Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, May 3, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, May 3, 2007
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UPI
May 03, 2007

Highway fire raises nuclear waste concern

OAKLAND, Calif., May 2 (UPI) -- A long-lasting inferno on a California highway raised concerns over nuclear waste shipped by truck, and the threat to public safety.

Federal authorities say a chance of a shipment of nuclear waste being caught in such a fire -- which burned for two hours Sunday and reached 3,000 degrees on Oakland's MacArthur Maze freeway -- are remote.

A full fuel tanker en route to a gas station hit a guardrail and exploded, melting the steel holding the highway overpass, which collapsed, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Bob Loux, director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects (and adamant opponent of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project in Nevada), said the incident shows moving nuclear waste is vulnerable to accidents as well as terrorist attacks. Some of the waste that could be sent to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could travel via truck, though most would be shipped via rail.

Al Stotts, spokesman for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said federal agents travel with the shipments in case of an attack.

If such an incident involves nuclear waste, however, the results aren't clear. The containers are tested to withstand fires lasting only half an hour and at 1,475 degrees.

Transuranic nuclear waste is shipped from Washington, Idaho, Colorado, South Carolina and Los Alamos, N.M., to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the deserts of New Mexico.

The U.S. Energy Department has sent 5,600 shipments of such waste -- generated from U.S. research and weapons programs -- since 1999.

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Boston Herald
May 03, 2007

The world in his hands: Markey sees us spinning off course

By Brett Arends
Boston Herald Business Columnist

Rep. Ed Markey is busy on Capitol Hill these days. He is, after all, in charge of saving the planet.

The Malden Democrat was tapped by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to head up the first committee on energy independence and climate change. Early proposals are pencilled in for July 4.

When we met this week, Markey showed a lot of frustration with the way “we have gone backward” in energy efficiency over the past 20 years. And no wonder. Since 1986, fuel economy in new cars has actually fallen - from 27 miles per gallon to 25. And the net result isn’t just about greenhouse gases. For those still skeptical about global warming: Our dependence on imported oil has skyrocketed from 27 percent to 60 percent. That’s costing us about $300 billion a year.

Oh yes, “and unfortunately,” says Markey, “in too many countries that money is used by the leaders to fund al-Qaeda and madrassas.”

Could we be any more stupid if we tried?

Markey recalls that after the first energy crisis in the mid-1970s we doubled car mileage in 10 years, and slashed our dependence on imported oil from 46 percent to just 27 percent.

What are we likely to expect this time around?

“If we improve fuel economy from 25 mpg to 35 mpg over the next 10 years,” he says, “that backs out the equivalent of all the oil we import from the Persian Gulf.”

Ethanol may cut “maybe another 1 million barrels a day” from our oil imports. Markey says he is also looking at higher energy efficiency standards for everything else, from your PC to your cell phone to your air conditioner (apparently we are wasting an enormous amount of energy by leaving our computers on screensaver). And then there will be “cap and trade” mandates that limit the amount of greenhouse gases companies can emit. Creating greener technologies, he says, “should be the moonshot of this generation.”

But two things, apparently, won’t be in the mix - higher fuel taxes and nuclear power.

Too bad.

On fuel taxes, Markey thinks we don’t need them. Mandating higher efficiency standards on manufacturers “work just as well,” he says, citing the ’70s and ’80s. The problem? Back then we were responding to soaring energy costs as well, thanks to OPEC.

You might wonder how much energy we’ll save as long as it is cheap. A $6 gallon of gas - offset by a deep cut in income taxes - would go a long way to stimulating conservation and new technologies.

As for nuclear power? Markey points out we still can’t agree on where to store the waste. The designated site in Nevada’s Yucca Mountains remains a source of bitter dispute. Markey recalls it was only chosen in the ’80s because Rep. Tom Foley of Washington, House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu all used their clout to block sites in their states.

The solitary Nevada congressman at the time, who fought bitterly against the decision?

“It was,” laughs Markey, “a man named Harry Reid.”

That would be today’s Senate majority leader. Oh yes, and Nevada now has an early presidential primary. So don’t expect that issue to be resolved any time soon. Markey, realistically, says it could take decades.

--Talk back at mail@brettarends.com.

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San Francisco Chronicle
May 02, 2007

The Maze Meltdown

Safety: Nuclear shipments questioned

Keay Davidson
Chronicle Science Writer

Sunday's highway inferno in Oakland has sparked calls for federal officials to take another look at the safety of their truck shipments of nuclear waste, spent fuel and nuclear weapons, as a guard against a future freeway mishap that would shower cancer-causing radioactive materials over an urban area.

But federal agencies charged with the shipments said Tuesday that there's nothing to fear.

Truck shipments of nuclear weapons are accompanied by "highly trained federal agents. They're armed and they're ready to defend the cargo in whatever way they have to if they were attacked," said Al Stotts, spokesman for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration.

However, one concern among nuclear critics is what would happen if a truck carrying nuclear materials collided with a fuel tanker, either accidentally or because of a terrorist attack.

Sunday's fire reportedly grew as hot as 3,000 degrees -- almost one-third the surface temperature of the sun -- and burned for two hours. Federal agencies have tested nuclear shipments in so-called "fully engulfing" fires that last only 30 minutes and don't exceed 1,475 degrees.

"This incident raises concerns about nuclear waste and spent fuel shipments," said Bob Loux, state director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects in Nevada, where the Bush administration is pushing to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear burial site near Las Vegas.

The federal regulations regarding such shipments, he said, "need to be revisited and re-evaluated," not only in response to the MacArthur Maze blaze but because "many of these regulations haven't been looked at since the early 1970s."

"Things have changed in the real world," he said.

Federal officials say nuclear disasters from highway accidents are highly unlikely.

Since 1999, the Department of Energy has made more than 5,600 shipments of transuranic nuclear waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico from Washington, Idaho, Colorado, South Carolina and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said Bill Mackie, manager of institutional programs for the isolation plant's field office in Carlsbad, N.M.

"We have had no radiation leakage or severe accidents," he said.

Mackie acknowledged that the nuclear containers haven't been tested in fires lasting longer than 30 minutes and burning hotter than about 1,475-degrees, but he was confident they could withstand hotter blazes because they're so sturdily built.

Loux, noting nuclear power plant failures and the loss of two NASA space shuttles, cautioned that "these 'very remote' kinds of things have a tendency to occur."

Bob Halstead, a longtime consultant on nuclear shipments to Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency who has testified before Congress on such issues, told The Chronicle that the drivers hired to ship nuclear materials are diligently screened by the federal government and said he's not worried about their reliability. But he is concerned that even excellent drivers can't prevent a terrorist from deliberately plowing a fuel tanker into a nuclear shipment.

He said a long-lasting fire like the one that occurred in the MacArthur Maze on Sunday could unleash radioactive poisons -- in particular, the health-threatening isotope cesium-137 -- into the atmosphere.

Halstead accused federal agencies of "complacency."

"I try to remind them that when the Exxon Valdez (oil spill) occurred, there had already been 8,000 successful tanker shipments out of Alaska," he said.

--E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.

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Charlotte Observer
May 02, 2007

Duke CEO:

Nuclear is answer

Christopher D. Kirkpatrick

Duke Energy Corp. Chief Executive Jim Rogers said environmentalists and Congress should support nuclear energy or risk failure in battling global warming.

The strident talk from Rogers, one of the first utility executives to call for regulating carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources, comes as Duke plans a nuclear project in Cherokee County, S.C., estimated to cost up to $6 billion.

It also comes at a time when the Democratically controlled Congress considers how to tax or otherwise regulate industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

Coal-fired power plants are a major source of carbon dioxide, blamed by climate scientists as a cause of global warming, which threatens to melt polar ice and cause flooding, among other environmental disasters.

Nuclear energy, on the other hand, has zero emissions, and the President Bush-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides financial incentives for utilities to start building plants again. But where to store nuclear waste for the long term is unresolved and has been a sticking point in Congress for years.

Environmentalists and Congress can't push for carbon dioxide regulations, which will be expensive, and also obstruct nuclear and hope to have enough electricity for the future, Rogers said at a recent energy industry forum.

"For the Congress to address climate change and not address the future of nuclear will doom us to failure, in terms of achieving our climate objectives," he said. "Nuclear has to be thought of in the same breath as carbon."

Charlotte-based Duke is the nation's third-largest consumer of coal as it provides power to 3.9 million customers in five states. About 52 percent of the electricity Duke produces in the Carolinas comes from burning coal, about the same percentage from all utilities nationwide.

Duke operates three nuclear power plants in the Carolinas and derives 46 percent of its Carolina electricity from the technology, compared with 19 percent for all utilities across the country.

The United States is behind much of the western world in relying on nuclear energy. But as concerns over global warming intensify, the technology is increasingly seen as an environmental solution. Most utilities abandoned projects and none have been licensed since the partial meltdown in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa.

Some environmentalists say Rogers' scenario provides an artificial choice between nuclear energy and global warming.

They believe nuclear energy and carbon dioxide are both unacceptable threats and that electricity needs can be met in other, safer ways. They say power companies and the country should focus investment on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programs that reduce demand.

Utilities and governments also should invest more money into perfecting clean-coal technologies that show promise in capturing carbon dioxide before it is released into the atmosphere. The gas might then be stored underground or pumped into gigantic greenhouses for plants, which breathe carbon dioxide.

Michael Shore, a senior policy analyst with N.C. Environmental Defense, said an energy future with less carbon dioxide does not automatically mean more reliance on nuclear power. He said Duke is moving in the right direction by pledging an aggressive energy efficiency program. He said utilities could slash one-third of energy demand in North Carolina through efficiency programs. And if only the most cost-effective efficiency programs were implemented, demand could be reduced by 14 percent, Shore said.

Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, also are becoming cheaper and don't give off greenhouse gases, he said.

"Nuclear should bother everyone. It's expensive, and we have not figured out how to manage the waste. And there are security issues," he said. "It's quite possible that we can figure out a low-carbon future that is not dependent on nuclear energy."

Nuclear's Uncertain Future

Duke CEO Jim Rogers believes nuclear technology, once all-but abandoned as unsafe, is a necessary part of the nation's energy future. But plants will need to be re-licensed, and 26 new projects, including a Duke plant project in Cherokee County, S.C., are in the beginning stages and face uncertain futures, he said. Rising materials costs and the looming issue of where to store nuclear waste could slow or block the projects.Duke has three operating nuclear plants, and the spent nuclear fuel rods are stored on site in special pools of water and also in dry storage containers that resemble free-standing mausoleums.

The federal government has spent $9 billion preparing a deep underground storage facility inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But politics has stalled the project, which is several years overdue. The government estimates the price tag for completing and operating the site until 2023 is nearly $27 billion.

Nuclear's Troubled Past

After the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, interest in nuclear plants waned.

About 60 plants across the country were scrapped, and billions of investment dollars were lost or passed on to consumers through rate increases.

Duke scrapped six plants, and Raleigh-based Progress Energy canceled three.

Duke lost hundreds of millions on the Cherokee County, S.C., site . The utility raised rates to recover $224.5 million of the roughly $600 million it spent on the previous project that was never completed. It now wants to build twin reactors on the same site for an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion.

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Cherry Hill Courier Post
May 02, 2007

Analysts: PSEG set to gain from expansion

Industry analysts say PSEG has everything to gain from the overture to expand.

A federal energy bill in 2005 offered huge tax credits, loan guarantees and risk-insurance benefits to companies that seek licenses for clean-energy projects before the end of 2007. That has led to a rush of companies applying to build new reactors.

Although there are 104 licensed to operate nuclear power plants in the United States, no new facility has been built since 1996. But this year so far, about 20 companies have made proposals.

Constellation Energy already has proposed building two advanced reactors at Calvert Cliffs, Md., or Nine Mile Point in New York, and at two other undetermined locations, using the same new reactor design already under construction in France and Finland.

Eighteen other ventures involving dozens of sites and reactors also are under consideration. Two, in Illinois and Mississippi, already have the needed approvals.

"So many others already are in that race that I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that second reactor at Hope Creek," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the watchdog group the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But there are a lot of variables involved."

Even the industry believes that only a fraction of the reactors proposed will be built. But advocates point to the stack of new applications, spawned in part by federal tax credits, as evidence the nation is once again interested in nuclear power.

From the industry's standpoint, recent history favors a nationwide expansion.

The notoriety of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania may have been a setback, but advocates of nuclear power point to its safe record since then, both here and in Europe.

In France, for instance, nuclear energy was embraced 30 years ago, when the rest of the world was dealing with an energy crisis.

Today, with 58 plants, the country gets about 78 percent of its energy from nuclear plants. It even produces enough to export electricity to England and Germany.

All that and air that's largely clear of the air pollution emitted by fossil-fuel burning plants.

Critics argue that no matter the industry's record and the environmental benefits of nuclear energy, there is still the question of what to do with nuclear waste.

While burying excess waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has created a nationwide stir, France has taken its nuclear waste and reused it, albeit at a cost of more than $1 billion a year.

Spent nuclear fuel rods from French plants are sent to a sprawling plant on the coast of Normandy. There, the rods are cooled for years and used to make new fuel.

Some critics caution that France might not be gaining much.

Although reprocessing reduces the amount of traditional reactor waste, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research pointed out recently that the process leaves other types of wastes that still require long-term storage, leaving roughly the same overall need for a repository.

Mitchell Singer, a spokesman for the industry-backed Nuclear Energy Institute, said that the United States needs to consider nuclear power as one of the methods available to meet future needs while also reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas linked to global warming and climate shifts.

"When you take into account environmental goals and the talk about climate change and greenhouse gas, nuclear definitely has a role to play in our energy story going forward," Singer said. "That effort can't be accomplished without nuclear as a component."

-- Gannett News Service

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 01, 2007

Former aide to Idaho senator to be nominated to NRC post

Svinicki worked as nuclear engineer in connection with Yucca project

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A Senate staff member who worked on Yucca Mountain issues for an Idaho senator will be nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the White House announced Monday.

Kristine L. Svinicki worked on nuclear issues as senior policy adviser to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, from 1997 to 2005. Craig is a leading supporter of the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository.

Earlier in her career, Svinicki served as a nuclear engineer in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the Energy Department office that manages the Yucca project, according to the White House.

The Energy Department declined to disclose information about Svinicki's work on the Yucca project, such as her dates of employment, her job assignment and whether she worked at the site of the proposed nuclear waste dump, in Las Vegas or elsewhere.

DOE spokesman Allen Benson said questions about Svinicki should be directed to the White House.

Svinicki is a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, specializing in nuclear weapons issues.

She could not be reached for comment.

Svinicki, who lives in Virginia, would replace Jeffrey Merrifield on the five-member NRC board if confirmed by the Senate. Merrifield is a Republican appointee whose term expires later this year.

If confirmed, Svinicki would serve on a term that runs until 2012. Barring further delays in the Yucca program, the term is expected to coincide with the NRC's consideration of an Energy Department application to license nuclear waste storage at a site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"She is one of the sharpest minds in the nuclear policy world," said Dan Whiting, communication director for Craig. "Hopefully the Senate leaders will move quickly" on confirmation.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who usually exerts influence on all things dealing with Yucca Mountain in Congress, "intends to watch her confirmation hearing process closely," spokesman Jon Summers said.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Svinicki's past involvement with the Yucca project could be troubling.

"We would rather see someone who hadn't had ties to Yucca Mountain but we would like to know more about her," Loux said.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Svinicki started her career as an energy engineer for the State of Wisconsin Public Service Commission, according to the White House.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 01, 2007

Documents added to Yucca database

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department announced Monday it has added 2.1 million documents to a Yucca Mountain electronic database that is available to the public.

Coupled with earlier postings, the database now contains 3.4 million DOE scientific and engineering documents, and other material government officials say will support their bid to establish a nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Yucca Mountain critics said the licensing support network also is likely to contain information hinting at repository flaws, and they plan to examine the documents closely.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the documents will be divided among 30 science consultants and critiqued for information that could become part of the state's case against the project, to be located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada plans to file "thousands" of contentions, or objections, during formal repository licensing hearings the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to hold, Loux said.

The network Web site is www.lsnnet.gov. It also contains Yucca documents posted so far by the NRC, Nye County and the state of Nevada.

The electronic library will be shared among the participants in repository license hearings. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said several hundred thousand more documents remain to be posted.

The public disclosure appeared to douse one fight between the Energy Department and Nevada, which had alleged that the DOE was hoarding documents and making it hard for the state to track the project.

Another disagreement may be brewing.

By law the licensing database must be officially certified six months before the DOE is allowed to file a repository license application with the NRC. DOE officials have said they plan to certify the database in December so the agency can file an application by the end of June.

But Loux said the state plans to protest that key documents such as analyses of key computer models, and the Total System Performance Assessment, a major science document, might not be made available until the spring.

"The modeling reports are foundation documents that may not be ready until sometime next year," Loux said. "We continue to think this will cause DOE a problem in trying to certify their records."

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KTNV
May 01, 2007

John Edwards Holds Town Hall Meeting At UNLV

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards held a town hall meeting at UNLV.

The former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate took questions from a small crowd.

One of the last questions dealt with the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Edwards is against it.

Edwards says communities should be empowered to decentralize the division of electricity and the power grid, so electricity can be more affordable to everyone.

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Lahontan Valley News
May 01, 2007

Letter: CCHS Student Clarifies Issues about Yucca Mountain Trip

I read the recently published article by Robert Loux about Yucca Mountain and the trip taken by CCHS chemistry classes.

I am a 16-year-old student who participated in that trip, and I would like to clarify a few points.

Our chemistry teacher, Mr. Johnson, has done a very good job teaching us about both the pros and the cons of the Yucca Mountain Project. Admittedly, our tour did give us a biased view of the project; however, we studied much more than that in class.

We understand that there are negative effects of the nuclear repository. During our tour, we were able to ask questions and air our opinions, and the guides gave us satisfactory answers. We listened to what they told us, but I doubt that any of my classmates took everything they said as proven fact.

Each of us was given the chance to formulate our own opinions, and not all of the chemistry students agree with the opinions of those quoted in the original article on March 31.

I would like to personally invite Mr. Loux to come visit our class and teach us his point of view. I'm sure we would all benefit from a meeting.

Rachel Mills
Fallon

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News & Observer
May 01, 2007

Letter: Nuclear positives

It seems production of more nuclear waste as a stumbling block to building new nuclear plants is only in the minds of the anti-nuclear power groups ("Nuclear foes see danger in waste, news story, April 15).

Electric utilities have made their intentions official that they wish to build at least 30 nuclear plants in the coming years, including plants in the Carolinas. Public opinion about nuclear energy, already generally supportive, continues to grow as people learn more about the effects of burning fossil fuels. With the alternatives for producing electricity mostly the burning of more fossil fuels, it seems dealing with the relatively small amounts of nuclear waste is not nearly that big a problem.

To put it in perspective, the volume of high-level nuclear waste you could attribute to a person if all his electricity for one year came from nuclear would be about the size of an aspirin bottle. Certainly we must properly dispose of used nuclear fuels, and it is expected that the facility under development at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, will serve that purpose.

In the world of energy, there are no perfect answers, only better and worse choices.

W.D. Walker
J.B. Duke professor emeritus
Duke University
Durham

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 30, 2007

Nuclear Energy Institute: Delays fan frustration with Yucca

No plans yet for DOE shake-up

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The nuclear industry's frustration with Yucca Mountain delays is at an "all-time peak," but a senior executive said there is no consensus as to whether the Energy Department program should be overhauled.

Alex Flint, a senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said there is "incredible frustration" that a Nevada nuclear waste repository won't be ready for another decade at the earliest to accept spent fuel. The site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas was supposed to open in 1998.

Flint, who is head of NEI governmental affairs, spoke with reporters at a breakfast organized by The Energy Daily.

Flint said Ward Sproat, the Yucca project director, "is probably the best manager the program has ever had." Sproat, a former executive at Exelon Corp., has been "blunt about the schedules and some of the challenges the program faces."

That has exposed industry officials to the unwelcome news that Yucca Mountain is years away from possible reality, he said.

In testimony to Congress and in speeches to industry groups, Sproat has set 2017 as a "best achievable" schedule for the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas to begin accepting waste, adding it is more likely the date would slip to 2020 or 2021.

Other experts and critics of the repository program set a repository opening time frame for 2025 or later if ever.

With Yucca Mountain facing further delays, some industry officials have revived an idea that the repository might be built with less political intervention and less leadership turnover if it is handed over to a semi-private government-chartered corporation.

Most recently, H. Brew Barron, chief nuclear officer of Duke Energy Corp., promoted the idea in a speech Tuesday. He said the repository effort is hampered by a "revolving door" of senior managers who come and go during election cycles.

"Let's not privatize the program, but let's run the program with private sector principles," Barron said at a conference of the U.S. Transport Council. He said an appointed board of directors similar to the one that runs the Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, would hire managers for long employment and hold them accountable.

"I think that same type of organization would serve our high-level nuclear waste program much better than the structure we have today," said Barron, whose company operates seven nuclear reactors in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Flint said the long delays forecast for the Yucca Mountain repository are causing "a few people" in the nuclear industry to think about restructuring the project.

"But we are far from a consensus on whether we need to contemplate a new management structure, and if so what kind of management structure," he said.

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Bennington Banner
April 30, 2007

Rep will fight tax on Yankee

Neal Goswami

BENNINGTON — A plan to tax Yankee Nuclear to fund the expansion of Efficiency Vermont has drawn opposition from a local legislator who has vowed to fight it, calling the proposal "dirty politics."

Rep. Joseph L. Krawczyk Jr., R-Bennington, said the funding source proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, which will cost Vermont Yankee about $37 million dollars over the next five years, is ill-advised and irresponsible.

"This is dirty politics," said Krawczyk. "We should be doing policy but we're playing politics."

Legislative leaders have lumped together House and Senate bills dealing with renewable energy and climate change. The Senate bill contains a section seeking the expansion of the state's efficiency utility and proposes to tax Yankee Nuclear to fund that expansion.

Efficiency Vermont ostensibly works to make homes, farms and businesses more energy efficient. Some legislators now want to expand the utility from solely working with electrical efficiency to also include home heating fuels.

The plant provides about one third of the state's power, and supplies Central Vermont Public Service, Vermont's largest electrical utility, with the majority of its electricity.

The "extended spent fuel nuclear storage charge" would tax the power plant, owned by Entergy Nuclear, for storing spent nuclear waste in the state. Proponents say that when Vermont Yankee went on line in 1972, it was understood that spent nuclear waste would remain on site for only a brief period.

However, waste storage has become a long-term problem. The federal government is responsible for the long-term disposal of nuclear waste, but has been unable to move forward in building a repository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The U.S. Department of Energy had originally planned for the repository in 2010, but now says 2017 or 2020 are more accurate.

The state reached a deal with Vermont Yankee in 2005 that allowed the company to store waste in dry casks in exchange for paying $15 million over a six year period. Without the dry casks, the plant was expected to run out of storage space before its licensing agreement ended in 2012.

Opponents of the plan say it is unfair to tax the plant two years after a storage agreement was reached, especially because power is being provided to Vermonters at about half the market rate.

Additionally, the state has known for some time that the Yucca Mountain repository would be delayed or abandoned.

"We knew very well that there was barely a snowball's chance in Vermont in July that Yucca would be built," said Joyce Errecart, R-Shelburne, vice chairwoman of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee last week. "I think this is very clearly reneging on a deal. This is amazing, for two years later to say, 'oh, you need to give us more.'"

Krawczyk lamented the Democratic majority in the Legislature for proposing new taxes to fund programs they hope to implement.

"That's all we've done up there — raise taxes," he said.

Shumlin's plan will make it difficult for the state to attract business, said Krawczyk.

"If I was looking into investing in wind, I wouldn't do it after seeing how we're screwing with Vermont Yankee," said Krawczyk.

House and Senate members will come together in conference committee to iron out differences between the two chambers before the unified bill gets sent back for approval.

Krawczyk said he and the other three Republican representatives in his committee intend to argue against the legislation on the House floor. However, the bill will likely pass because of heavy pressure from Shumlin. Shumlin is trying to force legislation after opening the Legislative session with several weeks of seminars and hearings about global climate change, said Krawczyk.

"He has to do something after the first three weeks," he said.

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Las Vegas SUN
April 29, 2007

McCain casts himself as Western hero

By Michael J. Mishak
Las Vegas Sun

Sen. John McCain spoke to Clark County Republicans at their annual Lincoln Day dinner this month and sold himself as a Western conservative, a presidential candidate with a unique understanding of Nevada's issues.

Water: California has stolen it.

Federal land: Government has mismanaged it.

Growth: Infrastructure can't handle it.

And, to top it all off, the Arizona Republican assailed Nevada's status as a donor state: "We need your tax dollars back in the state they came from."

Unspoken, as party volunteers prepared to auction a Remington rifle, tea time with first lady Dawn Gibbons and other items, were McCain's positions on a few other important issues that have become part of a litmus test for candidates in Nevada.

Front and center is Yucca Mountain, the proposed repository for the nation's nuclear waste about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "I think it's a suitable place for storage," he told reporters before his speech.

Then there is his legislative record on gaming issues. McCain unsuccessfully tried to ban college sports betting here, an unpopular move in a state where gambling is an economic engine. He also pushed for creating a federal boxing commission and once called what many see as that sport's successor, Ultimate Fighting, "human cockfighting."

All of this shadows McCain's candidacy as he campaigns in a state that, for the first time, will be a proving ground for presidential candidates. Nevada Democrats and Republicans will hold caucuses on Jan. 19, five days after similar contests in Iowa, which votes first in the nation.

McCain visited the red-leaning city of Elko on Saturday as part of a four-day "announcement tour" of early presidential voting states.

Political observers say his stances on Nevada issues are not likely to hurt his efforts here as he seeks to reinvigorate his ailing campaign. In fact, they say, President Bush supported Yucca Mountain and won the state in 2000 and 2004, a point McCain himself made during his Las Vegas visit this month.

"It's not going to kill him , but it doesn't give him any boost," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at UNR and a registered Republican.

As a parochial issue, Yucca Mountain, for instance, doesn't have the fundamental impact on voters' lives as ethanol does in Iowa, giving McCain more freedom to take an unpopular position with relatively little political risk. "It's not a passion issue," said Ryan Erwin, a Republican consultant.

By contrast, in 2000 McCain virtually skipped the Iowa caucuses, partly because of his opposition to federal subsidies for ethanol, the corn-growing state's cash cow. He has since softened his position, now stressing production of the alternative fuel source as part of a larger energy policy.

The real challenge for McCain, Republicans say, is to recapture the maverick image that attracted so many voters to his bid in 2000 and helped him win the New Hampshire primary, all before he fell to Bush in South Carolina.

"Clearly, running as the establishment candidate doesn't work for him," Herzik said. "He needs to reclaim that straight-talking Westerner, outsider image."

That will be difficult. McCain has been working to court the party's conservative base since his last presidential campaign. He supported - begrudgingly - Bush's reelection in 2004, and has been the most outspoken advocate of the president's troop buildup in Iraq when polls show most Americans favor setting a timetable for withdrawal.

And yet some of his Nevada supporters say his unflagging support of an unpopular war will resonate with Republican caucus-goers.

"He'd rather win the war in Iraq than the nomination," said Sig Rogich, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and longtime McCain friend who is helping the senator's efforts in Nevada. "At the end of the day, people look for integrity and straightforwardness," Rogich said. "They may not agree with him on all the issues, but at least they know where he stands."

Indeed, that strategy appears to be paying dividends in New Hampshire, where a recent poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, found McCain's positives had jumped about 20 points among likely Republican primary voters since February. Andrew Smith, the center's director, attributed the spike to McCain's support for the troop surge. Herzik said Sen. Harry Reid's comment that the "war is lost" could further help McCain's effort.

In the end, Rogich said , the Republican caucus will not turn on local issues. If true, that's good news for McCain, who trails former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in state polls. Looking for a boost, the campaign announced Friday that McCain had earned the endorsements of state Sens. Mark Amodei and Dennis Nolan and Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury.

As McCain works to get his message out in Nevada, his record as a budget hawk will win him points with conservatives, said Chuck Muth, a Carson City conservative activist.

In his speech to Clark County Republicans, McCain pledged not only to veto bills with pork-barrel projects but to make examples of their authors. "We're going to regain the enthusiastic exuberance of our Republicans, the fundamental base of our party," he said.

--Michael J. Mishak can be reached at 259-2347 or at michael.mishak@lasvegassun.com.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 29, 2007

McCain slams Bush Iraq policy in Elko visit

Sandra Chereb
Associated Press

ELKO -- U.S. Sen. John McCain reiterated his criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq on Saturday, and proclaimed that Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered as one the worst defense secretaries in history.

But the Republican White House hopeful from Arizona asked for patience, and affirmed his support for the administration's recent troop surge.

"The war is long and hard and tough. I'm not here to tell you, 'Mission accomplished,'" McCain said, distancing himself from President Bush's declaration of an end to major military actions in Iraq nearly four years ago.

The war was "terribly mismanaged" and Rumsfeld will go "down as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said.

The Arizona Republican made the comments to a crowd of about 300 people at a campaign rally in this rural Republican stronghold.

He also lashed out at Democrats, predicting they will drop their call for a troop withdrawal timeline and not cut funding for the war effort because of the consequences.

"The fact is they won't do it because (then) they assume responsibility for what takes place," McCain said.

In a speech in Las Vegas last week, McCain criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when the Nevada Democrat said the war in Iraq was "lost."

"We cannot declare this war lost when young Americans are fighting and sacrificing over there today," McCain said Saturday in response.

"Presidents don't lose wars. Political parties don't lose wars. Nations lose war; and when nations lose wars, they suffer the consequences."

McCain, a former Navy pilot, touted his experience and fiscal conservatism, pledging to rein in pork-barrel spending and cut government waste.

"I know war. I know peace. I served in the military, I know how the military works. I know how the world works," he said.

"I need no on-the-job training."

The senator repeated his stance that mistakes have been made in launching the war but that withdrawing troops would lead to chaos, genocide and embolden terrorists to bring their violence to American soil.

McCain's visit was part of a five-state, four-day swing to officially kick off his presidential campaign. He finished the tour later in the day in Tempe, Ariz.

The senator has been trailing in polls and fundraising to Republican Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. He acknowledged his uphill campaign Saturday with humor.

Citing his own failed presidential bid in 2000, as well as those of fellow Arizonians Barry Goldwater, Morris Udall and Bruce Babbitt, McCain quipped, "Arizona may be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children that some day they can be president of the United States."

The senator has struggled to maintain his reputation for political independence while staunchly defending the administration's increasing unpopular war policies.

In an interview following the rally, he also criticized fellow Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who this week said the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power.

"The hunt for Osama bin Laden must be pursued until we find him and either capture him or kill him," McCain said. "It is naive not to understand how important a symbol Osama bin Laden is to would-be terrorists and radical Islamic extremists all over the world."

McCain also took aim at the Bush administration on the issue of global warming.

"Probably one of the great failings of the Bush administration in my view is not to acknowledge that climate change was indeed a threat to our planet," he said.

Though rural areas of Nevada have been friendly territory for Republicans, McCain could have an uphill battle in the rest of the state, particularly in the populous region around Las Vegas in Southern Nevada.

McCain has a long record of supporting the opening of a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The waste dump is strongly opposed by Democrats and Republicans in the state.

A central repository, he said Saturday, is needed for national security.

But McCain downplayed the significance his support of Yucca Mountain would have on voters, noting that Bush also was pushing Yucca Mountain and carried the state.

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News Journal
April 29, 2007

Talk of 4th nuclear reactor on Del. River draws criticism

Watchdog group calls for expanding danger zone to include all northern Del.

By Jeff Montgomery
The News Journal

The last time the federal government considered how dangerous the Salem County, N.J., nuclear complex could be, it came to this conclusion: In the unlikely case of a meltdown, 100,000 people in the region would die within one year, with 75,000 injuries and 40,000 later deaths to cancer.

That was 25 years ago.

While there has been nothing close to a meltdown, the complex -- the nation's second-largest -- has run erratically, with numerous problems at times earning it a federal ranking as one of the nation's most troubled nuclear installations.

Now the facility's owner, PSEG Nuclear, is preparing to apply for 20-year permit extensions for all three of its reactors -- Salem Units 1 and 2 and Hope Creek -- and is considering turning up the heat at its Hope Creek reactor to produce more electricity.

All that would be enough to raise the ire of neighbors who want to see the complex shut down because of its unpredictable performance. But the company is going further. PSEG officials have said the company likely will take the first step this year to add a fourth reactor, making the complex the nation's largest.

"Clearly, the location in South Jersey was originally envisioned for four units. It has three. It makes sense to look at that site, which has some infrastructure advantages," said PSEG spokesman Paul Rosengren.

The suggestion of building a fourth reactor comes as the nuclear industry is touting itself as a safe, environmentally friendly source of energy for a nation focused on problems linked to fossil fuel-burning power plants.

"If you are going to get serious about carbon emissions, you need to take a serious look at the potential expansion of nuclear power," Rosengren said.

Federal officials have said that nuclear power has a safe record, and past meltdown studies might overstate potential losses.

But the PSEG plan can expect fierce opposition.

"They're going to start a firestorm," said Norm Cohen, who directs the watchdog group Unplug Salem. "They have enough to do to run three old, cranky reactors. They don't need to be building a new one. I can't see the people of South Jersey going for that."

Cohen has long argued that the complex has too many mechanical problems, management weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Even more important, he says, the federal emergency planning zone is inadequate. That zone, which currently spans a radius of 10 miles from the complex, takes in 11,722 households in towns as far west as Middletown.

Congress sought consideration of a 20-mile zone for distribution of potassium iodine pills, used to protect against thyroid cancers caused by radioactive iodine. But federal officials subsequently found that "it would not be a prudent allocation of resources to purchase [tablets] up to 20 miles when the likelihood of any significant consequence at that range was very small," spokesman Neil Sheehan said.

But opposition groups have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to expand the zone to 20 miles to accurately reflect how many homes and residents would need to be evacuated in case of an accident. An expanded zone would encompass 187,000 households from just north of Dover to the arc of Delaware, west into Cecil County, Md. and east across a big swath of South Jersey.

And that's without a fourth reactor.

5 million people at risk

PSEG's reactor cluster on the Delaware River, now rated at a combined 3,400 megawatts, could become the nation's largest nuclear producer if it adds the additional unit. It also could cement its position as one of the nation's top hazards.

Although only 33,400 people live within 10 miles of Salem-Hope Creek, more than 5 million live within a 50-mile radius, the region in which radiation could spread in case of an accident.

Jane Nogaki, South Jersey representative for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, said her group believes the complex already is a potential target for a terrorist attack. A fourth reactor, she said, would make PSEG's operation even more tempting.

"Nuclear plants are vulnerable targets. It's impossible to protect them fully. They're out there in the open, and the radioactive waste is located right there alongside," Nogaki said. "It's too great a risk for that kind of power. We would outright oppose it."

New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection last week asked a federal appeals court to order a new environmental study for the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in that state, citing its vulnerability to attack by aircraft and other terror tactics.

Agency spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said the department has not yet decided if it will take a similar stand on PSEG's operation.

For people like Matthew F. DelPizzo, who operates a carpentry business out of a house near Delaware's Augustine Beach community, the danger outweighs the benefits of more megawatts of nuclear-produced electricity.

"I don't think we need any more exposure to possible problems with a new reactor, since the ones there now have been so problematic," DelPizzo said. "I think there's certainly other alternative energy sources out there, especially the wind farm that they want to build on the ocean near Indian River Bay."

But for PSEG, great forces are at work -- a changing climate.

With global warming becoming a political question, the nuclear industry -- once vilified for the toxic waste it produces and the dangers it presents -- is reinventing itself as green amid the rising clamor for clean electricity.

Federal incentives

PSEG, Rosengren said, sees increased nuclear power capacity as part of a broad range of steps needed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases tied to global warming and climate change.

Industry analysts say the company has everything to gain from the overture to expand.

Although there are 104 licensed to operate nuclear power plants in the United States, no new facility has been built since 1996. But this year so far, about 20 companies have made proposals.

Eighteen other ventures involving dozens of sites and reactors also are under consideration. Two, in Illinois and Mississippi, already have the needed approvals.

From the industry's standpoint, recent history favors a nationwide expansion.

The notoriety of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania may have been a setback, but advocates of nuclear power point to its safe record since then, both here and in Europe.

In France, for instance, nuclear energy was embraced 30 years ago, when the rest of the world was dealing with an energy crisis.

Today, with 58 plants, the country, with its "City of Lights," Paris, gets about 78 percent of its energy from nuclear plants. It even produces enough to export electricity to England and Germany.

All that and air that's largely clear of the air pollution emitted by fossil-fuel burning plants.

Critics argue that no matter the industry's record and the environmental benefits of nuclear energy, there is still the question of what to do with nuclear waste.

While burying excess waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has created a nationwide stir, France has taken its nuclear waste and reused it, albeit at a cost of more than $1 billion a year.

Spent nuclear fuel rods from French plants are sent to a sprawling plant on the coast of Normandy. There, the rods are cooled for years and used to make new fuel.

Some critics caution that France might not be gaining much.

Passing grades

The Salem-Hope Creek reactors already produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 2 million homes. Nuclear power overall accounts for more than half the electricity generated in New Jersey and 19 percent of the national total.

The older Salem units are pressurized, two-step reactors that use non-radioactive steam to drive turbines. Hope Creek is a boiling water reactor that boils water inside the reactor, sending steam directly to a turbine.

All three plants were recently given passing safety grades by the NRC, but local nuclear power critics charge that PSEG's performance has been uneven and, in some cases, dangerous in the past.

In the mid-1990s, the NRC put Salem-Hope Creek on its "watch list" of troubled nuclear plants. Regulatory and public pressure eventually forced the company to shut down the Salem units for plant and management overhauls. Problems arose again in 2004, when mishaps and complaints prompted the NRC to put the company under special oversight.

"Compared to a couple of years ago, things at Salem and Hope Creek are looking pretty good," said Lochbaum, the nuclear engineer, adding that his group is watching closely as the NRC considers a proposal to increase the output of Hope Creek by increasing the reactor core heat.

The plan would hike the core water temperature in Hope Creek to about 535 degrees -- up 15 percent. Steam temperatures would rise even more, with steam pressures rising to more than 1,000 pounds per square inch.

Federal regulators have closely examined and then approved virtually all such proposals in the past, despite questions about increased vibration problems in boiling-water reactors similar to Hope Creek.

"The NRC is shirking its responsibility to protect the public by allowing clueless plant owners to crank up ... to see what happens," Lochbaum wrote in a 2004 briefing paper.

Drawing water from river

Equally controversial are company proposals to continue drawing trillions of gallons from the Delaware River each year to cool the Salem units.

The plant's intakes kill the equivalent of 354 million juvenile fish each year -- a figure that environmental groups say rises into the tens of billions of organisms when counting larvae and eggs.

Maya K. van Rossum, an attorney who directs the regional Delaware Riverkeeper Network conservation group, said a recent federal court ruling has undermined PSEG Nuclear claims that it can offset the effects of its cooling-water intake. The company has long financed restoration projects in surrounding wetlands as partial compensation for environmental damage..

The reactor at Hope Creek uses a cooling tower that recycles water from the river, cutting the amount of water it sucks up and the amount of aquatic life it destroys.

New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection has put PSEG Nuclear's request for a new cooling-water permit on hold, pending settlement of a similar case at the smaller Oyster Creek plant.

For Lois Boyles, who lives along Del. 9 just south of Augustine Beach, the Salem-Hope Creek complex has been a good neighbor.

"I've lived here for four years and I don't have any complaints," Boyles said. "When my time comes, it'll come. I can see the stacks [of the plant], but I'm not concerned about living here."

--Contact Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.

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Chillicothe Gazette
April 29, 2007

Report condemns nuke project

Local group maintains its safety, begins support campaign

By Ashley Lykins
Gazette Staff Writer

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is toyed with "fast and loose" by the White House, according to a group that released a report last week.

The partnership proposes recycling used nuclear fuel through new facilities, which could go to Piketon. A press release from Friends of the Earth, who collaborated with Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar Robert Alvarez on a report, call the plan "shoddy."

However, in the face of criticism, proponents of the partnership maintain the project has benefits and is safe.

The Southern Ohio Nuclear Integration Cooperative, which is made up of Piketon-based Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative and for-profit Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence, was one of 11 groups around the country awarded a grant to do a detailed siting study.

The study will determined the appropriateness of Piketon to host two possible GNEP facilities: an advanced nuclear fuel recycling center and an advanced recycling reactor.

The recycling center would separate used nuclear fuel into its reusable and waste components; GNEP proponents state 95 percent of the fuel is still reusable. The reactor would obliterate radioactive aspects of the used fuel while generating electricity.

If Piketon is chosen as the site -a decision that's slated to be released in summer 2008 -spent nuclear fuel rods would be transported there from all over the nation, and perhaps the world.

Additionally, proponents maintain the process would both reduce permanent nuclear waste, as well as prevent proliferation because nuclear-capable countries, such as the U.S. and France, would provide reprocessing services to other countries that agree not to pursue the programs themselves.

The opposing report states "crucial to the GNEP plan is using a new, unproven type of chemical reprocessing of spent fuel from power reactors in the United States and possibly other nations."

However, Dan Minter, a member of SODI's board, said if GNEP chooses to go down a technology path already in use by plants in places such as France, it has been proven.

"They have not determined a technology path as of yet," he said. "If they use something Japan or France has, it would be proven ... It's speculation on someone's part."

Something else that depends on the chosen technology is the environmental reaction to GNEP, which Minter maintains would be safe.

"Unlike direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods, reprocessing involves chemical separation of radioisotopes and creates multiple waste streams," states the report's abstract. "It also releases large volumes of radioactivity into the environment ..."

Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder agreed.

"If the government follows through on its plans for nuclear production and disposal, it could result in the largest, lethal source of high-heat radioactivity in the United States and possibly the world," he said in a news release.

However, standards don't allow that sort of pollution, said Minter.

"I would suspect the (technology) path would have to meet regulatory requirements, which don't allow you to have radioactivity in the environment," he said, noting nuclear-based energy is cleaner than other sources, such as coal, which does pollute. "It's odd that of the rest of the industrial nations, France has the cleanest water and air ... and they reprocess."

Minter traveled to La Hague, a 2-mile-long recycling facility based in France, to see first-hand its reprocessing plants.

Dan Moore, president of SONIC, said at a meeting last month that the facility created jobs for 6,000 people and cost about $15 billion. Furthermore, he said it proved to him that the technology could be "done safely."

The institute's countering report further maintains the Department of Energy's "troubled experience with defense high-level wastes should also serve as a cautionary warning" - something Minter said has nothing to do with GNEP.

"Defense materials were used for different testing processes," he said. "And you have different risks associated with that than you would nuclear fuel ... Some of the folks believe a nuclear reactor is an atomic bomb, and those are totally different technologies."

Friends of the Earth, in the group's release, call the GNEP plan "risky."

However, Matt Allen, another board member of SODI, has other thoughts.

"If we don't recycle these nuclear fuel rods, I think that is risky," he said. "Right now, where we're going, if we don't do something to curb the use of these nuclear fuel rods, we'll have to build more Yucca Mountains in the future -and I think that's risky. (We have a) capacity to create energy in a way that doesn't harm our environment."

Yucca Mountain is the proposed geological repository where the reduced permanent waste would be stored after reprocessing.

Allen is the vice chair of the Ross County Community Outreach Group, a committee that formed under the SONIC umbrella about a month and a half ago.

It launched a letter-writing campaign that Allen said has been successful.

"(The number of letters is) in the thousands," he said. "One of the reasons why we formed the group was to try to highlight the fact that this is a community-afforded project ... The potential for the payoff for this is huge."

Ross County Commissioner Frank Hirsch, also a part of the committee, said he's also trying to get letters written.

"It is a very needed, environmentally safe source of energy," he said. "The clean-up part, recycling part, of it appeals to me ... The thing we have to get across to people is nuclear energy is safe, if you follow the guidelines. France has proven that."

--Lykins can be reached at 772-9376 or via e-mail at anlykins@nncogannett.com

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Pahrump Valley Times
April 28, 2007

Yucca Mountain

Mina off the table, Caliente is back on

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is refocusing its plans for a Nevada railroad to Yucca Mountain after the Walker River Paiute Indians announced they no longer were interested in having nuclear waste shipped across their reservation, a DOE official said Wednesday.

A Northern Nevada railroad corridor that would have crossed tribal territory in Mineral County will no longer be considered, according to Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

DOE now will dedicate itself to completing studies of a rail corridor to the waste repository site that originates in eastern Nevada near Caliente, Sproat said.

"I wish they would have told us sooner, but they told us now," Sproat said of the Walker River Paiutes. Following a vote by its governing council, the tribe announced April 17 that it was withdrawing from environmental studies of the Mina rail corridor, named after a site on Highway 95 northwest of Tonopah.

Sproat said the Mina corridor studies essentially were done, and still would be included in an environmental impact statement that DOE expects to make public in October, along with its assessment of the Caliente corridor.

But, Sproat said, the Mina route "essentially wouldn't be considered as a viable alternative. So Caliente most probably we will end up sticking with and providing in our formal record of decision."

The DOE official gave a presentation to a conference organized by the U.S. Transport Council, whose members are organizations tied to nuclear materials shipping.

The tribe's participation was the key element of a strategy to route nuclear waste cargo on rail through Northern Nevada, and then south to the repository through old mining districts once served by rail.

Nuclear waste bound for Yucca Mountain would have used tracks that run through the middle of the Paiute community of Schurz.

As a possible condition of the tribe's participation, the possibility of relocating the rail line away from the town was being studied.

"I don't view this as a setback," Sproat said. "It is one less option that could have been cheaper and faster to build, but it is not something that is a major difficulty to us."

Gary Lanthrum, transportation director for the Yucca program, said the tribe's decision effectively closes the door on any rail route through western Nevada.

In the early days of the Yucca program, DOE identified a branch that would essentially go around the Walker River reservation.

But Lanthrum said in an interview that path was "longer and more problematic. It is very rough terrain, rougher than Caliente, and it makes (the route) as long or longer than Caliente."

Lanthrum also said he doubted there was time to develop other railroad options.

"The tribe said no before, then they said yes, then said no again," Lanthrum said. "We have done our due diligence looking at all the viable alternatives. I might feel better if the tribe were still at the table but they may still pay close attention to how the report comes out."

DOE officials and some in the nuclear shipping industry officials believed the 280-mile Mina corridor could have proved a less expensive and easier-to-build alternative to 319-mile Caliente corridor, where price projections have eclipsed $2 billion.

Critics say the Mina corridor could expose more communities to waste shipments. Opposition began to build in cities like Reno and Sparks.

Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant to the state of Nevada, said the Energy Department will have its hands full trying to develop the Caliente route.

"The assurances that we are hearing that this is not big deal that Mina has dropped off, maybe that is good damage control, maybe that is wishful thinking," Halstead said.

Halstead said DOE faces engineering challenges at several locations along the Caliente corridor, and also resistance from disgruntled ranchers and the sponsors of "City," a monumental desert art exhibit in Garden Valley.

"We think they are going to have problems with Caliente, and we are prepared for that," he said.

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Sacramento Bee
April 28, 2007

It's time to power up nuke talk

By Steve Wiegand
Bee Columnist

One of the curious things about the debate on global warming and clean energy sources is the near-absence of the word "nuclear" in the discussion.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's head environmental cheerleader, rarely mentions it.

At an April 12 appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the guv did say that nuclear power plants currently don't fit in his plans to save the state/world. The nuclear waste generated by the plants, he said, just creates another environmental problem.

But a broader discussion of nuclear power as a possible long-range component in finding a clean energy mix might be one of the few areas where California is trailing the rest of the world on the subject.

There are currently more than 400 nuclear power plants around the world, and at least two dozen new plants are being discussed in other U.S. states.

A recent report by an outfit called the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) said a combination of high fossil fuel prices, energy security concerns and worries about the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate "have created good prospects for a major nuclear expansion over the coming decades."

The company, which analyzes various aspects of the world energy market, noted that 28 nuke plants are under construction around the world and that 20 countries have plants under construction or in the planning stages.

"Governments and businesses are taking action," the report concludes. "The 'nuclear renaissance' is real."

On the other hand, we have an equally recent report from a British organization called the Oxford Research Group. The Oxford report disputes the most attractive argument put forward by the pro-nuke corner, which is that nuclear power is a clean energy source when compared with fossil fuel sources.

The Oxford folks argue that when you take into account all the steps involved, from mining and processing the uranium used for fuel to storing the spent fuel rods, nuclear plants are responsible for a fair amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.

The yin-and-yangness of the issue is also reflected in California's nuclear experience.

Two of its four nuclear plants are operating; two have been decommissioned. Under a state law approved in 1970, California's official policy is "to encourage the use of nuclear power wherever feasible." But under a 1976 law, no new nuke plant can be built in the state until the California Energy Commission signs off on a proven technology for reprocessing nuclear fuel rods and safely disposing of the plants' radioactive waste.

A bill to repeal the 1976 law was recently introduced by a Republican assemblyman from Irvine named Chuck DeVore, and summarily squashed in its first committee hearing by majority Democrats.

DeVore argues that a bill passed last year to wean California from coal-based energy (about 20 percent of current supplies) necessitates finding new sources to replace it, a point well taken. But he skates around the problem of spent fuel storage, positing that it would take at least a decade to build a nuke plant, and by that time we'll know where to stick the wastes.

That could well be so much wishful thinking, particularly in light of the vow by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to stop the federal nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., from ever opening.

Still, it would seem prudent to at least elevate the discussion about nuclear power in California beyond a brief Assembly committee hearing.

On an issue like this, no stone should be left unturned. Even the glowing ones.

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Kansas City Star
April 28, 2007

Environment | Remembering Rachel Carson

Green Heroine: Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring started a movement, remembered on the centennial of her birth

On the centennial of her birth, the influence of this environmental pioneer is still being felt.

By Steve Paul
The Kansas City Star

Walk a paved trail through the Burr Oak Woods with Lynn Youngblood, the nature preserve’s manager, and you’re likely to learn a few things:

How the mayapple plant, which sends a colony of low-lying umbrellas out of the ground from a single horizontal root, is mostly poisonous except for the ripe berries that appear in the fall.

If you’re lucky, she’ll spot a broad-headed skink as it skitters through the crunchy dry leaves on the forest floor.

“It’s a male,” she says, after noticing the telltale, early-season orange head as the little lizard dives for cover.

Youngblood has worked as a naturalist for more than two decades, and it’s quite possible that she would not have chosen her career path on this wooded trail in Blue Springs had it not been for a brave American woman with a typewriter.

Her avowed heroine is Rachel Carson, who combined writing and biology on the way to changing the course of American culture.

“She was the first true environmentalist,” Youngblood said recently at the Missouri Conservation Department’s nature center, which she has managed for 17 years.

Carson would have turned 100 on May 27. Instead she died at age 56 of breast cancer just two years after alerting the nation to a hidden environmental crisis. Her fourth book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, exposed the danger of toxic chemicals to wildlife and, by extension, to humans, who, she argued quite successfully, could not be separated from the chain of life that surrounds us.

“She recognized that our natural resources were not being wisely used,” Youngblood said, “and that we the people were destroying them by our practices. And we had to do something immediately.”

As “green” becomes not only the color of money, but the color of a major change in public attitudes, many people say we have Carson, more than most, to thank. Without her, we’d not likely be spending time with this month’s “Green Issue” of Vanity Fair, which documents water crises and South American oil debates alongside its celebration of celebrity environmentalists.

Nor would we have a new book, Courage for the Earth, in which a lineup of writers, natural historians and others toast Carson’s accomplishment and her legacy.

Even Al Gore, who often is cited as a catalyst for new awareness about global warming, by way of the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” appears in that book to say, wait a minute folks, it’s not about me, it’s about her.

Without Silent Spring, Gore writes, “the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all.”

•••

Carson was born May 27, 1907, in the western Pennsylvania town of Springdale. She began writing as an adolescent, successfully publishing short stories in her teens. Her path into science started at Pennsylvania Women’s College (now Chatham College) and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

She wrote three elegant, closely observed books about oceans and shorelines and their resident creatures. A couple of them, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea, were best-sellers in the 1950s.

Then one day she got a letter from a friend who expressed concern about the pesticide DDT, which had been sprayed widely in her community to eradicate mosquitoes. The letter prompted Carson, who’d worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to investigate. She spent nearly five years exploring the previously untold consequences of toxic chemicals in the environment.

Silent Spring became a sensation and was followed quickly by trade industry outrage, congressional hearings and eventually by the banning of DDT, which was blamed, among other things, for endangering the existence of the nation’s majestic symbol, the bald eagle.

“We must all have a great sense of responsibility,” she told an interviewer in 1962, “and not let things happen because everyone takes the comfortable view that someone else is looking after it. Someone else isn’t looking after it.”

•••

Reuse. Repair. Recycle. Reduce.

Paul Hilpman adopted those four R’s years ago in his teaching and as a philosophy of living in the world. The retired geologist and professor at both the University of Kansas and UMKC recognizes Carson as a catalyst in his field of environmental science.

Sitting in a basement rec room that he built in a Crossroads building he owns, it becomes clear that Hilpman lives the motto.

He cut and rewelded metal bed rails to frame the windows. A lavatory, someone else’s construction mistake, comes from Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore.

“It cost $5,” he said.

Prop open the end of the old, coal-fired boiler – voila! – there’s a wine rack.

The point, Hilpman said, is that consumerism and status consciousness might make us feel good, but it’s hugely wasteful. You’ve got to make a choice.

Although industry tried to vilify Carson’s position after the publication of Silent Spring, Carson’s real legacy, Hilpman said, was to spark a feverish round of science in the 1960s.

By the end of that decade a corporate-supported committee of the American Chemical Society developed a significant report, titled Cleaning Our Environment: The Chemical Basis for Action, which essentially buttressed what Carson had shown.

Carson highlighted the notion of interconnectedness, an idea that has become virtually embedded in the cultural and scientific consciousness.

Garrett Hardin, author of a landmark essay about overpopulation, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” raised the related notion that “you can’t do only one thing,” Hilpman said, meaning that everything you do affects something else. And you can’t do nothing, Hardin wrote, because that’s an action, too.

Hilpman’s own relationship to environmental science dates to the 1950s, when he began working for the Kansas Geological Survey. Among the projects he was involved with was a study of Kansas salt mines as a potential depository for nuclear waste.

The hugely divisive issue illustrates the enormous effort it takes to deal with the consequences of modern society on a planetary scale.

“It took us a half century to make a decision on a way to get rid of the stuff,” Hilpman said, referring to the establishment in recent years of the Yucca Mountain repository project in Nevada.

“I don’t hold out a lot of hope.”

•••

To Lynn Youngblood, hope may lie only in education.

Her biology teacher at St. Teresa’s Academy introduced her to Silent Spring in the 1970s.

And now, the 47-year-old says Carson’s greatest legacy is in the work that occurs at Burr Oak Woods Conservation Nature Center. With 1,100 acres of glades and forests, Burr Oak was the state conservation department’s first nature preserve. Later this year it will mark its 25th anniversary.

What’s most important, Youngblood says, is how she and her colleagues at Burr Oak Woods reach children and make them and their elders conscious of and comfortable with nature.

“You feel a lot closer to the Earth when you’re working with kids,” she says, “when you get in the dirt with them and help them see what it’s all about.”

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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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