybody stepped up and talked and it became increasingly clear that we needed to change our position from just supporting voluntary efforts to supporting regulation.
Q In the long run, do you think society will have to consume and produce less energy?
A One of my favorite statistics is that in the U.S., electricity demand as a percentage of GDP has actually decreased 30 percent. To say it another way, if we were at the same concentration of electricity per unit of GDP today, we would have to build as many power plants as there are in Texas and California. So we've become as an economy less energy intensive, and I think that trend will continue.
Q Did you have a "conversion moment" on the climate issue?
A There wasn't a burning bush on the way to Damascus that did it for me. But about eight years ago I asked this smart guy in our company, a former Peace Corps member, to be my special assistant, because I liked the way he thought. I asked him to tell me about carbon. He did all this research, we spent long stretches of time talking about it. At the same time, I was attending the World Economic Forum at Davos every year. I'd sit and listen to how the Europeans are thinking about it. I started to say, "Wow, they have such a different view than we have." So that forced me to dig in more. The more I learn, the more passionate I get about it.
Q How are you personally reducing your carbon footprint?
A I'm actually in the process of building a house, and I'm working with my architect to bring in people who are experts on building energy-efficient homes. So I'm trying to build a home that reflects energy efficiency's best practices. This is a passion of mine. I've recently been named to the Alliance to Save Energy board, and my goal is to be chairman of that in several years.
Q What kind of car do you drive?
A I drive a Lexus. A real small one, though.
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Tri-City Herald
April 03, 2007
DOE expands comment period by 2 more months
Annette Cary Herald
Staff Writer
The Department of Energy will take comments for two additional months to prepare an environmental study on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
The deadline to submit comments will be extended from April 11 until June 4, DOE announced Monday.
"Continuing the environmental scoping process means we will continue to better understand the environmental conditions under which we will be operating," Dennis Spurgeon, the assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in a statement.
Hearings have been held in Pasco and Hood River as DOE considers whether to use Hanford to reprocess spent commercial nuclear fuel. It's considering 13 sites across the nation for at least one of three proposed facilities.
Washington state has sent DOE a letter emphasizing that the environmental study -- called an environmental impact statement -- needs to include adequate information and analysis.
"The scope of the GNEP proposal is enormous, and the potential impacts are long lasting," wrote Jane Hedges, program manager for the Nuclear Waste Program of the Washington State Department of Ecology.
If GNEP facilities require permits from the state of Washington to treat, store or dispose of waste from the project, the state will need a full evaluation of impacts on human health and the environment, Hedges wrote.
The state is asking that the study answer 28 questions, including:
w How mature or proven are the technologies being proposed for use?
w Would the vitrification plant be used to treat waste for disposal?
w How much used nuclear fuel might be brought into the state, where would it be stored and how long would it be stored before processing?
w Would reprocessing waste be classified as high-level radioactive waste?
w What emissions would facilities generate?
w Would any facilities be built near the Columbia River?
w What routes would be used to transport used fuel rods and waste to and from Hanford?
w How will DOE reconcile the continued use of Hanford for GNEP with budget shortfalls and schedule delays in Hanford cleanup?
The Hanford nuclear reservation is being considered for all three facilities proposed under GNEP. A nuclear waste fuel recycling center is proposed to separate used nuclear fuel into reusable and waste components and then manufacture new fuel from the reusable components.
An advanced recycling reactor would be built to use the recycled fuel, producing electricity while destroying radioactive waste that otherwise would have to be stored at an national repository such as Yucca Mountain, Nev.
DOE also is proposing an advanced fuel cycle research facility to develop recycling processes. Supporters of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility would like the reactor restarted to help with the research.
Besides destroying waste, GNEP also has an international component.
It's proposed by the Bush administration to ensure reliable fuel services while limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States would cooperate with countries that have advanced nuclear programs to supply nuclear fuel to other countries that refrain from pursuing enrichment or recycling of fuel.
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Pottstown Mercury
April 03, 2007
Exelon will use remote heat monitors on spent fuel rods
Evan Brandt
ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
LIMERICK -- Exelon Nuclear has reversed a previous position and decided to install remote heat monitors at the spent nuclear fuel storage depot it is building at the Limerick Generating Station.
In addition to remaining radioactive for hundreds of years, the spent fuel from the nuclear reactor also generates heat and an increase in temperature around the casks could indicate a problem inside.
Exelon’s decision comes two months after the company received a letter from the Pottstown Environmental Advisory Commission and authorized by Pottstown Borough Council, asking for exactly that.
However, it was not that request that spurred the decision to install the monitors, but safety concerns for plant workers, said April D. Schilpp, manager of MidAtlantic Nuclear Communi-cations for Exelon.
"There were some site issues that contributed to this decision," she said.
In essence, the location of high voltage wires near to where some of the steel casks filled with spent nuclear fuel will be located had caused Exelon officials to re-think having workers regularly visiting the area to check temperature measurements, said Schilpp.
"It has to do with the way the operators have to access the temperature readings," Schilpp said. "They have to be on top of the casks and that just reduces our safety margin so we decided to look at other options."
She emphasized that the change was not made as a result of Pottstown’s request.
Last year, Pottstown had also asked for remote, real-time radiation monitoring of the dry cask fuel storage site, a request Exelon also rejected.
"There was no technical reason for it and it was not required," she said.
Don Read, chairman of Pottstown’s EAC, said he was pleased the additional monitoring would be done, no matter the reason.
"Hey, anything that gets the job done works for us," he said.
The fuel to be stored outside the building has been cooling in a pool inside the reactor building for at least five years. It will be loaded into a steel canister now being manufactured in Japan and placed inside concrete housing.
Steve Minnick, project manager for the effort, said ground has broken on the concrete slab on which the casks will be stored. That part of the project, which was approved in July by the Limerick Board of Supervisors, is the only part over which local officials had any oversight.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a blanket permit for the type of dry-cask storage system being used at the plant -- the NuHOM system built by a firm called Transnuclear -- and so no new permitting was needed for the project at Limerick.
Schilpp said the Limerick plant has received little in the way of public feedback about the dry cask storage project "and it’s not as if we haven’t been asking."
She said Exelon would have taken public concerns into account "if there had been a bigger outcry, but we just hear from Don Read."
Limerick Township, where the plant is located, has not communicated any concerns, not have any other surrounding towns, other than Pottstown, said Schilpp.
Limerick Supervisors’ Chairman David Kane said his board has kept up with the concerns raised about the plant.
"We have been in touch with the NRC and we had been educating ourselves about just what jurisdiction we have," Kane said.
"Our hope is that the people charged with this on the federal level will treat this project with the same concern for safety as we would if it were in our jurisdiction," said Kane. "All we can do is educate ourselves and request."
However, some towns may soon start getting into the act.
With borough council’s approval, the Pottstown EAC sent letters to numerous townships March 13, suggesting they might want to take a closer look at the fuel storage project "since your municipality is located within the evacuation zone for Limerick Nuclear Generating Station."
Although the storage of the fuel outside the reactor building is considered temporary by Exelon, the letter notes that the fuel’s eventual destination -- buried at the controversial and long-delayed Yucca Mountain project in Nevada -- may of "decades away from accepting nuclear waste it if ever, in fact is approved to do so."
The letter than outlines the attempts EAC has made to have additional heat and radiation monitoring installed.
"It is the opinion of the Pottstown EAC that once this fuel is loaded into the NRC approved storage containers in Limerick, it will be there for a very long time," Read wrote in the letter.
"As a community located within the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station evacuation zone, we believe you should be aware of our attempts to enhance and ensure public safety related to the dry cask storage project," Read wrote. "We invite your input and participation in our ongoing dialogue with Exelon."
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MarketWatch
April 03, 2007
Oil prices, CO2 concerns to spur nuclear renaissance: CERA
By Ian Talley
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- High fossil fuel prices and a global push for cleaner energy have created an environment ripe for a nuclear renaissance, Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report published Monday.
Despite obstacles such as high-level radioactive waste disposal, non-proliferation concerns, high investment costs and engineering shortages, CERA Senior Director Jone-Lin Wang and Associate Director Christopher Hansen said in their report, "The nuclear renaissance is real."
"Over the past few years, high fossil fuel prices, energy security and climate change concerns and increasing urgency about reducing greenhouse gas emissions have all converged to improve the position of nuclear power relative to other options," the two authors said in a press release.
The report said the trends, along with "excellent performance of the existing nuclear fleet and financial incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005," have led to a race to develop new nuclear power reactors in the U.S.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently awarded two separate early site permits to Entergy Corp. (ETR : Entergy Corporation have also applied for early site permits for nuclear power plants. No new nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. for 28 years.
The Bush administration, however, is facing mounting pressure to resolve a growing stockpile of spent nuclear fuel - currently stored temporarily at sites across the country - as plans for a national storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., have faced continuous legal and political hurdles, delays and projected budget expansions.
The CERA report noted that in Asia, where new nuclear plant construction has continued for years, several countries have recently raised their target for new nuclear capacity. In Western Europe, a new reactor is under construction for the first time in more than a decade, a second one is planned, and there are growing political calls for nuclear power as a key way to diversify away from natural gas dependency.
CERA said nuclear component manufacturing capacity and a dearth of skilled personnel could constrain nuclear capacity growth over the next several years, "but these are short-term growing pains similar to those faced by other industries and other segments of the energy industry."
It said recent worldwide trends toward higher fossil fuel prices, combined with low interest rates, low inflation, and the increasing importance of carbon dioxide emissions as a direct power generation cost, have improved the relative economics of nuclear power.
Longer-term issues involving spent fuel storage and the risk of proliferation need to be addressed and will require the implementation of international conventions. One of the Bush administration's top international energy priorities is the Global Nuclear Energy Project, or GNEP. The DOE said the program seeks to encourage the development of nuclear power by helping countries such as Russia, China and India handle spent nuclear fuel in a safe and proliferation-resistant manner while providing the opportunity to dramatically influence nuclear energy policy abroad.
Among the report's key conclusions are that governments will be unable to curtail rapidly rising global carbon dioxide emissions without expanding nuclear power generation, and so government support was essential.
"Success in capital-intensive projects like nuclear power requires a stable and predictable investment climate, which in turn requires efficient and stable government licensing and regulatory processes as well as a predictable structure for power markets," it said.
As a result of a projected renaissance, higher uranium prices and increased demand should lead to substantial mining capacity expansion.
It also warned that a major nuclear accident or an incident of nuclear terrorism "would put the brakes on new plant development," and was a "low probability, but high-consequence event."
--Contact: 201-938-5400
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 02, 2007
Nuclear waste on our rails
Susan Voyles
Trains carrying up to 4,500 casks of high-level nuclear waste could roll through downtown Reno and Sparks every week for 24 years under the latest strategy by the U.S. Department of Energy to build a railroad line to Yucca Mountain, according to Nevada officials.
In this new age of terrorism, the greatest threat is a cask being blown up on a train in downtown Reno or Sparks, said Bob Loux, Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects director.
"We think all shipments are vulnerable to terrorists and sabotage," Loux said.
Other than to keep pestering Energy Department officials, Loux said he doesn't believe local and state officials can do much to stop the latest route under study. "I don't see a legal recourse," Loux said.
As many as 4,500 or 5,000 casks -- half of all the casks to be shipped by rail -- are expected to go through Reno and Sparks if the Mina line is built and the DOE moves forward on using a "suite of routes" instead of only one rail line across the country, said Bob Halstead, the state's transportation consultant for Yucca Mountain.
Using the southern Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway route as well as the central Union Pacific route would provide greater security and operating flexibility in routing rail shipments from the East Coast, he said. The Santa Fe route would come up from the Central Valley in California and then over Donner Pass and into Reno on the UP line. Other shipments would come across the UP line from Utah.
At the earliest, DOE officials expect rail construction to begin in 2012. The repository would be open to start taking in 77,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in 2017 in the energy department's best-case scenario, while state officials say 2025 is more likely, if Yucca Mountain is approved at all.
Reno and Sparks are not included in a draft environmental-impact study on the Mina railroad line now proposed to be built through central Nevada. From the Union Pacific line, the Mina route would start with an existing rail line at Hazen, east of Fernley. Then, this route would head south to Hawthorne, where a new line would follow an abandoned railroad route to the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada.
The study is limited to the effects of building the new line and continued evaluation of the Caliente Route, which has been the favored route, starting near the state's eastern border.
The suite of routes has been proposed in discussions by members of the DOE's Transportation External Coordinating Working Group and outlined in a series of DOE e-mails quoted in an unpublished report by Halstead.
If only the Union Pacific route is used to send shipments across the country, most allotments would not go through Reno. Only 1,000 casks, or about 10 percent, would come by train through Reno and Sparks from power plants in California and Oregon, Halstead said.
Allen Benson, spokesman for DOE's Yucca Mountain repository project, said he was unaware of the "suite of routes."
But he said there's no need to worry. DOE has been transporting casks containing nuclear waste around the country for 50 years without incident, including 5,000 shipments to a waste isolation pilot plant in Carlsbad, N.M., he said.
"Nuclear material is already being shipped around this country and has been since the dawn of the atomic age," Benson said. No harmful release of radiation has occurred in this country in 2,700 shipments over 1.6 million miles, the department boasts.
But Benson declined to say much about protecting the casks from attack or sabotage.
"All of our shipments are escorted. I'm not going beyond that because it's a security measure," he said. "Those who need to know will be made aware."
Benson describes the casks as "pretty robust."
While DOE intends to hold another hearing in Reno when the draft Mina report is issued this fall, Benson said there are no specific plans to study the impacts of routing more nuclear waste by rail through Reno and Sparks. That's because transportation already was covered in an initial environmental-impact statement issued several years ago, he said.
And, he said, Reno is no different than any other city, such as Kansas City, that will be on the route.
Terrorist threat
With the same shoulder-fired weapons used in Iraq, Loux said terrorists could launch a two-cycle rocket to destroy a cask containing nuclear wastes on board a train.
"Most have a secondary explosion. The first explosion penetrates the cask and then a second explosion occurs once inside. Then you'd have a huge explosion that would include nuclear material," he said.
Depending on the winds, Loux said, the radiation could spread over 42 square miles.
He said his office had a list of weapons that could be used to attack the casks on its Web site, but the FBI asked that information be removed because it was copied onto terrorist Web sites. Loux said the information was widely available through publications such as Jane's military magazine.
In February Loux and Halstead stood along the trench through downtown Reno and asked whether it would be a help or a hindrance in safeguarding the trains. Trains run under 11 bridges in the 2-mile-long trench.
The trench will have to be studied more, Halstead said. When trains carrying nuclear waste are coming, he said trains should be stopped on the other set of tracks before entering the trench.
Halstead said the trench could have symbolic value for terrorists. But if radiation leaked, he said, the trench could contain the radiation. But a lot of wind could stoke a fire, making an incident far worse.
In a letter, Reno Mayor Bob Cashell told DOE officials they mishandled the environmental review process with the sudden change of plans to send "large amounts of high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel through the second largest metropolitan area in Nevada."
Sparks is concerned about train cars carrying nuclear material "stopping and staging here when there's a change of crews," in a letter signed by Mayor Geno Martini and the Sparks City Council that was sent to the Energy Department.
Loux said he considers the Western states as a target because terrorists could launch a missile almost anywhere because of the wide-open spaces.
As more and more communities become aware that they too could become targets if and when the trains come, Loux said a movement will grow to stop the Yucca Mountain project despite DOE's desires "to keep the discussion bottled up in Nevada."
Protection?
The spent nuclear fuel from power plants and other waste sources represent only 10 percent of the cask's weight, Benson said. Over 24 years, he said, 1,250 rail shipments would be made, amounting to two or three shipments a week.
Loux said his office initially petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1999 to make the casks stronger. And since the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, the commission has started an internal analysis of those standards to consider making them stronger.
Halstead said three casks would be shipped on a train. A large rail cask would contain 21 pressurized nuclear fuel assemblies from power plants, he said. The radioactive material inside those 21 bundles weighs about 10½ tons, according to his figures.
Mina vs. Caliente
The new look at the Mina route was prompted by the Walker River Paiute Tribe. Last June, the tribe notified DOE that it had withdrawn its objection, filed in 1991, over an environmental study to ship nuclear waste across its reservation through central Nevada.
The DOE estimates the Mina route would require only 240 miles of new rail and would cross fewer mountain passes than the Caliente Route, which would require 318 miles of new rail.
The Mina route is estimated to cost $1.6 billion versus $2 billion for Caliente.
Both the Mina and the Caliente routes would involve few, if any, rail shipments through Las Vegas. Clark County has loudly opposed shipments and DOE officials would likely "pay a little more attention to what they're saying," Loux said.
Earlier this month, the Energy Department asked for legislation to withdraw public lands at Yucca Mountain and around it from public use, a move required as part of its licensing. It also wants to lift a 77,000-ton limit on the amount of nuclear waste to be stored there.
No matter the setbacks, the nuclear energy industry will wait, Halstead said.
"I was just at a meeting with 2,200 (industry) people. Only 25 of us were dubious about the future of the nuclear industry and dubious about the future of Yucca Mountain," Halstead said.
Sooner or later, "from a common sense standpoint, these guys are going to get a license," Halstead said.
Benson said the environmental study should be complete before the energy department submits a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008 as planned.
He said the license could take three to four years to get.
Loux said the project will not be approved because of bad science, questions over quality control work for the site selection and the energy department's history at other sites. He said the department has never built a nuclear-related facility that hasn't leaked.
Loux and Halstead said the Feather River Canyon route for Union Pacific shipments from California -- an alternative suggested by some local officials -- is unlikely to be adopted. The route would avoid Reno but it's longer and more dangerous, susceptible to slides of rock or mud.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 02, 2007
Blast in trench could affect casinos, hospitals, homes
Susan Voyles
A mile-wide swath along the train tracks in Reno-Sparks would be the most affected if a terrorist attack or an accident released radiation from large casks containing nuclear waste that could be shipped someday through the cities to Yucca Mountain.
"We know we have to be thoroughly prepared within a half-mile band on either side of the tracks," said Bob Halstead, the state's transportation consultant for Yucca Mountain. That would include evacuation plans for the people in the exposure zone in Reno and Sparks. The number of people who could be affected has not yet been estimated.
"It never occurred to us DOE would look at routes closer to Reno," Halstead said.
A number of hotel-casinos in Reno and Sparks, two regional hospitals and a state mental hospital are within a half-mile of the tracks. For all the buildings in the corridor, he said the proper officials would need to know where the air intake valves are so air systems could be closed off, among many other details.
Reno and Sparks have passed a number of resolutions over the years in opposition to Yucca Mountain, and they have approved resolutions calling their cities "nuclear-free zones."
Local officials said another round of resolutions couldn't hurt. "For DOE, we're not even on the radar screen. It's very troublesome," said Washoe County manager Katy Singlaub.
She said Nevada's Congressional delegation is focused on killing the entire project and not on transportation.
"The rail line continues to move forward," she said. "That makes it easier for the whole project to happen."
State and local officials are urging DOE to provide maps of the routes under consideration.
But so far, no routes have yet been chosen, said Allen Benson, spokesman for DOE's Yucca Mountain repository project in Southern Nevada.
Sparks Mayor Geno Martini said the thought of nuclear trains stopping at the Sparks rail yard during a shift change for railroad workers scares him to death. He said a number of train cars carrying tanks of propane can be found at the yard, just south of John Ascuaga's Nugget.
With a Union Pacific Railroad supervisor, he said he recently took a tour of the yard. He said his friend was driving a borrowed car and the two were never stopped once. "It's scary. It was an eye-opener for me."
Martini said officials can only keep the pressure on DOE to hold a meeting in Sparks to hear local residents' concerns. And he said local officials also need to work closer with Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign.
Reno Mayor Bob Cashell said he is also concerned about a terrorist attack or an accident involving a nuclear rail shipment through town. When he owned the Boomtown truck stop in Verdi years ago, he recalled a truck leaking napalm in his parking lot.
So far, Halstead said, the DOE has offered little in training and preparing for an incident for cities along the rail corridor. He said $10 to $30 million is to be split among 35 to 40 affected states.
Aaron Kenneston, Washoe County emergency management director, said the DOE should build a set of tracks to avoid the Reno-Sparks area altogether.
But he said he's working to make sure all first responders are trained to deal with radiation exposure. He said a team of first responders was sent to Los Angeles this month to observe a training exercise in a railroad trench there.
The county also has received a $500,000 Homeland Security grant to start preparing evacuation plans for downtown, among other projects.
Bob Loux, Nevada Office of Nuclear projects director, said the state will do more detailed studies on the impacts to the Reno-Sparks area especially because DOE officials have not included the area in the Mina railroad route study now under way.
Even without an incident, Halstead said, the risks associated with nuclear rail shipments through town could harm tourism and property values.
In a 2002 study, property value losses were estimated at $173 million if no accidents occurred because of the risk of an accident, he said. The study said property values would drop by $445 million if an accident occurred but no radiation was released and by $2.2 billion if radiation was released in a serious accident. But Halstead said those numbers are out of date.
Halstead said radiation from casks carried on a passing train would not be enough to harm anyone unless the train stopped at the same place repeatedly. The exposure would be similar to getting an X-ray, he said.
Each train would carry three large casks. "Even in a very severe accident or a terrorist incident, you are not going to have any immediate fatalities among the general public," Halstead said.
Firefighters and other first responders would likely be the most exposed to any radiation leak and would face a 10-20 percent increase in getting cancer over their lives, he said.
"It's not like an atomic bomb going off," he said. "The health problem is if you don't clean it up right away and people are exposed over days, weeks and months."
Halstead he expects DOE would send in teams immediately to evacuate residents and begin a large-scale cleanup.
In a study done for Las Vegas, he said, the cleanup took from 400 to 500 days. Cleanup costs would be in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
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Las Vegas Sun
April 01, 2007
Week in Review: D.C.
Reid in lead, Senate stands up to Bush
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - The Senate surprised Washington last week when 50 senators voted for a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, setting up a showdown with President Bush, who has vowed to veto the legislation.
After Tuesday night's historic vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid returned to his Capitol offices and uttered the understatement of the year.
"That was a tough vote," he said, according to an aide who was there. The closest he got to a victory lap was a little spring in his step.
Reid had tried twice since becoming majority leader to get the Senate to stand up to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. He kept senators in session on a Saturday over the President s Day weekend to vote against the troop surge, only to fall four votes shy. He tried again in mid-March to push back against the war, but saw his own Democrats sidestep.
Tuesday night he brought one Democrat back into the fold. Two Republicans joined the Democrats to defeat a Republican-led amendment that would have stripped the withdrawal timeline from the Iraq spending bill.
Even though the final bill didn't pass until two days later , the die was cast. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to tell Bush that the ball was in his court. By the time the Senate passed the bill Thursday morning, it was old news.
Bush called together Republican members of the House that morning, including Nevada Rep. Dean Heller, as a show of support for his own Iraq plan. Nevada's other Republican representative, Jon Porter, couldn't make the meeting. Nothing philosophical, Porter spokesman Matt Leffingwell said. The congressman supports Bush's efforts in Iraq; he just had other work piled high as Congress prepared to adjourn for a one-week recess, Leffingwell said.
Porter and Rep. Shelley Berkley set aside their differences last week in an attempt to win permission for a floor vote on zeroing out Bush's proposed $494.5 million request for Yucca Mountain in next year's budget. They failed, but Leffingwell said their efforts are helping to alter the debate about the proposed nuclear waste repository.
"There is a change in strategy here," he said. "Most of the history of Yucca has been the not-in-my-back-yard approach. They're going after this as wasteful, reckless spending."
Berkley had her own turn in the spotlight last week when Pelosi passed her the gavel. For the first time in her five-term career, Berkley is in the majority party, and she got to take a turn leading the House from the speaker's podium, as members in the majority do.
By Friday the town was essentially deserted as members fled to their districts for the recess. Nevada's congressmen also returned home, and Heller and Porter will deliver speeches this week to the state Legislature.
Reid will be back in the state, too. But he took Friday off.
--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Atlanta Journal Constitution
April 01, 2007
With nuclear power, hopes turn to ashes
By Dianne Valentin
After World War II and the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear technology was supposed to be used for peaceful purposes.
We were promised that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter" and that the lethal, radioactive waste produced each day from reactor operation would be long gone. A safe investment in the future, and a clean form of energy?
What have we learned? That nuclear power promises are hard to keep. Georgia Power estimated that four nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle would cost about $660 million. The final price tag was about $8.9 billion, and we got only two reactors.
We were promised that our utility bills would go down or remain stable. Unfortunately, Georgia Power bills showed the largest rate increase after Vogtle went on line. Another broken promise.
We held out hope for industry to make good on the promise of successfully disposing of highly radioactive nuclear waste. Well, it's been over 60 years since that first radioactive waste was created, and it hasn't been disposed of. Ratepayers are now paying for storage sites around the country to hold enormous amounts of deadly radioactive waste that was unanticipated when licenses were first granted for nuclear reactors almost 40 years ago.
Our government is struggling to find a suitable storage solution, since the problem-plagued Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada may never open. No matter where we decide to put this radioactive waste, it has to be transported on our roads, in trains, on ships. Translated: through our neighborhoods and on our waterways.
When nuclear plants were first built, terrorists were not a concern. After 9/11 we learned that nuclear power plants were intended targets. Yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which regulates those plants, still finds the likelihood of a terrorist attack too "remote and speculative." The NRC remains hesitant to require utilities to fully secure these radioactive facilities around the country.
In California, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has disagreed, and a case will eventually be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The NRC remains hesitant to require utilities to fully secure these radioactive facilities around the country.
We are being told that nuclear power is clean and will save us from global warming. But worldwide, it would take some 2,000 new nuclear power plants, at a cost of over a trillion dollars, to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Those plants would require a new Yucca Mountain-sized repository every few years to store the tidal wave of highly radioactive nuclear waste. With no answer to its radioactive nuclear waste, it is clear that nuclear energy will not be the answer to global warming.
Nuclear energy promoters disagree when environmentalists suggest that our energy needs can be met with a combination of energy efficiency and conservation, coupled with local, state and federal clean energy policies. However, around the world, various technologies and simple conservation are increasingly reducing CO2 emissions faster and cheaper than nuclear could.
With more information becoming available, we are less dependent on the information dispensed by the nuclear industry, and relying more on factual data from research. There is more evidence of health risks and damage to the environment in areas around reactors. The risk of accidents is a reality. The possibility that nuclear materials could fall into the hands of terrorists is a world-wide threat, the fact that nuclear power will not reduce our dependence on foreign fuel sources, the problems with transporting radioactive waste, all combine to make nuclear reactors a really bad idea.
The nuclear industry fooled us once and built 104 reactors in this country, but fool us twice ... we don't think so.
--Dianne Valentin is a community activist living in Atlanta.
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Pahrump Valley Times
March 31, 2007
County OKs Yucca Mtn. study pact
By Mark Waite
PVT
A new five-year agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy has only been proposed, but Nye County commissioners last week felt confident enough to approve 16 contracts worth $1.26 million for the Independent Scientific Investigation Program of the Yucca Mountain project for the next year.
Nye County officials signed a five-year agreement with the DOE in April 2002 to fund the program. The Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office has $1.5 million in carry-over funds for the program, until the proposed $2.5 million in new funding is available.
The new five-year proposal is meant to reduce uncertainty in defining pathways of contaminants that may occur from Yucca Mountain and travel times in the ground water from the proposed repository to Amargosa Valley.
The knowledge will help in planning mitigation measures to protect human health, safety and the environment, interim Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office Director Dave Swanson said in a memo to commissioners.
"It is proposed to award these professional service contracts without competition," Swanson wrote. The awards will be based on previous experience.
Swanson said that, on average, these contractors have worked for Nye County at least seven years each. "These contractors provide a very valuable service to Nye County and it would be damaging to the program to lose their services," he wrote.
The swarm of contractors, their duties and their allotted amounts include:
John Campanella, Norwest Corp., will receive up to $170,000 for tracer tests, which include supervising test wells to refine a conceptual model of the hydro-geologic system downslope from Yucca Mountain;
Tom Buqo, a hydro-geologist, will receive up to $150,000. Buqo was the principal investigator for water-level monitoring, including identifying trends in groundwater levels in Amargosa Valley and Pahrump Valley;
TerraSpectra Geomatics will produce maps and maintain the Web site and the license support network Web site. The company will receive up to $150,000;
Jamie Walker, of Jamieson Geological Inc., a managing geologist, trained geologists and technicians for the project, served as a support geologist in drilling and sampling, as well as helping plan new bore holes and wells. He will be paid up to $145,000;
Frank D'Agnese, of Earth Knowledge LLC, data management systems, former principal investigator of the Death Valley Regional Groundwater Flow System, will receive up to $100,000. He evaluated groundwater modeling supervised by Buqo and made recommendations in defining the hydro-geologic framework.
George Danko, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, Mackay School of Mines, performed ventilation models showing the beneficial cooling and drying effects of natural ventilation at Yucca Mountain. He will receive $90,000 to continue studying air flows;
Bob Wilcoxon, geologist III, provided logging support for the Early Warning Drilling Program, performed technical oversight on geologic samples and developed water level monitoring networks. He will receive up to $90,000;
Mary Ellen Giampaoli, in charge of environmental compliance, has obtained the necessary permits and documentation for well construction, testing and surface excavation, as well as site reclamation. She helped prepare a health and safety plan. Giampaoli will receive up to $70,000;
Arturo Woocay and Aline James, University of Texas, El Paso, geochemistry graduate students, will help in groundwater chemistry sampling, for a fee of up to $66,000. Woocay used statistical models to analyze ion water chemistry data near Yucca Mountain and identify groundwater flow pathways that effect Amargosa Valley;
John Walton, chairman of the environmental science and engineering program at the University of Texas, El Paso, helped develop a water chemistry model for the repository barrier system that demonstrated the potential for corrosive brine development. He will be paid up to $55,000;
James Foster, a lab technician who conducted hydrologic tests on core samples, will receive up to $50,000;
Sarah Morealli, University of Pittsburgh a structural geology graduate student, will be paid up to $42,000 for structural geology support.
Thomas Anderson, a University of Pittsburgh professor of geology, will be paid up to $40,000. Anderson investigated geologic characteristics and identified potential fast pathways for groundwater flow of contaminants to the Amargosa Desert area.
Ed Huskinson, a geologist III, provided geologic logging support for the Early Warning Drilling Program, characterizing minerals. He will receive up to $30,000.
Ken Hooks, of Caruthers and Associates Inc., a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission quality assurance engineer, will continue revising the quality assurance documents and will be paid up to $10,000.
William Belke, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission quality engineer, will continue monitoring the quality assurance plan and will be paid up to $10,000;
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Lahontan Valley News
March 31, 2007
Local students impressed by safety of nuclear repository after site visit
Marlene Garcia
mgarcia@lahontanvalleynews.com
Ask Churchill County High School science students what they think of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and they will explain how safeguards make the proposal a good idea.
A group of advanced placement chemistry pupils in Steve Johnson's class visited the planned nuclear waste repository earlier this month, along with the Nevada Test Site and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California. A stop at Hoover Dam taught the students about hydroelectric power.
What the teens learned on the trip convinced them that nuclear power is a vital energy source, and that storing radioactive waste in Nevada is not a big deal.
Alex Belbin, 16, said this was his second trip to Yucca Mountain but his first to San Onofre.
"Not only do they have all these guards, they have a backup in case the systems fail," he said about the power plant. "It's really, really, really safe. That impressed me."
After touring Yucca Mountain, Belbin said geologists explained how the waste would be protected via natural features of the area, such as volcanic rock.
"It's really safe. Nothing is going to happen," he said about a potential disaster.
Belbin plans to attend the Naval Academy and eventually work in engineering. He enjoys chemistry and all sciences. The junior has lived in Fallon most of his life after being born in England where his mother was stationed with the Navy.
"I like the concepts and doing things with chemicals. Explosions are always nice, too," he joked.
Shane Groover said experts at Yucca Mountain explained how nuclear waste would be stored in an unbiased way to allow students to form their own opinions.
"The Yucca Mountain trip reinforced my opinion that it is a good place to store nuclear waste," he said. "We have to store it somewhere. If we don't, the nuclear industry is going to collapse."
He hopes to be a nuclear engineering someday. Groover, 17, said he would love to be a pilot but he suffers from motion sickness that might hamper that goal. His father retired this week after 23 years with the Navy.
Pam White said she doesn't understand why Nevada officials oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
"Of all the places to store it, I see Nevada as the best place," said White, 17. "There's a very small chance it would get into our water table. Our government has some good ideas, and we're very good about planning for the future."
She hopes her future holds a job she enjoys, that is creative and also contributes to society.
Misty Moyle said visiting a museum at the Nevada Test Site brought to life the public's reaction to atomic testing beginning in the 1950s and continuing for four decades until a moratorium was enacted in 1992.
"It was interesting to see a visual of how destructive the bombs were," she said.
Moyle, 17, joins her classmates in the belief that Yucca Mountain is completely safe for storing nuclear waste.
"Everything about the whole process is so safe. They have taken every precaution to the Nth degree," she said. "To me, it's a beautiful piece of land, and I love Nevada, but it's so safe nothing could happen."
She believes nuclear waste will be recycled and reused in the future.
Moyle is fascinated by how hormones work in the body and hopes to become an endocrinologist. She lives in Fallon during the school year and in Eureka to work on the family farm during summers.
The U.S. Department of Energy had set at 2017 deadline to open the nuclear repository in Southern Nevada, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The date was pushed back to 2020 or 2021 on Wednesday because it could take longer to get approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Litigation has also delayed the project.
Yucca Mountain would be the country's first national repository for nuclear waste with the capacity to store at least 77,000 tons of the material.
There is currently about 50,000 tons of radioactive waste sitting at reactor sites in various states.
Johnson said he has been taking students to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain for about 10 years.
"The Nevada Test Site has played a major role in the Cold War years. It's important for Nevada residents to know we played a part," he said.
--With AP reports
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Rutland Herald
March 31, 2007
Letters: Nuclear fuel is vexing issue
The growing amount of high-level nuclear waste at Vermont Yankee should be of concern to every Vermonter. It is more than a safe bet to say that the lethal by-products of 35 years of power production will not be going to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, anytime soon, if at all.
The Rutland Herald article entitled "Vermont AG weighs in on Yankee spent fuel" published on March 20 shows that at least one powerful state leader wants a serious statewide debate on the subject. Sen. Peter Shumlin should be commended for raising concerns and offering direction on what is a vexing and pressing issue.
Chris Williams
Hancock
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 30, 2007
Letters: Dumb bird
To the editor:
In response to Erin Neff's Thursday column on Yucca Mountain and Nye County:
Ms. Neff confuses political double-speak with Webster's definition of "oversight," while at the same time explaining perfectly that "oversight" means to oversee the eventuality of Yucca Mountain's dreaded appearance.
Typical of non-host county "leaders," Ms. Neff attempts to insult Nevada's largest county for actually spending oversight money to prepare for the inevitable. While she and others believe the fairy tale that our good Sen. Harry Reid somehow possesses superhuman powers that will allow his powerful voice to overcome the needs of a majority of East Coast states, we in Nye County trust our leaders to understand reality and spend tax dollars a bit more wisely.
We can hope only that the voters of Clark County understand that their leaders' ostrich impersonations will not keep the wolf from calling.
Sandy Harmon
Tonopah
--The Writer is Former Three-Term Tonopah Town Board Member and Former Director of Economic Development for Nye and Esmeralda Counties.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
March 30, 2007
Diablo Canyon: SLO group wants less used fuel in pools
David Sneed
dsneed@thetribunenews.com
A San Luis Obispo group is one of three urging federal regulators to require that Diablo Canyon and other nuclear power plants reduce the number of fuel assemblies in their spent fuel pools as a safety measure.
The commission has shown no sign of adopting such a rule, though. Diablo Canyon plant managers have no plans to do so voluntarily but have not ruled it out in the future, said plant spokeswoman Sharon Gavin.
"We’d be willing to revisit it once some of the fuel has been removed from the pools," she said.
In a March 26 letter, the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace nuclear watchdog group and advocacy groups the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Citizen urge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change its security rules to require that plants return their spent fuel pools to their original, low-density configuration.
Such a step would greatly reduce the likelihood of the spent fuel assemblies in the pools catching fire and spewing radioactive steam and smoke into the environment, Mothers for Peace president Liz Apfelberg said in the letter.
"This measure would be an essential element of any rational strategy for providing defense in depth of nuclear power plant and its spent fuel," she said.
Nuclear utilities argue that the likelihood of the water draining out of the pools in the event of an accident or terrorist attack is so low that it does not justify the millions of dollars per plant it would cost to reconfigure the pools.
Used but still highly radioactive reactor fuel must cool off in pools for five years after removal from the reactor.
Originally, the pools were intended to hold a relatively small number of fuel rods.
The failure of the federal government to open a centralized storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has caused the density of the fuel pools to increase to five times their original configuration.
Early in 2008, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will begin loading spent fuel in dry casks for storage above ground. But the utility plans to remove only enough old fuel assemblies to make room for those new assemblies scheduled for removal from the reactors.
The topic of how to store highly radioactive spent fuel will not go away anytime soon. This week, the head of the Yucca Mountain project said the storage facility will likely open in 2020 or later.
At the same time, the trend of all nuclear plants applying to renew their operating licenses for 20 more years will continue unabated, NRC Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield said in a speech this month.
"Today, we have renewed the licenses of close to 50 reactors," he said, "and absent some unforeseen circumstance, it appears that within a handful of years all 104 will either be allowed to continue to operate for 60 years or be in various stages of review."
Diablo Canyon’s licenses will expire in 2024 and 2025. The utility plans to study whether to renew the plant’s licenses. State utility regulators have given PG&E until June 2011 to make its decision.
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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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