Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, June 1, 2007
---------------------------
Courier and Press
June 01, 2007
Nuclear waste may pass through Evansville
Trevor Brown
Several watchdog groups are concerned about a train purportedly carrying a used nuclear core that they believe will travel through the Evansville area.
Nukewatch, a Wisconsin-based organization dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons and power, reported that a train carrying the low-level radioactive waste, consisting of the core of a defunct reactor, departed at about noon Thursday from the Dairyland Power Cooperative site in Genoa, Wis., for a disposal facility in South Carolina.
Nukewatch could not say when the shipment would travel through Evansville.
According to a report released this week by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, along with 41 community-based groups nationwide, the shipment will likely travel on rail through Evansville. The NIRS, which was founded 29 years ago as a national information and networking center for citizens and environmental activists, said the route of the nuclear material was determined using the Department of Energy's data and its online routing program.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Jan Strasma said the agency is aware of the shipment, but said it is completely safe and complies with all federal shipping requirements. Citing security reasons, he could not divulge the shipment's contents or route.
Strasma said he was not aware of the report listing probable transportation routes of nuclear waste, and he would not comment on whether he thought that the group's releasing of the data would cause a security risk.
"For security reasons we don't disclose that data," he said. "But if someone wants to speculate, that's up to them."
Nukewatch Co-director John LaForge said while the shipment is classified as low-grade nuclear waste, he said his group has concerns it might have higher amounts of radiation and could be vulnerable to accidents. In addition, he cited studies that show the material could be harmful.
"Just by passing through increases everyone's risk," he said. "It adds to the burden of radioactivity to our environment."
Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said the group released the data showing probable routes across the country for nuclear waste to alert the communities where the material would pass.
"Any dose of radiation carries a health risk," he said. "Bystanders near rest stops or houses along the railroad could be exposed to this routine dosage."
He also said he is worried that in the future, higher-level shipments will be more common, and that too will prevent further risks. He said currently there are only a handful, if any, of high-level radiation shipments a year. But he fears this will only increase. He said there are proposals to build additional nuclear waste disposal centers in Morris, Ill., and Paducah, Ky., that could bring many more shipments traveling through Evansville.
"From our organization's perspective, we wanted to get word out that this shipment is a trailblazer for the future," he said.
Kamps said the group's other motivation is to bring to light security concerns of nuclear waste transportation's vulnerability to terrorism.
"High-level waste shipments are radioactive bull's-eyes," he said. "We need to be careful before such shipments take place."
LaForge and Kamps rejected arguments that releasing the routes of the nuclear waste shipments, could itself cause a security threat and give sensitive information to terrorists. "Most people know radioactivity is dangerous and know to stay away," LaForge said. "Our view is the nuclear industry is acting as the terrorists in this case."
---------------------------
Athens News
June 01, 2007
Guv talks about OU dissension, nuke-waste storage plan
By Jim Phillips
Athens News Senior Writer
While Gov. Ted Strickland is willing to conditionally support using a plant in Pike County as a temporary nuclear-waste storage facility, he wants something stronger than a promise from the U.S. Department of Energy that the site will never become a long-term waste dump.
"I don't have a lot of confidence in the Department of Energy based on prior experience, and I don't want that site to become a dump site," Strickland said last Thursday. "I will continue my support based (only) on guarantees that that won't just become a dump site. And it will take a lot more than a handshake from the Department of Energy."
A group called the Southern Ohio Nuclear Integration Committee (SONIC), with support from Strickland and several U.S. House members from Ohio, has proposed using the old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant as a repository for high-level nuclear waste.
The governor made his remarks on the issue in response to a question, following a speech in Columbus to the Central Ohio chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Strickland also answered a question from an Ohio University student journalist, about a recent vote by OU undergraduates. In a poll sponsored by OU Student Senate, more than three-quarters of respondents said they lack confidence in university President Roderick McDavis.
Strickland seemed more bemused than concerned by the vote, however.
"It's springtime and it's Ohio University, and I love Ohio University," he said. "It would be a strange springtime in Athens, Ohio, without some expression of student unrest."
He added that McDavis "seems like a fine person to me. I know he's made some tough decisions, but quite frankly, I'm encouraging the heads of all our higher-education institutions to make tough decisions."
AS BEFITS A speech before a journalist's group, Strickland's talk focused largely on issues relating to the news media.
He bemoaned what he called an erosion of the media's willingness to ask tough questions, as more and more journalistic outlets come into the hands of the same few corporations.
"I'm concerned, as I suspect many of you are, about how newspapers are cutting back on staff and cutting back on content," he added.
He expressed strong support for allowing the news media unfettered access to public records, citing the fact that "my first executive order (as governor) dealt with transparency in how (state) government operates." He acknowledged, however, that he has some concerns about possible misuse of such access.
Noting that his office is now processing a public-records request for every communication he's received regarding political matters, Strickland argued that the broadness of this request may pull in private letters that don't belong in the public eye.
"I've received thousands of letters from Ohioans," he said, some of which contain highly personal information - a woman writing about health-care reform who mentions that her son has AIDS, for example, or a woman urging support for battered women's shelters who shares details of an abusive relationship.
"I don't think these kinds of communications ought to be on the front page of a public newspaper," Strickland said. "Should I go around the state telling Ohioans, 'Don't send me a letter unless you are prepared to see it in the media?'"
He added, however, that he hopes he would never invoke executive privilege to protect documents from public scrutiny.
"I'm not exerting executive privilege, but I'm asking for common sense from those who ask for records," he explained. "I think there are bounds that you as journalists should not cross."
Strickland rejoiced in how he's been able to alter the discussion in Columbus on higher education, getting Republican legislators and his own party into a kind of competition to see who can provide more funding.
"The argument now is not whether we're going to invest in higher education; it's how much we're going to invest in higher education. I think it's a delightful argument," he said. "They (presumably Republican state legislators) are trying to outdo me... and I'm saying, 'Please don't throw me in that briar patch.'"
In response to a question about the execution of convict Christopher Newton in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville last week, Strickland made clear that while he's ready to enforce the state's capital punishment law, he's always had misgivings about it.
When deciding whether to run for governor, he admitted, "the first hurdle for me was coming to terms with my ability to carry out the law as it was in Ohio."
An outspoken opponent of the Bush Administration's handling of the war in Iraq, Strickland said he believes Ohioans and troops from other states will continue to die there unless Americans clearly show their opposition to the president's plans.
Without a major change in direction, "I don't believe that the 'surge' (in troop levels) is a surge that will end any time soon," he said. "I cannot tell you how angry I feel about what is happening."
---------------------------
Orlando Sentinel
May 31, 2007
Decades lost -- we must get energy-smart
Mike Thomas
Sorry to say, but my generation has failed the next miserably.
We shirked our duty by ignoring Jimmy Carter's call for energy independence. And in the process, we abandoned nuclear power.
We could be plugging our advanced hybrid cars into electrical outlets, driving to work on domestically produced power provided by emission-free nuclear plants.
We could be energy independent and economically secure while poisoning the planet a whole lot less in the process.
That is the nation we should be handing off to our kids. Instead, all we can do is undertake a journey we should have completed long ago.
One small step for Florida involves plans by Progress Energy to build a nuclear-power plant in Levy County. It would be just north of its current nuclear plant near Crystal River.
This new facility could be abusing atoms and producing electricity by 2016. Meeting that timetable should be a priority for Charlie Crist.
Gov. Charlie has joined Gov. Arnold out in California in rejecting the Republican Party's flat-Earth approach to greenhouse gases. Nuclear power fits in perfectly with their shared goal of turning off the global microwave oven.
Unlike OUC's coal-fired plants, the proposed nuclear plant would not spew out sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury.
It would not sterilize lakes, send mercury up the food chain, make fish inedible, poison panthers and submerge Miami under a rising sea.
What it would do is produce one condensed pile of radioactive waste that we would be forced to confront.
Nuclear-power plants do not let you hide from the pollution you are creating by shooting it up a smokestack and dispersing it around the globe and into the atmosphere. Instead, the waste safely sits in storage where it was produced, perhaps one day to be shipped to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
We could drastically cut the volume of that waste by recycling spent fuel in reprocessing facilities.
Nuclear power is, by far, the cleanest and safest technology we now have to produce vast quantities of energy. And we are using obsolete designs from the 1960s and '70s.
A new generation of nuclear plants would be several orders of magnitude better.
In the old days, utilities practically reinvented the reactor with each plant. There was little uniformity. The process to certify the plants for use was bureaucratic, lengthy and filled with fraught for utilities that invested billions in them.
Safety systems were elaborate, complicated and a little too reliant on Homer Simpson flipping the right switch at the right time.
Now there are a few basic reactor designs that sharply reduce the number of moving parts. They can be built almost like a modular home.
What this means is that regulators can sign off on elements of the design in advance. Since much of the facility basically has already been approved, the utilities can be confident that once the plant is finished, they'll be able to get them up and running quickly.
That saves them tremendous amounts of money and takes a lot of the risk out of building a plant.
What could Florida do?
We could tinker with the regulatory process to make building fossil-fuel plants more difficult and more expensive than building nuclear plants. We need to get away from natural gas as a quick fix to our power needs. This eventually will make us dependent on yet another volatile energy source from overseas.
By 2050, Florida should be getting all its power from the sun, wind and nuclear energy.
--Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com. His blog is OrlandoSentinel.com/mikethomas.
---------------------------
Tallahassee Democrat
May 31, 2007
Increased nuclear power urged
Former EPA chief touts benefits of nuclear energy
By Bruce Ritchie
Democrat Staff Writer
Nuclear energy is a clean and safe alternative that should play a greater role in Florida's energy future, Christine Todd Whitman, former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Wednesday.
Whitman is co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which describes itself as a national grass-roots organization dedicated to education on the benefits of nuclear energy. Her consulting firm is paid by the coalition, which is funded by the nuclear industry.
Energy conservation and renewable energy have a place in the future, Whitman told the Economic Club of Florida. But other power generation is needed, she said, and nuclear energy is more efficient and pollutes less.
For the first time since the 1970s, U.S. companies are talking about building nuclear reactors - as many as 34 nationwide, Whitman said.
"The future of nuclear energy actually is very hopeful," she said. "The signs we are seeing is there are more and more who are now looking at nuclear energy as a real alternative today."
Some in the audience at the Silver Slipper restaurant were receptive to the speech. But some environmentalists who did not attend said they still have questions about nuclear energy.
Florida CFO Alex Sink, a member of the Economic Club of Florida, said she is interested in increasing nuclear as part of the state's energy supply mix. Sink sits on the Cabinet, which approves the siting of new power plants.
"If we are going to be a growing state, we are going to have to figure out how to produce the energy that more people are going to require," she said.
Former Lt. Gov. Wayne Mixson said he was joining the coalition because he's concerned that the U.S. is using fossil fuels needed in developing countries.
Members of the Council for Safe and Efficient Energy include Associated Industries of Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush, the Tampa Branch of the NAACP and the Florida Medical Society, according to Hill & Knowlton, a public-relations firm that coordinates council activities.
Nuclear is on the negotiating table because of concerns about global warming from burning coal for electricity, said Susan Glickman, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. But she said concerns remain about nuclear energy's safety, waste issues and cost.
"If you satisfy your energy needs by throwing up large nuclear power plants, there is less incentive to develop renewable energy and make the investments in energy efficiency," she said.
Whitman said the nation has a nuclear waste solution in Yucca Mountain, Nev., but has been blocked from using the disposal site by "political science."
Citing concerns about offshore oil drilling and coal mining in the U.S., Whitman said, "We say 'no' to just about everything. If we want to continue to grow and to sustain our economy and quality of life, we have got to start saying 'yes' to some things."
--Contact reporter Bruce Ritchie at (850) 599-2253 or britchie@tallahassee.com.
---------------------------
Bend Weekly
May 30, 2007
Desert tunnel is the key to U.S. nuclear energy production
by Dana Wilkie
CNS
YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. - From the 4,950-foot crest of Yucca Mountain, the valley below is a spectacular sweep of desert landscape - ringed by the Funeral and Chocolate mountains, colored by blue-gray sage and pocked by red-and-black cones that represent the area's last gasps of volcanic activity.
Standing here, it is difficult to believe that 400 yards below one's feet lies a 5-mile tunnel carved out of the mountain's limestone - a tunnel that may one day hold the nation's spent nuclear fuel and that is crucial to President Bush's plan to diversify the country's energy portfolio and address the international clamor to fight global warming.
What happens with this cave-like corridor in the coming 18 months could, in the view of some, determine whether nuclear energy will blossom as an alternative to carbon-based electricity generation, or whether the decades-long effort to build a burial spot for high-level radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain Project will sputter and perhaps die.
"Opening Yucca Mountain is regarded as very important by the U.S. nuclear industry to its renaissance," said Allison Macfarlane, a George Mason University expert on Yucca. "Each time they (in the federal government) say they need more time, I think the overall impression is that the repository is that much further in trouble."
For decades, leading scientists have disagreed so starkly about the Nevada site's geology, hydrology and seismology that one wonders if they're talking about the same place. Likely, their disagreements reflect the difficulty of accurately predicting what will happen thousands of years from now to the radioactive waste buried at this first-of-its-kind repository.
Today - with the Yucca project two decades behind schedule, utilities suing the federal government to take the waste off their hands and the Bush administration seeking electricity sources that aren't culprits in global warming - the U.S. Department of Energy is scrambling to prepare a license application for Yucca, which it hopes to give the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission next summer.
After that, the decision whether to proceed with Yucca's construction will lie with five regulators largely sympathetic to Bush's plan for a resurgence of nuclear power, which depends on a place to store highly radioactive byproducts that can remain dangerous for many thousands of years.
If the department cannot submit the license application by next summer, there are fears the Yucca repository may suffer a fatal blow.
"They're very concerned about actually getting this application done in time for 2008," said Jon Summers, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who vows to kill the Yucca project. "If they don't get it done by 2008, the project may not happen."
Macfarlane isn't convinced the project would die, but she agrees more delays won't be good news for utilities banking on Yucca's opening as they prepare to build 27 new reactor units. Courts are already siding with utilities suing the DOE for failing to open Yucca and take waste off their hands.
"Limited storage capacity, the federal government's legal obligation to take possession of used fuel, and the need to dispose of high-level defense waste requires a deep geologic repository at some point in the future," said Trish Conrad, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade group.
The two-hour drive from Las Vegas to Yucca begins at the southern tip of Nevada and moves northwest - down Interstate 95, deep into the sage- and creosote-bush-splattered Amargosa Valley and briefly through the Nevada Test Site, a Rhode-Island-sized expanse marred by craters from military test bombs.
The turnoff toward Yucca comes after a lonely corner with an "all nude" Kingdom Gentleman's Club. From here, it is another 45 minutes along barren roads and gravelly switchbacks to Yucca's crest, where one gets a 360-degree view of the surrounding valley and some appreciation for the area's isolation. The closest population center is Indian Wells, with 4,865 people.
Below one's feet lies the tunnel, hewn by the "Yucca Mucker," a 720-ton, cylinder-shaped contraption that cuts rock at a rate of 18 feet per hour. It took the "Yucca Mucker" from the summer of 1994 to the spring of 1997 to carve the tunnel, whose innards are now reinforced by steel rails.
Although the dump's projected 2017 opening date is already two decades behind schedule, activity at Yucca is in a lull - thanks to a recent $50 million funding cut engineered by Reid. A work force of 180 has been slashed by two-thirds as the DOE funnels scarce resources into preparing the license application.
During the decade since the tunnel was carved, engineers have been conducting tests to ascertain how long steel-packaged nuclear fuel can safely remain in the 2,000 acres of burial space that will lie along 42 finger-like extensions off this tunnel. For instance, to simulate the heat generated by spent fuel - which resembles a bunch of hard, black marbles - engineers have subjected the couch-length steel canisters to 400-degree temperatures, hot enough to cook a turkey.
"This is not liquid oozing from barrels," said Michael Voegele, once Yucca's senior engineer and now a DOE consultant. "It's metals, ceramics and plastics, not green goop."
While some in the scientific community believe the steel containers may last a couple of thousand years, Bob Loux - director of the Nevada Agency on Nuclear Projects - believes the standard should be hundreds of thousands of years, as some radioactive elements can remain dangerous that long.
"We don't believe any metal will last longer than 500 years underground at Yucca Mountain," Loux says.
In cool, cave-like alcoves branching off the tunnel, engineers have drilled holes in the rock walls, and then installed a drip system to study how water moves through the mountain. They have imagined that 14 kilometers away lives a "reasonably maximally exposed individual" - someone who draws all drinking, cooking and bathing water from a desert well. They calculate how long it might take for radionuclides to escape their steel canisters, migrate through Yucca's rock, find their way to groundwater and move below this hypothetical man.
These tests demonstrate that radionuclides could show up in drinking water in 50 years or less, and that water in the rocks contains lead, arsenic, mercury and other substances that might eat away at canisters, Loux says.
Allen Benson, spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project, says the tests show that the earliest that radionuclides might get into groundwater is 50 years, but that the latest is 600,000 years. In fact, he said, neither extreme is probable and it's more likely radionuclides would migrate to groundwater after several thousand years. Even then, the DOE goal is to ensure radioactivity is so diluted it poses no human or environmental danger.
"(Loux's) position is that absolutely no radionuclides can ever be released from the repository," said Benson, noting it is not unusual for water to contain trace amounts of lead, arsenic or mercury. "All (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) regulations dealing with pollutants recognize that it is impossible to guarantee that no pollutants will ever be released from any disposal facility."
Critics say an earthquake could damage the canisters and allow radioactive releases, that the site has 33 earthquake faults and that there was a 5.9 quake in 1992 that destroyed buildings at the Yucca Mountain Project.
Benson says the 1992 quake only broke windows at one building, while Voegele points out that boulders teetering along mountain ridges have stood there thousands of years.
"There's not been enough shaking in this valley in the past 500,000 years to dislodge" them, said Voegele, who turns his face toward the desert valley and sighs. "I used to hope my son wouldn't' have to work on this project. Now I'm just hoping my grandchildren won't."
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 29, 2007
Letter: Nuke dump
OK, even though Nevada has fought it all these years, it seems that Yucca Mountain is going to be some sort of nuclear trash bin eventually. I think the state should form a partnership with private enterprise and build 20 nuclear power plants deep in the heartland of Nevada (after the appropriate land swap with the federal government). That way, we Nevadans will have cheap energy and could export the huge excess for a tidy deposit to the public coffers. And we'd have a local repository for all of our needs.
Heck, with enough inexpensive energy, we could pump water here from the Mississippi. When life gives you radioactive lemons, make radioactive lemonade.
Chandler Levrich
Las Vegas
---------------------------
Provo Daily Herald
May 29, 2007
Skulking in the Senate
We have to wonder if the irony involved in derailing an open government bill was deliberate or coincidental.
The Open Government Act, which would reform the federal Freedom of Information Act, had been passed to the full Senate by a unanimous Judiciary Committee in April. But it was blocked last week when an unknown senator placed a secret hold on the bill.
The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, would strengthen the federal open records law. The senators' bill would require the government to respond to records requests in a timely manner and hold officials accountable for compliance with the law.
FOIA was created to give people more access to the information they need to be informed citizens. Through the years, it has been used to discover such things as fraud in hurricane relief efforts, to learn that U.S. Marines were given defective body armor and to see how many people live along routes designated for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Unfortunately, bureaucrats have not followed the spirit -- or, in some cases, the letter -- of the law. Some FOIA users have waited years for a request that, according to law, should be filled within a couple of weeks.
Several years ago, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft directed government agencies to look for any pretext to deny records requests, reversing the previously maintained presumption of openness. The government also blocks information under the nebulous "critical infrastructure" category created after the 9/11 attacks.
The Leahy-Cornyn bill would have shifted the balance back toward openness and put a bite on those who would withhold information improperly.
The hold on the bill is a perfect example of why this reform is desperately needed. Obviously some senator has a problem with giving the public access to information to which it is rightfully entitled. This is contempt mixed with cowardice. If this senator had any courage, he or she would come out in the open and explain why this bill should not be heard.
If a senator has a problem with the bill, he should address it in floor debate, where everyone can hear. The public ought to be able to see who is doing the arguing on all sides of an issue. Instead, we have a senator in the shadows who is secretly pulling strings under arcane Senate procedures.
The Society of Professional Journalists is polling senators to find out who is blocking the bill. We hope it succeeds in flushing out the skulker. We also think our own senators, Orrin G. Hatch and Bob Bennett, should publicly state where they stand and use their influence to get the bill moving again.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 28, 2007
Week In Review: Washington, D.C.
Rest maybe, relaxation unlikely for lawmakers
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Even though Congress recessed for Memorial Day, the weeklong holiday will hardly be a vacation.
Lawmakers are likely to hear from constituents worked up about the immigration debate, scheduled to resume when Congress returns to Washington.
Nevada's delegation also will likely be grilled over the Iraq war spending bill, which lawmakers approved despite protests from anti-war activists who say Americans want the war to end.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was targeted by the powerful progressive group Moveon.org even before the break began Friday for voting to give Bush the money he needs to fund the war through September.
In a sign of the war's political stakes, Nevada's House members didn't publicize their position after last week's votes. Other than Reid, whose leadership shop puts out media communications by the hour, only Republican Sen. John Ensign dashed off a release with the headline saying he "Supports Troop Funding Bill Without Surrender Date."
Days earlier, Republican Rep. Jon Porter took a bipartisan tack, gathering signatures on a military banner in support of the troops. The banner will be sent to a military hospital overseas. Porter hung the sign in the Speaker's Lobby in the Capitol for much of the week, generating signatures from about one-third of his colleagues.
The Iraq bill also was roundly criticized for its pork spending on domestic projects, but among those were funds to compensate Nevada's livestock producers that lost rangelands in wildfires.
Also tucked in the Iraq bill was the Democrats' much-promised minimum wage increase. Nevada's low-wage workers who received a $1 an hour pay raise , thanks to last November's state ballot measure , will see another smaller salary bump once this bill becomes law.
While the war divides Nevadans, a swing state where residents split evenly on many issues, the immigration debate tears it apart.
The congressional offices reported an overwhelming majority of calls last week against the immigration bill making its way through Congress. Even though CNN polls over the past year show 80 percent of Americans say they want to offer a path to citizenship to the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, those people apparently are not the ones calling lawmakers.
Callers told the offices they don't like the plan to legalize the 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States or efforts to allow more illegal immigrants into the country.
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a conservative from Nevada's neighboring Arizona, noted wryly that as the plan's chief architect he had learned some new words from voters this past week. Judging by the calls so far, Nevadans can expect the same.
Perhaps to her advantage, Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley will be out of town for much of the recess, traveling with a congressional delegation to Europe to honor fallen U.S. soldiers and visit wounded troops at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
Berkley's trip is being led by Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, who introduced legislation last week to begin storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, even before the repository is built.
The bill, co-sponsored by longtime nuclear energy advocate Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., drew instant rebuke from Nevada's senators. And in a nod to Nevada's clout as an early Democratic caucus state, the presidential contenders piled on.
Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York was first in the in-box with her opposition to the Yucca bill, followed by Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, the former energy secretary who called it "particularly reckless."
The next day, Ensign fired another salvo in the Yucca debate by getting $90 million for the project chopped from a $333 million defense bill.
No word whether Berkley and Craig have scheduled any breakout sessions on the trip to chat about the bill.
The rest of Nevada's congressional delegation plan to be in and around the state for much of the week - unless they decide they've learned enough new words.
--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 27, 2007
Editorial: A dead horse rides
Attempt to revive plan to dump nuclear waste in Nevada is folly and should be abandoned
Two of the nuclear industry's biggest supporters in the U.S. Senate, Republicans Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Larry Craig of Idaho, are trying to revive the foolhardy plan to dump tens of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada.
The senators are up to an old ruse, saying the Nevada Test Site would be a temporary location for the nation's spent nuclear fuel. The Test Site is adjacent to the government's preferred storage location - Yucca Mountain, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas - so the idea, of course, would be to ultimately make Nevada the nation's permanent toxic graveyard. To that end, the bill also would repeal the 77,000-ton cap in law placed on how much waste could be buried at Yucca Mountain, nearly doubling the dump's potential capacity.
Nevada has fended off challenges such as this over the past two decades and will need to mount another defense. The evidence is overwhelming that putting the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada would be unsafe, but the power of the nuclear industry's lobby, especially over the Republican Party, has been able to keep this project alive in Congress. This is why it has been important to have Democrats, especially with Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as majority leader, in control of the Senate to block this project.
After spending years and billions of dollars trying to make a scientific case for Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department has failed. It has also failed to support absurd claims that it is perfectly safe to cart tons of nuclear waste across the country on the nation's highways and railroads.
It is time for the senators who are behind this latest attempt to remember the old Western saying: You are beating a dead horse.
---------------------------
Yakima Herald-Republic
May 27, 2007
Northwest less likely to reconsider nuclear energy
By Pat Muir
Yakima Herald-Republic
RICHLAND -- Inside Energy Northwest's sprawling Columbia Generating Station, hundreds of workers are laboring in one of the nuclear power plant's periodic refueling efforts.
Floors are stacked with disassembled machinery, and yellow caution tape lines many of the rooms as workers scurry about on hundreds of chores.
Welcome to the Pacific Northwest's only nuclear power plant, a status unlikely to change anytime soon despite global warming fears that are increasing national support for nuclear power.
"The first few will probably be in the South or in Texas," Dale Atkinson, Energy Northwest's vice president for nuclear generation, said Wednesday, the same day a reopened Alabama nuclear plant became the first to start operating in the United States since 1996.
The public and political will to build more nuclear plants just doesn't exist in the Northwest, where the emphasis is on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, he said, after a media tour of Energy Northwest's Columbia Generating Station. The plant, which has produced nuclear power since 1984 at its 1,089-acre site in Richland, was shut down for refueling May 12 and is expected to restart in mid-June.
Energy Northwest is a publicly owned nonprofit corporation that operates wind, hydroelectric and solar power plants as well as the nuclear plant.
"We will do what the region wishes to do for a power source," Atkinson said.
The region may warm to nuclear power, though, if its residents see other areas adding safe, efficient nuclear plants, he said. Global warming caused by greenhouse gases is changing the way people think about nuclear energy, which is produced without emitting them, added Steve Scammon, an Energy Northwest project manager who has been at the plant since it opened. That is what ultimately will open the door for another nuclear plant in the Northwest, he said.
"I expect it will eventually," Scammon said. "But it will take time. Nuclear is not the sole answer, but I think it's part of that mix."
Within the next two years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for 28 more plants, almost exclusively in the South. Nuclear's popularity is up in some corners of the environmental movement, even among some who protested nuclear power in the past.
"I just came to realize that I had been overreacting," said Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace who now directs Vancouver, B.C.-based Greenspirit, an environmental consulting firm that promotes sustainable development while warning against the "scare tactics" of environmental activists.
Moore, who in a 1976 Greenpeace publication called nuclear power plants "the most dangerous devices man has ever created," now co-chairs the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition with former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency during President Bush's first term.
The "emerging concern about climate change in the 1990s" changed his mind on the matter of nuclear power, he said. He now dismisses concerns about the safety of nuclear plants and the chance they could spread nuclear weapons technology -- the very issues he helped put in the public consciousness.
"In retrospect, I think that was one area in which we made a mistake in judgment," Moore said, adding that "a lot of lessons" were learned from the 1979 core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Those arguments, though, have not swayed the environmental movements stalwarts including the Sierra Club and Moore's old organization, Greenpeace.
"The industry is trying to dress itself up in the bow of increased concern over global warming," Sierra Club spokesman Josh Dorner said. "To us that's like putting lipstick on a pig."
Plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have not progressed, leaving stashes of radioactive waste at plants around the country. Concern about global warming doesn't mean the nuclear waste just goes away, Dorner said.
"It's just a huge problem no one has come up with a solution for," he said. "And it's being conveniently ignored."
The Energy Northwest plant, which produces enough energy to serve a city the size of Seattle, has 15 spent-fuel casks on site. The casks, each standing 19 feet with a diameter of 11 feet, contain smaller steel canisters full of spent fuel. There are plans next spring to load 12 more casks with spent fuel from the plant, Scammon said.
The solution to the energy problem is not nuclear, according to the Sierra Club. Dorner said it would take 100 new nuclear plants to make a dent in global warming. Instead, the organization urges conservation and increased efforts in wind, solar and hydropower.
"The combination of those things shows the way forward," Dorner said.
Energy Northwest officials agree to an extent, and have established wind and solar programs. Those sources, though, will never be able to take the place of nuclear.
"You can't power everything with wind turbines," Scammon said. "You just can't. You can't build enough. And then, sometimes, the wind stops blowing."
--Pat Muir can be reached at 837-6111 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.
---------------------------
Decatur Daily
May 27, 2007
Just how affordable is nuclear power?
Massively expensive at $1.8 billion, the ongoing restart of Browns Ferry Unit 1 still appears to be a good financial investment for TVA and its ratepayers. New reactors, however, may be a different story.
TVA expects Unit 1 to break even in as little as four years as it pumps out enough electricity to power 650,000 homes.
Dave Lochbaum is director of the nuclear safety program at Washington, D.C.-based watchdog Union of Concerned Scientists. He was a reactor engineer at Unit 1 in the early 1980s.
Despite his title, he does not expect safety issues to provide the answer to the simmering debate about the viability of a large-scale shift to nuclear power for U.S. energy production.
“We can argue about Yucca Mountain (a proposed repository for spent nuclear fuel) as a negative and global warming as a positive, but the bottom line is cost,” Lochbaum said. “Right now, absent huge subsidies, nuclear power is just too costly.”
Applications
He may be right. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not granted a new-reactor license since 1978.
That said, in the next three years, the NRC expects to receive 19 new-reactor applications. Does that disprove Lochbaum’s point?
Not necessarily.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 will pump up to $13 billion of subsidies into the nuclear power industry, including a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour during the first six years of a new plant’s life. It also includes “risk insurance” for six new reactors and government-backed loans.
Lochbaum’s point: If the only way to make nuclear power competitive is with subsidies, then nuclear power is not competitive.
But nuclear power plants are not quite the widgets used in Econ 101 supply-and-demand textbooks.
For one thing, nuclear power plants require enormous capital investments. They cost more than $2 billion, and much of that money is tied up during the 12-year construction process.
Regulations
The industry also is regulated heavily.
Over 12 years those regulations can change, and almost certainly would in the event of a terrorist attack aimed at a nuclear plant or an accidental meltdown.
That means investors have to weigh the possibility that their money is being poured into a plant that will never see a fuel rod, much less receive a ratepayer’s monthly utility check.
So many of the costs (including safety risks) and benefits (including reduced air pollution) of nuclear power accrue not to the purchaser but to the public that the free market may not be the best measure of its viability.
Arguably, subsidies are the public’s payment for costs designed to benefit the public.
A heavy user of nuclear-produced electricity benefits no more than the public from the reduction of greenhouse gases, but absent subsidies he pays more for that benefit.
He also has no more exposure to the inherent risk of a meltdown, but in a subsidy-free environment he pays a disproportionate amount to limit that risk.
Will our grandchildren have an air conditioner powered by nuclear energy? Solar or wind power? Coal? Natural gas? Decades after the debate began, we still cannot answer the question.
--Contact Eric Fleischauer at eric@decaturdaily.com.
---------------------------
Knoxville News Sentinel
May 27, 2007
TVA says future depends in part on energy source, but activists worry
By Andrew Eder
edera@knews.com
As the Tennessee Valley leads a nationwide nuclear resurgence, environmental activists and others worry that the costs and dangers of splitting atoms for power are being lost in the nuclear industry's rhetoric.
But TVA, whose Unit 1 reactor at Alabama's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant represents the country's first increase in nuclear generating capacity this century, says nuclear power is an important option in diversifying its power mix and meeting the energy needs of a growing region.
With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expecting 19 applications to build and operate 28 new reactors, the debate isn't going anywhere. TVA, which saw a successful nuclear reaction last week at Browns Ferry 1 after a five-year, $1.8 billion restoration, is considering completing the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tenn.
TVA also plans to apply with a consortium of utilities to build and operate two reactors at the idle Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site in Alabama, although it remains to be seen whether and how such a project would be executed.
Jack Bailey, said the federal utility could add two or three more reactors to the six it currently operates — three at Browns Ferry, one at Watts Bar and two at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.
"We certainly could use more nuclear without having too much risk in the nuclear basket," Bailey said.
But a former Watts Bar worker and whistleblower questioned the wisdom of the nation's "nuclear renaissance."
"They are selling something that they can't produce," said Ann Harris, now southeast director for We the People, a nuclear worker advocate group. "They can't produce inexpensive nuclear power, they can't produce a clean future, they can't produce healthy workers, they can't produce clean drinking water, they can't produce clean air. What have they produced?"
The cost
One element driving renewed interest in nuclear power is concern over greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. Those gases — carbon dioxide in particular — are blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere and changing climate patterns across the globe, with potentially disastrous consequences.
TVA, which is already spending billions of dollars on pollution controls at its 11 coal plants, faces the specter of spending potentially billions more if the federal government steps in to regulate carbon emissions, which TVA views as likely to happen in the next 10 years.
Nuclear reactors create heat from fission — the splitting of the nucleus of an atom — instead of combustion, resulting in no emissions during the power production process. But Bailey said the anticipation of carbon regulations had little influence on TVA's decision to complete Browns Ferry 1 and consider the other nuclear projects.
"It was competitive in our models even without CO2 (carbon dioxide), and therefore it needed to be explored as an alternative," he said.
Nuclear has higher construction costs than other types of generation, but lower operating costs. Bailey said the "all-in" cost for Browns Ferry 1 — including construction, production and decommissioning costs — was about $27 per megawatt-hour, paid for with operating revenues.
Construction costs of power plants are constantly shifting, but Bailey said the cost of new nuclear plants today would be comparable with new coal plants at $40 to $50 per megawatt-hour. New nuclear projects would likely be financed with a combination of debt, cash and other financing, he said.
It was TVA's ambitious nuclear program in the 1970s that contributed to much of the agency's nearly $23 billion debt. TVA originally planned to build 17 reactors but canceled eight of them when demand for power failed to meet TVA's projections.
The agency invested $10.9 billion in nuclear projects that were never completed, with a $3.3 billion "deferred nuclear generating unit" asset — the Bellefonte site — still on the books.
The latest wave of potential nuclear construction nationwide is fueled by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provides loan guarantees, production tax credits and insurance protection for utilities pursuing nuclear power projects.
Without those government subsidies, nuclear cannot be considered an economical source of power, argues Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace.
"The numbers don't add up," Riccio said. "Basically, these corporations are looking for a government handout to subsidize their reactors."
Waste and emissions
The nuclear industry is pitching atomic power as a clean way to light homes, but some environmentalists bristle at that description.
"We cringe every time we hear nuclear power put out there as a 'clean' energy source," said Stephen Smith, executive director of Knoxville-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Nuclear projects require a long construction time, and environmental advocates stress that global warming requires immediate action.
"When you're looking down the barrel of catastrophic climate change, you really don't have the time to throw at nuclear power," Riccio said.
But the obvious objection to the "clean" characterization is the fact that nuclear energy produces a waste byproduct that remains radioactive for thousands of years, and the country still has not figured out a solution to store it permanently or recycle it.
The federal government contracted with utilities in the late 1970s to remove their spent nuclear fuel, but a proposed nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada hasn't materialized and may never do so.
TVA still pays a fee to the Department of Energy under its contract, but it has had to sue the department to recover its costs for building aboveground-storage facilities, known independent spent-fuel storage installations, or ISFSIs, at the Browns Ferry and Sequoyah plants.
TVA also plans to build a storage facility at the Watts Bar plant by 2015 if Watts Bar 2 is completed. The spent fuel is currently stored in pools of water, which helps dissipate heat from the decaying fuel assemblies.
TVA's Bailey said developing a program for reprocessing spent fuel — as other countries like France do — would help the storage issue, but TVA still believes a permanent facility is needed.
"We think Yucca Mountain is still a key part of the long-term solution," Bailey said. "But we also believe you can safely store it in these ISFSIs for an indefinite period of time."
David Lochbaum,
"It is probably (sustainable) for several decades, but at some point that becomes more of a threat than it should be," Lochbaum said. "Mini warehouses are for office stuff, not for spent fuel."
Apart from the question of waste, some nuclear opponents take issue with what one called the "mantra" of nuclear power as an "emissions-free" source of energy.
Although nuclear produces no emissions in producing power, the entire life cycle of a nuclear plant impacts the environment, in particular the energy-intensive process of mining and milling uranium ore, converting it to uranium hexafluoride gas, enriching the gas and fabricating fuel assemblies, critics say.
TVA's uranium is enriched at the United States Enrichment Corp.'s facility in Paducah, Ky., which also is TVA's largest directly served industrial customer.
Bailey said that in spite of ancillary energy usage, nuclear power compares favorably with other forms of generation, including renewables, in terms of emissions during the entire life cycle. He cited reports that put nuclear on par with hydropower.
"The amount of emissions even from the complete life cycle of a nuclear project is way overblown by those who try to use that as a weakness of the nuclear program," Bailey said
Safety
With Browns Ferry 1, TVA chose to refurbish its oldest reactor after a 22-year shutdown. Watts Bar 2 would involve completing an older design that was never finished.
But safety concerns aren't necessarily higher for such projects, said Lochbaum, who noted that new plants would involve a learning curve for operators, while older plants might be compromised by embrittled parts or corrosion.
"There's no free lunch," he said.
More concerning to Lochbaum were letters from TVA nuclear employees included in recently released public comments. At least two letters detailed difficult working conditions at the Sequoyah plant.
"Managers are expected to work 60 plus hours each week; Operations is so understaffed that the TVA benefits such as AL (annual leave) and SL (sick leave) are not available to them ... material condition of the plant is at an all time low; Morale is at an all time low due to over worked Managers and reduction in staff," one letter reads.
Lochbaum said an NRC rule earlier this year limited the number of hours employees can work, but the rule doesn't apply to supervisors. He said many plants are facing the types of problems detailed in the employee letters.
"People who are fatigued make more errors than people who are not," Lochbaum said.
TVA's response
In general, Lochbaum said safety in the nuclear industry is far better today than it was 10 years ago, when he joined Union for Concerned Scientists.
But nuclear power does carry one unique liability — the chance for a serious accident and a resulting sea change in public opinion and the regulatory environment, as happened with a near meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979.
"The problem will always be, and anybody in nuclear will tell you, we are all linked together in the nuclear world," Bailey said. "An accident at any one plant can affect all of us."
But Bailey added that utilities have benefited from nearly 30 years of operating experience since Three Mile Island and could potentially resist the effects of an accident by showing that the industry is meeting high standards of performance and safety at its plants.
Regardless of industrywide issues, the decisions made by TVA, a government-owned corporation, carry symbolic weight.
"It won't be a free ride for them again," said Harris, the former Watts Bar worker. "There's a lot of people throughout the valley that are extremely unhappy about this."
Bailey said nuclear is an important aspect of TVA's plans for the future. But he said the agency — along with all utilities — will have to cast a wide net to solve the country's energy problems.
"Nuclear, we think, is a good option to deal with a lot of the issues that need to be dealt with," Bailey said. "It's not the only option, and going forward the U.S. probably has to take advantage of nearly all the options that are reasonable, because it's going to be hard to build and sustain or conserve the amount of energy we're going to need for the future."
---------------------------
Chillicothe Gazette
May 27, 2007
Letter: Gov't desperate for nuclear dump site
I strongly oppose the siting of a high-level nuclear waste facility in Pike County.
The federal government is currently paying billions of dollars in fines to the nuclear power plants. It had promised to find a spot to store the spent fuel rods, but now that Yucca Mountain is unavailable, the government has no place to put them. It is desperate for a new dumping ground. The site in Pike county became the ideal dump.Now, the federal government could save the billions of dollars in fines it is paying to the power companies and save the billions in cleanup at the plant site.
If high-level nuclear waste is going to be stored there, the government can call it a "similar use" facility and dodge cleanup altogether. It is a win-win situation for them and a lose-lose situation for Ohio.
We can be the winners if we say "no" to becoming a dump and "yes" to all the good jobs from a cleanup of the site.It is time for justice for Ohio.
Kathleen Boutis
Yellow Springs
---------------------------
Irish Independent
May 27, 2007
Dismissing nuclear concerns will not get rid of the waste
By Colum Kenny
THE British media have no doubts. They believe that a decision has been made, regardless of the promised public consultation. "Nuclear to play large role in Britain's future," proclaimed the Daily Telegraph's website as soon as the UK Government published its new energy plans last week.
And across a political divide, the leftist Guardian agreed: "Government pushes forward nuclear plans," it shouted, while The Times rudely declared: "Minister dismisses 'daft' anti-nuclear lobby".
You might not guess it from the greenish tones of the UK Government's official press release, but Britain's moratorium on building new nuclear plants is about to end. Prime Minister Tony Blair warned last week, "Flicking a switch and the lights coming on is something that we take for granted. Yet we should not be lulled into a false sense ofsecurity."
The implications for Ireland have as much to do with nuclear waste as with nuclear power. That is because there are two distinct issues and both of them are important.
You can be in favour of nuclear power as an energy option, but still deeply worried by Britain's failure to dispose of its heavy nuclear waste in a better fashion. Bullying supposedly "daft" opponents of nuclear power will not bury the long-term nuclear waste which remains a danger to humanity for millennia.
Right now, US authorities are building a deep and relatively safe storage area for their high-risk nuclear waste, under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. The Swedes bury theirs in rock under the Baltic Sea. And Finns are making a deep dump at Olkiluoto.But the UK Government is doing no such thing. It talks about future dumps while continuing to stack up high level nuclear waste above ground, primarily at Sellafield. It is a hazard that is potentially far more serious than anything that now seeps into the Irish Sea from that recycling and storage plant in Cumbria.
The nuclear consultation document issued in London last week envisages no deep geological storage facility being opened before about 2045. Meanwhile, there are to be certain vague "interim" solutions that seem to involve continuing to stockpile hazardous material above ground.
New nuclear plants are especially attractive for Britain, an island that in two world wars has found itself almost cut off and starved of resources. Its old nuclear plants are clapped out and North Sea oil is running low. The UK does not fancy becoming dependant on energy imports.
But British nuclear energy is also attractive for Ireland's Government, which needs new sources of power before our lights start going out. Ireland old-style ESB stations are polluting the atmosphere.
The Taoiseach and government ministers may pledge their opposition to nuclear generation but we already buy nuclear power from the United Kingdom. Just as the UK can be relied upon to do our dirty work when it comes to abortion, so too the big bad Brits generate nasty nuclear power of which we avail.
Electricity generated across the Irish Sea has been arriving indirectly in the Republic, since 1996, via the Moyle interconnector between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Such electricity has been generated partly by nuclear power plants. That Northern Ireland link accounts for more than one in 12 units of all electricity consumed in the Republic.
And if you must have a nuclear neighbour, then Britain is far from being the worst. Its parallel commitment to alternative forms of renewable energy seems genuine. UK Trade and Industry Secretary (minister) Alistair Darling last week promised to triple by 2015 the amount of electricity from renewable sources such as wind and sun. And UK incentives for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are being stepped up.
But Darling also threw open a short period of consultation on the significant role that new nuclear power stations can play in cutting emissions and diversifying supply. He left British observers in no doubt that the UK Government wants such power stations built.
When I forecast in my book on Sellafield four years ago that a Labour government would reverse the nuclear slowdown after the General Election, even some environmental activists scoffed my prediction. Asked to speak at a conference of the Green Party for England and Wales, in Lancaster, I found great resistance to my suggestion that they had not yet won their battle to consign nuclear energy to history. They were indulging in wishful thinking.
Nuclear power provides a source of energy that is both efficient and usually clean, so long as the nuclear facilities do not melt down or suffer a traumatic terrorist attack. For governments genuinely committed to reducing green house gases and global warming, this makes nuclear an attractive option. Windmills and sun panels are still not seen by most governments as adequate alternatives.
A spokesperson for Energy Minister Noel Dempsey told me last year that there is no way of identifying where our electricity has come from (ie. whether it is from Great Britain or not, nuclear-generated or not), "as all the electricity generated goes into one central pool".
If the Government buys even more electricity directly from Britain, via a planned east-west underwater connector, it will become further implicated in the nuclear option that it so loudly opposes. But, by comparison, building conventional power plants in Ireland itself is economically unattractive.
Our growing dependence on British energy should not blind us to the related dangers of nuclear waste. And there is a real danger that governments could turn a blind eye to that danger because it is politically and financially awkward.
Opposition leader of the Liberal Democrats party, Sir Menzies Campbell, has accused Tony Blair of appearing to "disregard the issue of risk and cost and toxic waste". Our new Government must not do likewise.
Prof Colum Kenny of DCU is the author of Fearing Sellafield (Gill & Macmillan, 2003). For the UK 'Future of Nuclear Power' consultation document see http://www.dti .gov.uk/
---------------------------
Miami Herald
May 26, 2007
Nuclear plant eyed for Dade
FPL's search for a new nuclear power site may be over as the utility pursues plans to expand Turkey Point.
By Curtis Morgan, Matthew I. Pinzur and Rob Barry
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
Florida Power & Light, which has been considering about a dozen locations across the state for a new nuclear power plant, is now focusing on one site: the Turkey Point power complex in South Miami-Dade.
''We have made more commitment to Turkey Point than anywhere else,'' said FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra. ``It's our preferred site so far.''
Turkey Point is already home to Florida's oldest nuclear reactors; its twin cooling towers have been landmarks along the mangrove coastline of Biscayne Bay for 35 years.
In the last month, FPL has shown sketchy site plans to county planners and environmental regulators and briefed Homestead council members, a South Miami-Dade county commissioner and the superintendent of Biscayne National Park. Last week, the utility also assembled a lobbying team.
Nine lobbyists, including prominent Miami land-use lawyers Jeffrey Bercow and Michael Radell, all registered on May 17 to represent FPL for an ''unusual-use application'' at Turkey Point -- the category covering reactors.
Veenstra said FPL expects to soon file for permits to expand the plant, but stressed the company had not made a final decision ''by any means'' and other locations remain an option if this one doesn't work out. County land-use review, he said, was simply one step in a lengthy process.
Between scrutiny from myriad agencies and construction of facilities costing upwards of $6 billion, it can take 12 years or more to fire up a nuclear plant.
''Just because we're taking this action doesn't preclude us from looking at other spots,'' he said.
`PRETTY CLEAR'
But Mark Lewis, superintendent of Biscayne National Park, said FPL executives who briefed him by phone last month sounded settled on the site, which is plainly visible across a mile or so of shimmering Biscayne Bay from park headquarters.
''Although they told me they had not made any decisions, I thought it was pretty clear they were aiming toward Turkey Point,'' he said. During the conversation, he said, both sides also used GoogleEarth images to discuss the location -- a flat, grassy 450-acre site adjacent to an existing complex already bristling with two reactors, an oil-fired plant and nearly-completed natural gas-burning plant.
FPL also showed basic designs to Miami-Dade environmental regulators and planning staff last month. Planning spokeswoman Marisol Triana said the designs were deliberately vague because the company cited national security concerns.
If FPL moves forward, the new plant would add to the growing uranium-powered energy wave in the United States, which hasn't approved a new plant since 1973.
Sixteen utilities already have filed papers with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission laying the groundwork for at least 28 new reactors that could go on line by 2020 -- including two plants in Florida. Besides FPL, Progress Energy is pursuing a nuclear facility in Levy County and is about a year ahead in the process.
The ''nuclear renaissance'' -- as NRC chair Dale Klein called it Friday during an industry conference in Aventura -- has been fueled by the skyrocketing costs of oil and natural gas and growing concerns about global-warming pollution.
But nuclear plants come with their own concerns, from the heightened security risks of terrorist attack to growing stockpiles of potentially lethal radioactive waste. A federal dump that's planned under a Nevada mountain is behind schedule and mired in controversy -- and FPL, like most nuclear operators, is running out of room for spent fuel rods. By next year at its St. Lucie plant and 2010 at Turkey Point, the utility intends to start moving the most depleted radioactive fuel into concrete ''dry storage'' casks stored on each site.
Lewis said it was too early to comment about FPL's plan but ''there are obviously a lot of questions in our minds.'' Beyond the issues of more radioactive fuels and wastes, there are concerns that building construction and excavation for fill could potentially destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands.
FRONT-RUNNER
Since FPL announced last year that it intended to decide whether and where to build a new plant by 2009, executives have repeatedly hinted Turkey Point was a front-runner. The company said it needs to produce about 28 percent more energy over the next 10 years alone to serve a growing population. Turkey Point supplies up to 450,000 homes.
''It's no big secret,'' Veenstra said. ``All the steps we have taken so far have led us to Turkey Point.''
The site has obvious economic and strategic advantages, said Melanie Lyons, spokeswoman for the industry-run Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. Most new reactors are proposed for existing plants, not ''green'' locations.
''The transmission lines, the emergency response plans, all the environmental issues, they're all the same,'' she said. ``That's why you're going to see these first on existing sites.''
POLITICAL SENSE
It also makes political and public relations sense for FPL. National and state environmentalists have mounted a major campaign to oppose a new coal-burning power plant the company is proposing for rural Glades County, saying the emissions will contribute to global warming and harm the Everglades.
FPL's effort to extend Turkey Point's operating license for 20 years, approved by the NRC in 2002, drew only a smattering of objections from activists -- though the surrounding area has experienced a suburban boom since. Under current projections, a new plant would go on-line about the time that Turkey Point's existing reactors, by then a half-century old, would be up for a second and likely more difficult re-licensing.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Dennis Moss, who represents the area and talked with FPL executives earlier this year about the probable expansion, said the plant's safety record has given residents a comfort level with nuclear power that might not be found in other places. It also provides high-paying jobs in an area hungry for economic development.
''I think the community would be receptive,'' Moss said.
---------------------------
Wisconsin State Journal
May 26, 2007
Wineke: Warming up to nuclear power
Bill Wineke
608-252-6146
bwineke@madison.com
If you're lucky enough to live long enough, sometimes the world will come around to your way of thinking.
Professor Max Carbon retired from the UW-Madison nuclear engineering faculty 15 years ago and during both his working and retirement careers has been a rather lonely voice touting the virtues of nuclear power.
Now that almost every scientific report on global warming warns of impending doom, Carbon's views are no longer so lonely. Indeed, the threats posed by nuclear plants may pale in comparison with the realities of present power generation fuels, he says.
"Coal-burning plants contribute almost one-third of all carbon emissions the U.S. generates," Carbon says. "That's almost as much as produced by every car and truck on the road."
Just one Wisconsin power plant, the Pleasant Prairie plant in Kenosha County, discharged more than 830 pounds of mercury into the atmosphere in 2005, Carbon notes. (The plant is experimenting with programs to reduce mercury emissions.)
So, no matter how "clean" we try to make coal-burning power plants, they will have a negative environmental impact, Carbon argues.
"A large plant will burn each year the amount of coal on a 250-mile-long train," he says. "About 10 percent of that coal becomes ash and the ash contains arsenic, chromium, lead and nickel. Do you know what we do with that ash? We put it either into landfills or into holding ponds. We don't have a clue on how to handle safely the wastes from coal plants that may threaten the planet."
Yet Wisconsin law prohibits the construction of new nuclear plants until the "waste problem is resolved" and doesn't worry much about coal ash, he notes, calling the situation "strikingly illogical."
Carbon's suggestion, as noted above, is a return to nuclear power. He's author of a book, "Nuclear Power: Villain or Victim," first published in 1997 and just reissued.
Most of the fears associated with nuclear power are overblown, Carbon argues.
The waste generated by nuclear plants is relatively small, relatively stable and can be safely stored in places like the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada and the politics that keep that from happening are ridiculous, he says.
"Nevada's political leaders delay approval of the site even though hundreds of atomic and hydrogen bombs have been exploded underground just a few miles away."
These arguments go on and on, of course. But what gives Carbon new standing today is global warming.
Wisconsin has two nuclear plants in operation today. If coal-fired plants generated the amount of electricity provided by those plants, Carbon estimates they would add an additional 11 million tons of carbon dioxide, plus quantities of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides to the air.
Carbon still may be ahead of his time. But global warming headlines are giving him new credibility.
--Read Wineke's blog at www.madison.com/wsj/blogs.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 25, 2007
Yucca financing taking shape
Congressional committees begin process of setting 2008 budget levels
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- House and Senate committees this week took the first steps toward setting Yucca Mountain spending for 2008, a year in which the Department of Energy plans to meet a key licensing milestone if Congress supplies the funds.
The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday chopped $50 million from the military's contribution to the Yucca project, which would store Defense Department nuclear waste along with commercial used fuel within the planned repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
On Wednesday, the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee formed a spending bill that would fully fund the repository plan at the $494.5 million amount that DOE requested.
Both actions took place early in the Capitol Hill budget process. Final spending for nuclear waste disposal won't be set until the fall.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., engineered the Senate cut. Though the Pentagon asked for $292 million as its share of the program next year, the Armed Services Committee reduced that to $242 million.
"The more success we have in cutting funds for this reckless project, the further from reality it becomes," said Ensign, a committee member who opposes the disposal of high-level nuclear waste disposal in the state, as do most of its other elected leaders.
But in the House, Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., the chairman of the energy and water subcommittee, included full funding for Yucca in his panel's annual DOE spending bill.
Visclosky told reporters he wanted to ensure that the Energy Department had the money it said it needed to complete a Yucca license application.
Ward Sproat, director of the Energy Department's office for Yucca Mountain, has testified to Congress that the DOE hopes to complete a repository license bid and file it with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by next June.
The repository would not open until 2017, and probably a half-dozen years later, under schedules devised by DOE. The state of Nevada and environmental groups plan to mount legal challenges in a continuing effort to kill the project outright.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
May 25, 2007
County leery of nuclear waste processing
By Mark Waite
PVT
Nye County commissioners, after pressure from the Nevada Congressional delegation, decided Monday to back off from endorsing a plan to reprocess nuclear waste near the Yucca Mountain site.
Instead, the commission agreed to let Lewis Darrell Lacy Jr., newly-hired director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office, study the proposal.
The Nye County position on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project -- which went from aggressive neutrality to constructive engagement with the U.S. Department of Energy -- has been at odds with the state's official opposition to the project.
"I really thought our job was to provide independent scientific oversight of the DOE's activities at Yucca Mountain. I am also aware that we had been, I'll use the word, 'asked' by the delegation not to get involved in issues like this," said Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley.
President Bush recently unveiled the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, in which a site would be selected to reprocess nuclear waste and erect a reactor to use the reprocessed fuel, but none of the proposed sites is in Nye County.
Instead, locations being considered are in Hanford, Wash., Hobbs, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., Portsmouth, Maine, and the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. Most of those communities are part of the nation's nuclear program.
The partnership would expand the use of nuclear power worldwide and develop nuclear reactors to consume the most hazardous materials in used fuel.
A memorandum to commissioners from Dave Swanson, interim director of the county nuclear waste project office, said experts involved in the partnership believed it was logical to have recycling facilities near the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, thus reducing transportation costs.
"It is anticipated that recycling facilities will result in considerable economic benefits to the host community," Swanson's memo stated.
The county white paper states Nye County has a long nuclear history already, as the host county for the Nevada Test Site.
But the white paper states further that "political posturing precluded (the Department of Energy) from publicly voicing any intention to study a site in Nye County near its planned Yucca Mountain repository."
A recycling facility would be either publicly or privately owned, with government incentives. Those incentives and the potential of high paying jobs make the recycling facility attractive, the Nye County white paper states.
The recycling facility wouldn't do away with the need for the nuclear waste repository, the white paper states, but it would reduce the volume and toxicity of the waste. The reduced volume could increase the repository capacity and safety margins associated with the operation.
"However, to scatter the location of the separate GNEP facilities around the country will not optimize the environmental, safety and cost benefits that are available from collocation of some of the facilities," the white paper states.
Eastley told the board, "We've been warned by the delegation not to get involved in reprocessing. Here we are getting involved in reprocessing. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction."
Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said, "We discussed with Nye County the implications of a repository center in Nye County. Most particularly, having a reprocessing plant in Nevada is a step forward for Yucca Mountain and Sen. Ensign is adamantly committed to stopping a storage facility."
Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, "Our office did communicate with Nye County to ensure they understood the implications of locating a reprocessing facility in Nevada. Doing so could potentially be beneficial to the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, which, as you know, Sen. Reid opposes."
Nye County Commission District 4 candidate Lewis Beaver, during the 2006 campaign, suggested the county could benefit from the revenue from nuclear power plants using fuel from reprocessed nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Likewise, a county resolution asking for the transfer of three parcels, totaling 13,000 acres, from the 147,000 acres DOE will ask to withdraw for the Yucca Mountain project, was tabled. The parcels would be used for industrial parks for businesses and industries associated with the repository.
The sites would include 5,670 acres at Lathrop Wells adjacent to the southern boundary of the Nevada Test Site. Another site would be 5,120 acres in Crater Flat, where the proposed Yucca Mountain rail line would meet the west side of the Yucca Mountain project. A third parcel would be 2,240 acres north of Beatty adjacent to Highway 95 and adjacent to the proposed railroad near Sarcobatus Flat, which would be called the Sarcobatus Flat Railroad Business Park.
DOE is expected to contract with commercial businesses for repository construction and maintenance. Those contractors will need warehouse space, offices, lay-down yards, manufacturing, transportation facilities and worker housing.
Eastley, one of the commission liaisons on nuclear waste, said of the request for the nine sections of land, "We have been told that is not going to be a possibility."
Swanson said if DOE is going to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nye County wants it to be a success.
"For it to be a success, we have to benefit from the program," Swanson said. "We can use that facility to promote the local economy ... In other words it's not going to be a series of Quonset huts in the middle of the desert. It's something we can provide guidance, how we want to see the area outside the fence developed."
Nye County is in the early stages of preparing master plans for development of the industrial parks. The Amargosa Valley Science and Technology Park was first proposed back in 1999, but the land has sat largely dormant, except for construction of a couple of water tanks, a well house and some bladed dirt roads.
The selection of Lacy as the new nuclear waste project office director was approved by a 4-0 vote of the Nye County commissioners Monday without discussion. Commission Chairman Gary Hollis was absent.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
May 25, 2007
Delegation opposes GOP 'Nu-Way' plan
WASHINGTON -- Congressman Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., reacted angrily Wednesday to Republican plans to immediately turn the Nevada Test Site into a nuclear waste dump, according to her staff.
U.S. Sen.'s Harry Reid and John Ensign also quickly denounced the proposal.
Legislation generated by Sen.'s Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, would also accelerate the date when nuclear waste could be brought to the Yucca Mountain repository by altering the date when a license could be issued.
"There is only one answer to this dangerous scheme to immediately turn the Nevada Test Site into a nuclear waste dump," Berkley said, "and that is 'no way.'"
She said the plan for a waste dump is "just as danagerous as Yucca Mountain, if not worse."
Berkley said the so-called Nu-Way plan authored by the GOP senators would put families at risk across the country and would include "truckloads of radioactive garbage" that would be transported through Las Vegas.
According to Berkley, the plan to allow the test site's immediate use as a dumping ground is forbidden by law and amounts to a "slap in the face" to families who have been promised fair treatment.
The two Nevada senators also attacked the plan, to use Yucca Mountain for above-ground storage of nuclear waste.
"This is an irresponsible piece of legislation. Rather than addressing the problems facing the proposed dump at Yucca Mountain, its supporters are already trying to cram in more waste before it's even built," said Reid. "The dump is not based on legal, political, or scientific reality. Rather than trying to force nuclear waste into Yucca Mountain, the DOE should take ownership of nuclear waste and store it at nuclear power plans where it's produced. This is a critical topic that must be addressed as part of the bigger picture of energy independence."
His Republican counterpart Ensign also attacked the proposal.
"For the last 25 years, the Yucca Mountain project has been disastrous and has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars," said Ensign. "This bill attempts to circumvent existing hazardous material laws, start construction and increase spending on the broken Yucca Mountain project all prior to license approval. This legislation continues a reckless policy that disregards public safety and fiscal responsibility. I will continue my efforts to end this terrible project."
Reid and Ensign recently introduced the Federal Accountability for Nuclear Waste Storage Act of 2007 that would eliminate the need for the Yucca Mountain project by requiring nuclear waste to be stored at the point where nuclear power is being used.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------