Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, June 8, 2007
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Topeka Capital Journal
June 08, 2007
http://cjonline.com/stories/060807/opi_175579423.shtml
GNEP is a bad nuclear choice
By Robert Alvarez and Tom Carpenter
MinutemanMedia.org
President George W. Bush and his energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, have recently intensified their lobbying to revive "nuclear recycling" through a program they call the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP.
This is hardly a new idea. In 1996, the National Academy of Sciences reported on the feasibility of recycling nuclear fuel. It was an intriguing idea because of its promise to reduce the amount of waste that had to be buried, where it could conceivably seep into drinking water at some point in its multimillion-year-long half-lives.
But the Academy's conclusion was unequivocal — the idea was supremely impractical. It would cost up to $500 billion in 1996 dollars and take 150 years to accomplish the transmutation of dangerous long-lived radioactive toxins.
Now the Bush administration is actively promoting GNEP as a sweeping panacea — to supply virtually limitless energy to emerging economies, to "reduce the number of required ... waste depositories to one for the remainder of this century" and to "enhance energy security, while promoting non-proliferation." The National Academy of Sciences' findings have been swept aside, even though the idea is as costly and technologically unfeasible as it was in the 1990s.
Members of Congress, who will soon vote on the president's request for $405 million for GNEP in fiscal year 2008, should recognize that it has no chance in our lifetimes of brightening the prospects of finding safe ways of nuclear fuel disposal.
In 1982, Congress enacted legislation requiring that spent nuclear power fuel be disposed of in ways that shield humans for at least hundreds of millennia.
But today, a quarter-century later, prospects for long-term disposal are dimmer than ever. The government's nuclear waste disposal program is plagued by scandal, legal setbacks and congressional funding cuts. As a result, the schedule for the proposed Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada has slipped by two decades.
Under the president's plan, the United States and its nuclear partners would sell power reactors to developing nations that agree not to pursue technologies that would aid nuclear weapons production, notably reprocessing and uranium enrichment.
To sweeten the deal, the United States would take highly radioactive spent fuel rods to a recycling center in this country.
The foreign reactor wastes, along with spent fuel from the U.S. reactor fleet, would be reprocessed to reduce the amount that would go deep underground. Nuclear explosive materials, such as plutonium, would also be separated and converted to less troublesome isotopes in a new generation of reactors.
In short, using the Bush administration's fuzzy nuclear math, more would become less.
In fact, however, to reduce the amount of radioactive wastes slated for a deep geological repository, the majority of radioactive byproducts are planned to be stored in shallow burial.
The site selected for the GNEP recycling center is likely to become a dump for the largest, lethal source of high-heat radioactivity in the United States, and possibly the world.
If placed in a crowded area, a few grams of these wastes would deliver lethal doses in a matter of seconds. Concentrations could be so large that if they were disposed of under current standards in shallow land burial as low-level wastes, they would have to be diluted to a volume as large as 500 million cubic meters, enough to fill 500 Empire State Buildings.
The plan would also threaten water supplies. For instance, it could result in levels of radioactive disposal thousands of times greater than now allowed at U.S. nuclear weapons production sites, which are among the most contaminated zones in the country.
The Bush administration lacks (or at least, has yet to disclose) credible plans for addressing any of the unprecedented health, safety and financial risks that GNEP would create. Unless the administration can furnish these details, the public should urge their legislators to zero out GNEP's budget.
America is better off by investing in renewable energy and conservation, rather than pouring billions of dollars into the same old limitless energy schemes of our nuclear laboratories.
--Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies — www.ips-dc.org — in Washington, D.C., and a former senior policy advisor to the secretary of energy and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment (1993 ton1999). Tom Carpenter is the nuclear oversight director for the Government Accountability Project — www.whistleblower.org.
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Orlando Sentinel
June 07, 2007
Will Florida be a nuclear powerhouse?
Industry officials anticipate a surge in applications here and in 2 other states.
Kevin Spear
Sentinel Staff Writer
Nuclear power's comeback from national disfavor likely will start with construction of plants in Florida and two other states in the coming decade, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday at a conference in Orlando.
Dr. Dale Klein said his agency is bracing for a surge of license applications late this year and in early 2008. He predicted Florida, Virginia and South Carolina would lead in efforts to plug nearly three dozen proposed plants into the nation's electric grid.
It's "nice we can say 'nuclear' in public again," Klein told a small gathering of industry leaders at the General Electric Co. Nuclear Innovations conference at the Portofino Bay Hotel.
Renewed interest in splitting atoms to generate electricity has soared in recent years. Advocates for reviving nuclear energy say the next generation of plants will have standard designs with safer systems and discharge virtually no global-warming carbon dioxide compared with plants that burn oil, natural gas and coal. Those fuels generate 84 percent of Florida's electricity.
Meeting electricity demand in Florida is particularly challenging because of its isolation from the rest of the continent. The state is mostly on its own for keeping lights on, having little connection to power generated in other states.
For now, Progress Energy Florida, which proposes to build two reactors in rural Levy County, regularly points out that it has not made a final decision on whether to proceed with a multibillion-dollar investment. The company expects to apply for a license next year and possibly start construction in 2010 to have at least one reactor running nine years from now. FPL also has announced interest in building a new plant in South Florida.
In a surprise development earlier this week, the Florida Public Service Commission unanimously denied Florida Power & Light's request to build a pair of massive coal-burning generators in South Florida. The proposed plant drew controversy for being too near the Everglades and as a new source of carbon-dioxide pollution at a time when the nation is searching for solutions to global warming.
But the decision left experts baffled as to what comes next. Florida leaders have set few far-reaching priorities among energy options that include conservation, coal, natural gas, solar, wind, ocean currents and ethanol. The state now gets 14 percent of its electricity from five nuclear reactors in the state.
"Florida desperately needs a real energy plan," said Tommy Boroughs, an Orlando attorney who is chairman of the Florida Energy Commission. The panel will provide the Legislature with recommendations for power choices.
Whether Florida or the nation embraces nuclear power for future energy demand remains to be seen. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance For Clean Energy, said there is lots of unique risk.
"I think some nuclear plants are going to get through the gate because there's a lot of momentum," Smith said. "But in the post-9-11 world of terrorism, holding out nuclear power as a solution to global warming is naive."
Nationally, interest in nuclear energy collapsed after meltdowns at Three Mile Island, Pa., in 1979 and Chernobyl, Russia, in 1986. But parts of Europe and Asia continued to build plants.
John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association in London, told conference participants the drawbacks of nuclear energy are dwarfed when compared with the ongoing damage from coal-burning plants using the atmosphere as a "carbon dump site."
To solve global warming and meet the needs of a growing population will require a "twenty-fold" increase of the 440 nuclear plants that now provide one-sixth of the world's electricity, Ritch said.
Yet Klein of the NRC and representatives of major utilities outlined several obstacles that must be addressed to ensure a resurgence in nuclear power. They pointed to the ongoing failure of the industry and nation to open a storage site for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste that is piling up at the campuses of nuclear plants.
Efforts to open the proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, a site studied for nearly 20 years, has been stymied by politics and arguments over science.
Tom O'Neill, a vice president at Exelon Nuclear, said his company is looking for certainty in regulations, solid public support and favorable financial support.
"Certainly we in Exelon are confident these can and will be resolved," O'Neill said.
--Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062.
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Charleston Post Courier
June 07, 2007
New future for nuclear energy
The recent restart of reactors in Alabama by the Tennessee Valley Authority after a 22-year shutdown may well anticipate a greater reliance on nuclear power in the United States.
The nation is facing a series of fundamental decisions in the immediate future about how it gets its electricity and at what economic and environmental cost. The role of nuclear energy looms large in these calculations because it is the nation's largest source of electricity that does not degrade air quality or add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
With the growing acknowledgment about the relationship of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to global warming, the advantages of nuclear power are rightly getting new attention.
The shift is evident on Capitol Hill, where some former opponents are now willing to consider nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The Los Angeles Times counts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in that number, quoting her in a recent report, as saying, "I think it has to be on the table."
The Times cites other lawmakers who support caps to greenhouse gas emissions, along with incentives to build more nuclear plants. Their number includes Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama, all of whom are presidential candidates.
The United States currently gets 20 percent of its electricity from the 103 nuclear plants designed and built more than a generation ago. But most of the nation's electricity comes from polluting coal-fired plants. Other sources of electrical energy — natural gas, oil, water, wind and solar — have limited room for expansion or negative consequences, leaving coal and nuclear the dominant fuels for the foreseeable future.
Beginning around 2020, older nuclear power plants will begin shutting down as they reach the end of their 60-year useful lives. The last of them will shut down around mid-century. Unless the permitting process improves, it can take more than a decade to launch a new nuclear power plant. So the calendar dictates that now is the time to begin thinking about nuclear energy's future in the United States.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides billion of dollars of incentives to the nuclear power industry for new plants. Unless these plants are built, it is probable that nuclear power will not be a feature in this country's energy profile long-term.
That would be a mistake. The Energy Department forecasts that electricity demand in the United States could roughly double by 2050. Though some experts believe improved efficiency in the use of electricity could rule out the need for additional power plants, demand also could rise more than projected by the DOE if the nation succeeds in shifting private transportation to the electrical network though plug-in hybrid vehicles in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
Meanwhile, the recent Supreme Court decision taking the Bush administration to task for failing to impose limits on greenhouse gases under existing clean air legislation should serve as another incentive. The administration supports greater use of nuclear power.
There are still major waste disposal questions for the industry, created largely by opponents to the Yucca Mountain waste disposal site. Moreover, there are security concerns related to nuclear sites as targets for terrorists. And there are the lingering fears as a result of the reactor accident at Three Miles Island, near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1977.
But the need for energy independence and lower greenhouse gases provides new arguments for an expansion of nuclear power. Preserving the nuclear option as an alternative to coal is a prudent decision in spite of the still formidable security and waste disposal questions associated with the industry
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Charlotte Observer
June 07, 2007
Nuclear Waste that Won't Go Away
Storage dilemma nears critical mass
Finding a site to hold spent fuel rods vexes Duke, nation
Christopher D. Kirkpatrick
ckirkpatrick@charlotteobserver.com
Radioactive waste created by nuclear reactors in the Charlotte area is still at the plants. It's been waiting decades for a permanent home.
At Duke Energy Corp.'s McGuire plant on Lake Norman, like at more than 100 nuclear plants nationwide, spent fuel rods are stored on site in pools of water and sometimes outside in concrete dry casks.
Federal regulators and nuclear scientists believe it should all be permanently stored in one place. But no state wants to be the site. And, as Congress debates what to do, the nation's and Duke's nuclear waste grows. Two of Duke's three nuclear plants are within 30 miles of Charlotte.
Duke keeps the amount of waste a secret. But about 20 plants across the country, including McGuire and Duke's Oconee plant, just north of Clemson, S.C., have run out of room for spent fuel rods in their pools and are using the dry casks for storage. The Catawba plant, just over the S.C. line, will start using the dry casks soon, the Charlotte company said. The cylinders sit outside behind security fences.
Studies show the casks can withstand attacks from grenade launchers. A crashing plane would likely disperse most of the casks like bowling pins rather than break them apart, said Edward Davis, an independent consultant to the nuclear power industry in Washington.
The renewed issue of where to permanently store spent fuel rods is threatening a so-called nuclear renaissance as 26 new nuclear plants, including a Duke proposal in Cherokee County, S.C., are in the planning stages. Fueling the new popularity is worry that coal-fired power plants, which produce half of the nation's electricity, are a cause of global warming.
Many consider nuclear energy, which produces about one-fifth of the nation's electricity, to be a clean-air technology. But the waste question nags.
The federal government plans to store highly radioactive waste for 10,000 years in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but the project is mired in politics and cost overruns. Even if the facility is eventually operational, the country will still need more options.
One is to recycle rods, which would require building regional reprocessing plants. Great Britain, France, Japan, Russia and other nations reprocess, which allows about 95 percent of the waste to be reused, Davis said.
Duke Energy chief executive Jim Rogers and other utility executives say reprocessing is an option here.
But the waste, largely uranium, contains a small amount of plutonium, which some people fear could be stolen and used for nuclear weapons, Davis said.
Rogers, who says he wants to build the new $6 billion-plus S.C. plant to meet growing power needs, said leaving the waste question unanswered could scuttle his plans.
Nuclear energy has a larger presence in the Carolinas than in most other states. About 31 percent of electricity in North Carolina is produced from the technology and 52 percent in South Carolina, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the industry.
Some environmentalists support nuclear power as a clean-air option, but many believe the renewed interest in nuclear power distracts utilities from their responsibility of focusing on renewable sources, such as wind, and energy efficiency to reduce demand. The critics say nuclear waste storage is a question not likely to be answered soon enough.
The United States used to reprocess. But the facilities, including one in South Carolina, shut down during the Carter administration amid Cold War fears of nuclear weapons proliferation, Davis said.
But like nuclear plants, there's renewed interest in reprocessing. It would allow a centralized dump like Yucca Mountain to operate much longer, because most of the waste would be reused, Davis said.
"It's a key step in putting the United States on the same level as the rest of the industrialized world," he said. FULL POOLS | At the bottom of a pool of 23 feet of water that's been treated with boron, spent nuclear fuel rods at Duke Energy's McGuire nuclear plant are stored in metal casings, some dating to the early 1980s.
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Nevada Appeal
June 06, 2007
Yucca Mountain not dead after all?
Sen. Harry Reid has said with confidence that the plan to make Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste repository is dead, a proclamation that put the anxieties of many Nevadans at ease.
Yet New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig have introduced legislation that would fast track the licensing of Yucca Mountain. Domenici has tied the completion of the project as necessary to combat climate change, saying nuclear energy is a clean source of energy.
Clean for New Mexico, maybe, but Domenici might be singing a different tune if the waste were being shipped to his state rather than Nevada.
Yucca Mountain is a flawed project, a money pit that has swallowed up billions of dollars. Nevadans have said clearly they don't want the waste. But the new legislation is a clear signal that scientific flaws and the will of the people aren't enough to drive the final nail in its coffin. Politics is a powerful force that keeps the project's heart beating.
We hope Sen. Reid has more success in driving that final nail than he's had in his equally confident proclamations about ending our war in Iraq.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 06, 2007
Back Then
20 years ago this week
An amended bill that would increase Nye County's share of federal grants generated at the Yucca Mountain repository to 25.4 percent appears headed for a state Senate vote. Two of three Nye County commissioners oppose the plan, saying it exaggerates the potential income to be generated and contradicts the law which says the grant money from a repository site should go to the site county, namely, Nye.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 05, 2007
Nevada budget highlights
Attorney General: The budget for the state attorney general's office includes $36.1 million in general fund support. A special account for the legal fight against the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump project gets $2.3 million.
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IEER
June 05, 2007
Comments on DOE's Notice of Intent to Prepare a PEIS for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
See Adobe Acrobat Document:
http://www.ieer.org/comments/energy/gnepnoi.pdf
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Bennington Banner
June 05, 2007
Sensible nuke alternatives
Paul Myers
The futile "nuclear debate" seems interminable. Does nuclear power produce "clean energy?" Is it economical? Is it safe? Of course not.
The nuclear industry, while generously funded by subsidies and tax breaks, continues to produce electricity from over-aged reactors, making mountains of dangerously radioactive waste and storing it indefinitely on site. The 40-plus year old Yankee nuclear reactor operates at high stress levels and 20 percent above its design capacity while producing over 30 percent of Vermont's electricity. Chances of a catastrophic accident increase with reactor age.
Consider a sudden metal failure at Yankee with uncontrolled loss of coolant, escape of radioactive gases, and partial meltdown of the reactor core. Radioactive waste escapes into the atmosphere forming a plume which quickly spreads across Massachusetts and the Boston area, eventually crossing the Atlantic Ocean to rain down on the people of Western Europe and converting the fallout region into a radioactive wasteland, uninhabitable for centuries.
Then there is the highly radioactive waste which is stored in dry casks next to the Connecticut River in Vernon. Still, nobody has found a viable way to safely store or dispose of the waste while it slowly degrades over thousands of years. Hopes for opening the Yucca Mountain (Nevada) nuclear waste repository fade as local resistance grows. It may never open.
Will some miraculous discovery permit safe storage of high-level nuclear waste for thousands of years? Not likely. Who will pay the huge cost of reactor decommissioning and waste isolation — our grandchildren and their grandchildren? Do we just let it accumulate indefinitely at reactor sites all over the world?
And we should not overlook nuclear waste from aircraft carriers, submarines, etc. Since plutonium — one of the components of nuclear waste — can be used to make nuclear weapons, there is a high probability that some it will someday be used to kill large numbers of people. During the centuries that the nuclear waste will be hazardous, some type of disastrous "nuclear accident" is virtually inevitable. Without question, the use of enriched uranium for reactor fuels and weapons is suicidal in the extreme.
So, what are the alternatives? We still have choices. We can gradually abandon nuclear and fossil fuels while incrementally adopting sustainable energy sources, or we can wait for disaster to make it happen. Whether planned or catastrophic, the transformation is inevitable.
Assuming our choice is a voluntary transition, we first need to minimize our energy demand through vigorous conservation. Electricity and fuels should be made too expensive to waste. During this phase we must reduce the use of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). Let's say that we can reduce our total energy consumption by 15 percent in 20 years.
Meanwhile, we tax the producers of nuclear and fossil fuel-based electricity while giving business, homeowners, and industries breaks for saving energy and incorporating solar and wind-based electrical systems everywhere, while decentralizing power production. Our industry would shift away from building nuclear reactors, refineries and power lines to building local solar arrays and wind farms.
This transformation, if properly incentivized, could occur in 25 years. We should be able to make every home, business, and industry a model of energy efficiency. Combined with development of an efficient mass transport system and greatly enhanced local production and sale of goods and services, we could eliminate the specter of fossil fuel dependence within this century, while cutting our carbon emissions by at least half. We can do it. And we haven't mentioned its benefits in slowing global warming.
--Paul Myers, a member of vermontpeacetrain and a geologist by profession, lives in Peru.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 03, 2007
Week in Review: Washington, D.C.
Yucca dump on back burner
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - In these days of nearly $4 a gallon gasoline and global warming, Yucca Mountain is finding it difficult to get some face time in Congress.
Look what happened when longtime nuclear advocate Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., introduced legislation recently to begin storing nuclear waste in Nevada as soon as 2010 - at the earliest seven years before the proposed nuclear waste dump would open at Yucca. The bill got more attention from the Democratic presidential contenders stumping in Nevada than it did on Capitol Hill - and it was hardly the kind of attention Domenici wanted.
Other energy issues are more pressing for the chairman of the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who is not inclined to schedule a hearing on the Yucca bill anytime soon.
Bingaman and other Senate Democrats want to roll out a sweeping energy package this month to tackle such vast issues as higher fuel efficiency for cars, renewable energy investment and international energy diplomacy. After that, they're on to climate change legislation.
Yucca, as of now, is sitting on the bench.
Bingaman is focused on legislation he thinks will pass in this Congress, spokesman Bill Wicker said. What Wicker means is that Bingaman is not likely to take up legislation that generates about as much opposition from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as would a bill to outlaw casino gambling.
"I don't think Harry Reid is the only person who has a problem with Yucca Mountain," Wicker continued. "With many of the other energy problems our nation has right now ¦ it's probably a middle priority, not a top priority."
Everyone knew Reid would be an obstacle. But in many ways Yucca Mountain has become a parochial issue, one Nevadans know deeply but the rest of the country seems to care about only from time to time.
Sure, the presidential contenders are talking about their positions on Yucca. Democrats are mostly opposed, while Republicans aren't quite saying, with the exception of Sen. John McCain, who supports it.
But do comments about Yucca that the candidates make in Las Vegas stay in Las Vegas? Do the candidates broadcast their opposition when shaking hands in New Hampshire?
Maybe Yucca will rise again to the national stage as the 2008 campaigns unfold and the Energy Department approaches its June 2008 deadline to submit a license application for the repository.
Nuclear power is bound to enter the congressional debate as Democrats bring energy bills to the floor in the coming weeks. Some believe nuclear energy provides an answer to global warming as a cleaner source than coal-fired electric power plants.
The day Domenici's bill was introduced, energy executives were meeting at the annual Nuclear Energy Institute conference in Miami, where the chief executive of Exelon Corp., the nation's largest operator of nuclear power plants, said the delay of Yucca Mountain until at least 2017 means the nation needs a federal site (or sites) to store the waste temporarily.
Unfortunately for them, Domenici's legislation puts that temporary storage site right outside Reid's back door. (The bill also would provide the Energy Department with the tools it needs to get the Yucca project back on track, including access to cash and land, precisely the assist Nevada's congressional delegation vows to fight.)
Even Domenici lowered the expectations, recognizing as he announced the legislation that "this bill faces long odds."
--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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San Diego Union Tribune
June 03, 2007
Tunnel as tomb for radioactive waste hits wall
Next 18 months key in nuclear energy debate centered on Nev. site
By Dana Wilkie
Copley News Service
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 mountain ranges, 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's 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 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 cavelike 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. Their disagreements likely 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.
The Yucca project is two decades behind schedule, utilities have sued the federal government to take the waste off their hands, and the Bush administration is 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 could remain dangerous for many thousands of years.
If the department can't submit the license application by next summer, there are fears that the Yucca repository could 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 that more delays won't be good news for utilities banking on Yucca's opening as they prepare to build 27 reactor units.
“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 require 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 – up U.S. Highway 95, deep into the sage-and creosote-bush-splattered Amargosa Desert and briefly through the Nevada Test Site, a Rhode Island-size expanse marred by craters from military bombs.
The turnoff toward Yucca comes after a lonely corner with an “all nude” Kingdom Gentleman's Club. From there, it's 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.
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 summer 1994 to spring 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 Energy Department funnels 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 would lie along 42 fingerlike 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 an Energy Department 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 – thinks 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 said.
In cool, cavelike alcoves branching off the tunnel, engineers have drilled holes in the rock walls and installed a drip system to study how water moves through the mountain. They've imagined that about 8½ miles 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 – atoms with unstable nuclei – to escape their steel canisters, migrate through Yucca's rock, find their way to groundwater and move to where this hypothetical person lives.
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 said.
Allen Benson, spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project, said 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 that radionuclides would migrate to groundwater after several thousand years. Even then, the Energy Department goal is to ensure that 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 that it's 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 a magnitude-5.9 quake in 1992 destroyed buildings at the Yucca Mountain Project.
Benson said the 1992 quake only broke windows at one building, while consultant Voegele noted 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, turning his face toward the desert valley and sighing. “I used to hope my son wouldn't have to work on this project. Now I'm just hoping my grandchildren won't.”
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Dallas Morning News
June 03, 2007
Texas nuke plant deals gaining steam
By Elizabeth Souder
Dallas Morning News
esouder@dallasnews.com
TOKYO – In a private room at the back of a sumo wrestling-themed restaurant next to a busy Tokyo train station, a group of American and Japanese men in snappy business suits discuss the future of nuclear power in Texas.
The restaurant is loud on this March evening, full of families and college students, and it smells like the wide variety of fish on the menu. There's a sumo ring in the middle and a gift shop at the front that sells sumo key chains and pens and beach blankets. The Japanese bankers with Mitsui and Mizuho treat their American guests from NRG Energy and CPS Energy to platters of raw fish, bowls of boiling fish and lots of sake. The Americans want to buy two nuclear power plants from the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, and the bankers want to help seal the deal.
"We aren't in this as a science project. We want to build," said Steve Winn, head of development for NRG, a New Jersey company that's the second-largest power generation company in Texas. He leads the team that wants to spend about $5 billion to expand the South Texas Project.
If the deal progresses without losing steam, NRG would be one of the first companies to build nuclear reactors in the U.S. in about 20 years, leading a revolution that could more than double the size of Texas' nuclear fleet in the next decade.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is expecting new nuclear plants to keep the lights on, particularly after plans by TXU Corp. to build a huge fleet of coal plants were shot down by public protest about pollution and greenhouse gases.
Expansion plans will test whether Texans unaccustomed to living near nuclear plants will accept a reactor in the neighborhood.
So far, many anti-coal activists favor nuclear power because it doesn't pollute or contribute to global warming. But already the anti-nuclear camp is gathering support, complaining about nuclear waste and security.
"When you're looking at coal plants vs. nukes, it's sort of like quitting cigarettes and taking up crack," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, head of the Austin office of Public Citizen.
And the various proposals for new reactors will test whether investors can build such big, expensive, long-term projects in a deregulated environment, where regulators no longer ensure generation companies turn a profit.
The negotiators at the sumo restaurant are counting on government loan guarantees to help with the giant cost and risk of building nuclear reactors in Texas.
Big in Texas
Texas dominates the Nuclear Energy Institute's list of nearly 30 proposed nuclear plants in the U.S. Six are planned in Texas. Currently the state has four reactors.
Power companies want to build nuclear plants in Texas because the state will need more juice in the next few years to keep up with population and economic growth. Nuclear plants produce huge amounts of cheap power consistently and reliably.
And a nuclear generation company can sell that power at a relatively high rate on the Texas wholesale power market, which follows expensive natural gas prices.
Plus, nuclear plants don't pollute or poof carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That puts nuclear companies in a nice position, should the U.S. government limit greenhouse gas emissions.
NRG wants to build two reactors at the existing South Texas Project, co-owned by NRG, CPS and Austin Energy.
STP has two existing reactors, and the new reactors, near Houston, could begin operating as early as 2015.
Texas has two other reactors at Comanche Peak, near Glen Rose, owned by TXU. TXU would also like to double the size of its nuclear plant by adding two more reactors using Mitsubishi technology. Those reactors would begin operating between 2015 and 2020.
Two companies, Amarillo Power and Exelon Energy, want to build nuclear plants at brand-new locations, known as "greenfield" sites.
Exelon Corp., which operates the country's largest fleet of nuclear plants, plans to build one reactor in southeast Texas, south of Houston. The company hasn't named a site yet and hasn't decided on a technology. The plant would start operations in 2015 at the earliest, possibly a few years later.
Amarillo Power, a private company started by developer George Chapman, plans a plant near Amarillo. The company is in talks with UniStar Nuclear, a partnership between Constellation Energy and French nuclear plant maker Areva Inc., to build and operate the plant. If the companies go ahead with the project, the plant could begin operating as early as 2016.
The technologies
Each company would probably use a slightly different technology made by a different vendor. But each technology follows the principle of using a standard plant design, pre-approved by federal regulators, to cut the time it takes to get an operating license and to build the plant.
Only NRG has chosen a technology that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has pre-certified. The other technologies await certification.
To jump-start the U.S. nuclear industry, the Department of Energy is offering to guarantee loans and to insure the companies against the risk of regulatory delays. As the department sets up the details of those programs, Texas power companies are stumping for rules that would work for a deregulated, build-at-your-own-risk market.
Most experts agree that Texas will get more new nuclear plants if the government guarantees the loans. Without the guarantees, the state might not get any.
That's a hot topic for the group at the sumo restaurant. The Americans are responsible for lobbying their government to offer more money for loan guarantees and to limit the time that each loan is guaranteed to the construction period.
And the Japanese are to ask the government-owned Japan Bank for International Cooperation to offer loans to the project, making an exception to a rule that the bank may only support Japanese exports to developing countries.
Neither government has definitively granted the requests.
The past
Texas might represent the future of nuclear, and it certainly represents the past.
The most recent nuclear plant built in the U.S. is Comanche Peak, finished in 1993. The plant, owned by TXU, took 20 years to build and cost $11 billion, 12 times the initial estimate.
The problem with the last generation of nuclear is that each plant was a custom design, made especially for the site and the operator. And often engineers changed the design during construction, further lengthening the projects.
Since the U.S. took a break from starting work on new nuclear plants after an accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979, the industry has changed.
Now vendors have cookie-cutter designs that they can erect much more quickly. And that means a better prediction of project costs.
Consider the world's largest nuclear power plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Station on the shore of the Sea of Japan, northwest of Tokyo.
The most recent of the seven reactors at the plant was completed in 1997 and took about five years to build.
That reactor uses the same technology that NRG wants to use, the advanced boiling water reactor technology supplied by Hitachi.
The Japanese technology conglomerate has developed a method of building nuclear plants by making big modules in a factory, shipping them to the plant site and bolting them together, sort of like a prefab building.
The method has shaved years off the building time, and Hitachi engineers think they can build a plant even faster now.
Several of the negotiators with NRG and CPS Energy at the sumo restaurant said they'd spent a day touring the giant nuclear facility, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. They laughed about the weird safety jumpsuits they had to wear to crawl around some inner areas of the plant – this wasn't the kind of plant tour given to schoolchildren on field trips.
(The usual plant tour takes about an hour, and tour guides only ask people to change their shoes and wear plastic-soled slippers to go inside the reactor building. Most people only get to see the deep, spooky pool where long rods of spent fuel are stored and the platform on top of the reactor, which looks like a brightly lit roller rink that shakes a bit as the plant operates.)
CPS, the San Antonio city-owned power company, hasn't yet decided whether to invest in the deal. Neither has Austin Energy, which owns part of the South Texas Project. But the Austin municipal utility hasn't sent any officials to Japan.
"We're in the process of looking at that project. We have not made a final decision," said Austin Energy spokesman Ed Clark. He acknowledged that nuclear power is controversial among the power company's customers.
"Let me say this," he added: "This is Austin."
In my back yard?
Nuclear power executives like to cite polls that show most Americans support nuclear power plants. But off the record, they question whether people would accept a nuclear reactor in their own neighborhood.
So the real test of Texans' sentiment about nuclear power will come when Exelon announces a location for its plant.
The company is considering sites south of Houston, where no nuclear plant exists, though people there are accustomed to refineries and other heavy industry.
"We're also interested in Texas because the acceptance of nuclear in Texas, at least at this point, appears to be favorable, at least based on research we've done," said Thomas S. O'Neill, vice president of new development for Exelon.
The companies point out that nuclear plants bring jobs to a community – and not just jobs to operate the plants themselves.
Hitachi is looking for a plant to make parts for the South Texas Project expansion.
NRG said it will need a place to train plant operators and is considering a partnership with a Texas university.
Executives with each of the companies say they expect the government to have a solution for storing nuclear waste by the time their plants start creating it.
These days, nuclear plants store spent fuel on site as Nevada lawmakers continue to block development of the Yucca Mountain Repository.
So far, some of the most influential people who opposed the TXU coal plants are publicly supporting nuclear.
"The issues of dealing with the spent fuel now appear, for most scientists and many environmentalists, to be less substantial than additional greenhouse gas emissions," said Houston Mayor Bill White, who along with Dallas Mayor Laura Miller campaigned against building traditional coal-fired plants.
In speeches against coal pollution, Ms. Miller often suggested TXU consider nuclear. She liked to point out that she wears her Comanche Peak baseball cap while jogging each morning.
And Container Store founder Garrett Boone supports nuclear. He's one of the founders of Texas Business for Clean Air, a group of high-profile business leaders that opposed the coal plants.
"We very much feel that nuclear has to be a significant part of the energy mix. If one is truly serious about global warming, it is the only carbon-free alternative we have right now," he said.
They've diverged from consumer advocate Public Citizen, a fellow anti-coal-pollution group. Mr. Smith, head of Public Citizen's Texas office, said nuclear waste is dangerous and the reactors are vulnerable to terrorists.
"The dangers of nuclear power are so long-lived that it is not a risk that we should take when there are far cheaper alternatives that don't have the risks associated," he said.
He added that each week, his office takes more calls from people worried about new nuclear plants in Texas. Now they're getting three or four calls a week.
"It's reminiscent of the coal fight. First it was a trickle, then it was a torrent," he said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 02, 2007
Expert sees little concern with waste at Yucca
Still, he doesn't see need for repository there
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain is third on Frank von Hippel's list of nuclear fears, behind threats posed by nuclear weapons and safety of power reactors.
"The danger with radioactive waste doesn't register that much unless you do something totally irresponsible," said von Hippel, a theoretical physicist who directs Princeton University's Center for Science and Global Security.
Von Hippel discussed the issue Friday at a University of Nevada, Las Vegas symposium where he delivered the keynote address, "When nuclear fears come into conflict: Fears of radioactive waste vs. the fear of nuclear-weapon proliferation."
He said the United States should store highly radioactive spent fuel in dry casks on concrete pads until better solutions to the problem surface.
"The accident or terrorism risk for fuel in dry cask storage is orders of magnitude less than from fuel in reactors or storage pools at operating nuclear power plants," he said.
Von Hippel, who was assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 1993 and 1994, said he doesn't agree with the nuclear industry's stance that there's a pressing need for a repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"I'm not anti-nuclear, but I'm anti-pro-nuclear," he told attendees of the International Symposium on Technology and Society.
Nevertheless, he said there eventually will be a need for geologic disposal of highly radioactive waste in some repository, but not necessarily one in Nevada.
"A geologic process is not a bad idea," he said after the symposium. "But the process was corrupt in imposing this on Nevada."
While other countries such as France and Russia have reprocessed waste, there's a security risk involved with how easily the plutonium that has been separated from radioactive remnants could be obtained and fashioned into a nuclear bomb by a rogue nation or militant group.
"That's my beef with reprocessing," said von Hippel, who played a major role in programs with Russia to increase its security of special nuclear weapons materials.
On the waste issue, he concluded that the not-in-my-backyard mind-set is "an extremely powerful force and can drive governments to crazy and dangerous policies."
The terrorism risk in transporting spent nuclear fuel assemblies to a repository have been "over-exaggerated," he said.
Even if a transportation cask has been breached by an armor-piercing explosive or weapon, a relatively small amount of radioactive powder would come out but wouldn't catch fire.
"It would be dwarfed by a chlorine tank accident," he said.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 02, 2007
Dems show solid front against Yucca
LAS VEGAS -- According to the deputy executive director of the Democratic Party of Nevada, supporters of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository Mountain need not look toward the party's presidential hopefuls for any support.
Democratic presidential candidates, many of whom are visiting Nevada this week or next, are united in opposition to plans for dumping nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, as well as to a bill that was recently introduced in the U.S. Senate to speed up development of the nuclear waste dump, reported Kirsten Searer.
Meanwhile, she added, "Many of the Republican presidential candidates remain silent on the issue or, like Sen. John McCain, openly declare their support for storing the nation's nuclear waste just 90 miles from Las Vegas."
"The first question presidential candidates visiting Nevada should answer is this: Will you pledge to stop a dangerous nuclear waste dump from coming to Nevada?" said Democratic Party Chairman Jill Derby. "Democratic candidates join Sen. Reid - who has led the fight against Yucca Mountain - in working to stop Yucca Mountain and the dangerous bill introduced last week in the U.S. Senate to speed up the project. It appears Republican candidates don't put that sort of value on our safety in Nevada."
The Democratic candidates and where they stand:
Sen. Joe Biden: "I oppose Yucca Mountain. There are serious questions about the impact of using it as a repository of radioactive waste. The bottom line is that radioactive waste should be safely stored or recycled near the plants that generate it -- we shouldn't be hauling it all over the country. I agree with (Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.) that our focus on resolving this issue should be on science -- research and development of technology that allows plants to recycle waste or doesn't create that kind waste in the first place.
"Just as Senator Reid is opposed to this new legislation to speed up the licensing process on Yucca Mountain, my position has not wavered and I would not support it either."
Sen. Hillary Clinton: "I have long opposed storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. This latest attempt to push forward development of the project is particularly reckless, as it aims to increase spending and begin construction on the site prior to license approval. There are far too many unanswered questions about both the geology of the site and integrity of the science to support the decision to store waste at Yucca at all -- let alone to justify accelerating the site's development.
"Continued attempts to push this misguided project forward are both disappointing and irresponsible. As President, I will work with the scientific community to examine all options for safe, secure storage of nuclear waste as part of a comprehensive national energy policy."
Sen. Chris Dodd: "I am disappointed by recent efforts to advance the development of the Yucca mountain project. I oppose licensing a repository at Yucca Mountain based on serious security and safety concerns. Rather than accelerating development, we should use this time to urgently increase funding for research into new environmentally friendly long-term solutions that provide for safe storage and disposal of nuclear waste."
Sen. Barack Obama: "I want every Nevadan to know that I have always opposed using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository ... After spending billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain Project, there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there. I believe a better short-term solution is to store nuclear waste on-site at the reactors where it is produced, or at a designated facility in the state where it is produced, until we find a safe, long-term disposal solution that is based on sound science."
Gov. Bill Richardson: "The legislation proposed (May 23) by Senators Domenici and Craig threatens millions of Americans. For more than 20 years, in Congress and as Secretary of Energy, I have opposed the Yucca Mountain project. This decision must be based on science, not politics, and the latest scientific studies show that Yucca Mountain is unsuitable for high-level nuclear waste storage. We need to protect the health and safety of Nevadans, and I am proud to stand with Harry Reid in opposing this legislation and urge the Senate to put a quick end to this proposal."
Former Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Dennis Kucinich have also said they are opposed to the nuclear waste dump, said Searer, with Edwards saying this year, "Over time it's become clear that the science is unreliable. That seems to be now the consensus of the scientific community. There's also been serious allegations about fraud and misrepresentation in some of the scientific documents, and I've also become more concerned over time with the transport of nuclear waste across the country, particularly with what's happened with the threat of terrorism."
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 02, 2007
In Brief
Draft supplement
The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management anticipates conducting a public mailing in October and wishes to update its mailing lists. If you are interested in receiving the "Draft Supplemental Yucca Mountain Repository Environmental Impact Statement (2,100 pages)" or the "Draft Supplemental Yucca Mountain Rail Corridor and Rail Alignment Environmental Impact Statement (2,300 pages)," send your address to United States Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Mgmt., 1551 Hillshire Drive, Las Vegas, 89195-7304.
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BurlingtonFreePress
June 02, 2007
My Turn: Small state, big politics
By Rep. Judy Livingston
It's hard to know who took the biggest beating this session, Vermont taxpayers or the U.S. Constitution. An overabundance of expensive political shenanigans and posturing for popular positions was brought on by certain members seeking higher office in 2008.
The maneuvering started with seminars on global climate change. Experts were flown in to present long and redundant warnings -- to the state with the cleanest energy portfolio in the country -- us. Notwithstanding our ongoing efforts toward reducing carbon emissions and tightening building codes, the message we already know could have been delivered in a day instead of three weeks.
The tandem scapegoat for the session, the U.S. Constitution, really took a thumping. A new version of an old campaign finance bill reared its head once again, revealing the determination of those who like incumbent insurance. Popular with voters, restricting campaign spending sounds great, but it seriously hampers new candidates from buying enough exposure to unseat an incumbent. Moreover, capping donations drives candidates to start running even earlier to gather more small donors, generating lengthier campaigns. Significantly, Vermont faced the U.S. Supreme Court only two years ago because of similar legislation. Assuming a real need for such severe restrictions, the justices asked how many cases of campaign fraud had been uncovered in Vermont. Our attorney general had to answer -- none. The new law was declared unconstitutional. This embarrassment cost taxpayers $2 million. Apparently, the 2007 Legislature seems to have no memory of that fiasco -- so we're taking another run at it.
Politics at its worst can be said for the prescription drug bill that was swiftly brought to the House floor May 4. With the laudable intent of promoting generics, the bill takes aim at drug companies by suppressing marketing and sales to physicians. Following a U.S. District Court decision that struck down the New Hampshire prescription drug bill, again on constitutional grounds, the Health Care Committee continued on its ill-advised journey to bring forward a similar bill. ... Although the constitutionality of the bill is in question, and a lawsuit is inevitable, it was not reviewed by the Judiciary Committee and on it went. Another $2 million?
Then what had started in the House as a popular energy-efficiency bill came back from the Senate with a retroactive 35 percent gross revenue tax on Vermont Yankee Nuclear. The source of most of our in-state power, non-polluting and cheap, Vermont Yankee had negotiated an agreement in 2005 and pledged $28 million to the state Clean Energy Fund in return for the right to store spent fuel in dry cask storage. This typical method of storing used fuel is the recommended Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard and the only choice available to all U.S. plants until the Yucca Mountain facility opens in Nevada.
2005's "permanent" deal with Vermont Yankee was thrown overboard by senators who saw a ready source of new dollars from Entergy, the out-of-state firm that owns the plant. The tax was viewed around the Statehouse as a nasty way to treat a power source environmentalists now embrace for its clean operation. Most regarded it as not-the-Vermont-way of doing things, sending a clear message to businesses that a deal is not a deal under the golden dome in Montpelier. No matter what one might think of nuclear energy, Vermonters will face higher electric rates in the future, not to mention a likely lawsuit. Another $2 million?
None of the above topics is beyond the legislative sphere of concern and without these time-consuming distractions I believe there are real solutions to be found. Voters should know our Legislature costs $56,000 a day to listen, debate and get something done. These expensive, purely political exercises for press attention have not gone unnoticed by Vermonters who continue to be vocal about the need for tax relief and creative strategies. They see meager attention paid to their issues this year. They are right.
Rep. Judy Livingston is a Republican representative from Manchester.
-----Comments:
"The source of most of our in-state power, non-polluting and cheap, Vermont Yankee had negotiated an agreement in 2005 and pledged $28 million to the state Clean Energy Fund in return for the right to store spent fuel in dry cask storage. - untruth spoken by the Republican Woman from Manchester
truth- the 28 million dollar deal actually works out to far less - I think it is about a net present value of about 6 million - and it was Entergy's way of "bribing", "paying off","paying to play" the state legislature crafted in a behind closed door deal at the very end of the legislative session in 2005. It distinctly was not a "pledging millions to the state clean energy fund"
She continues thusly ...re dry cask storage...This typical method of storing used fuel is the recommended Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard and the only choice available to all U.S. plants until the Yucca Mountain facility opens in Nevada"
truth- Yucca mountain will not open. The dry casks Entergy plans on using have the steel lined casks that need changing each 30 years. When asked by David O'brien who would change them if Entergy was no longer in the state... three times... Each time Entergy's Sr. Liaison officer McElwee had the audacity to say the Federal Government would change them. Entergy plans on using the least expensive dry cask option available. Truth - Two pre-eminent nuclear scientist in Scientific American Sept 2005 wrote that the current generation of reactors have a life span of 50 years... YET ENTERGY IS SEEKING A 60 YEAR LIFE - not to mention the likelihood they will apply for another license extension the day after the current license expires... March 22, 2012 to run this thing as long a 80 years.
Ms Livingston republican of Manchester wrote,"2005's "permanent" deal with Vermont Yankee was thrown overboard by senators who saw a ready source of new dollars from Entergy, the out-of-state firm that owns the plant."
Since when does a back room spur of the moment deal constitute a "permanent deal" PR spin of the highest order it sounds like to me. No wonder given Entergy's 5 million dollar PR contract with Burson Marsteller and the industry front group, Niclear Energy Institute's 8 million dollar contract with Hill and Knowlton.
"Entergy, the out-of-state firm that owns the plant."- hmm what is VT about this clause? answer- the risk and the waste. The profits go out of state. Entergy is not a VT company.
"The tax was viewed around the Statehouse as a nasty way to treat a power source environmentalists now embrace for its clean operation." was written - and I perceive it as less than true.
Excuse me but the Better business bureau knows better and asked the NEI to not refer to nuclear as clean. Every reactor emits radioisotopes as part of its normal operation. The National Academy of Sciences has stated in its Biological Effects of Ionizing radiation report # 7 that all radiation no matter how small can cause cancer. Yet the industry is allowed to continue to release isotopes -Incomprehensively Amazing in my book...
Finally Ms Livingston does speak one piece of truth-
Vermonters will face higher electric rates in the future,-
I agree wholeheartedly with her. After 2012, when the current contract expires, Entergy is sure to charge VTers far more than we now pay ( negotiated at the Public Service Board in 2002) for the power they now produce making more than even they thought possible when they boosted the power production to 120%.
-----Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 10:37 am
So until we prove it to be a problem, it isn't one? The consequences of doing nothing seem to be so dire that it is indeed our responsibility to do what we can to slow the process. (note that I don't day stop the process...only slow it with whatever changes we can make) It will be wonderful if in the future we find that it is through no fault of mankind. Until it is demonstrated that humans are not speeding climate change, we should be careful and do what we can.
-----Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:57 pm
"As for taking responsibility for Global Warming, it would be irresponsible of the legislature NOT to take up the matter."
Well, I may be inclined to agree if it had been proven to be a problem. But until that is established 56K a day for 3 weeks to parade in any alarmist they could find was pretty irresponsible.
-----Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:52 am
"REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER" and "TAKE VERMONT BACK" both need to be dusted off.
I would hope the republicans of this state would wake up and start motivating an actual party. When you have republicans writing "flute bans while driving", you're party is not any better than the demonrats.
People are fed up with the leftists and progs. We've seen they can't deliver, continously spend and won't be happy until we live in a complete nanny state. No thanks~
-----Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:33 am
New slogan: "Vermont: where decisions should not be made without the consent of golden geese."
Puh-lease. The governor has wasted $60/HOUR cutting ribbons and pretending to hold open forums. In reality, he forbids any opinion contrary to his own. Remember the healthcare forums he held where anyone with the idea of universal healthcare was not allowed? Ideas were required to be rooted in corporate welfare.
As for taking responsibility for Global Warming, it would be irresponsible of the legislature NOT to take up the matter. So long as a single Vermont resident can go out and buy an SUV and claim a *tax credit* for doing so, then something can be done at the state level about Global warming.
I would partially agree that the Dems appear ingenuine seeing as they caved in to Entergy two years ago by allowing them to go forward with their ridiculous uprate plans. That deal should have been opposed like the Progressives did. However, for taxation fairness, Entergy is cashing the welfare checks and bitching when anyone tells them to earn it.
If anyone is playing politics, it appears to be Rep. Livingston.
-----Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:09 am
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In Business Las Vegas
June 01, 2007
Law and Small Business
Bevy of events sure to interest biz community
By Stephanie Tavares
The Henderson Chamber of Commerce is bringing the latest news on the Yucca Mountain Project to its members at its June networking breakfast.
The June 19 breakfast will be held at the Wildhorse Golf Club at 2100 W. Warm Springs Rd. The speaker will be Bobbie Pope of Bechtel SAIC Company. The cost is $20 and reservations must be made before noon June 15.
For more information log on to www.hendersonchamber.com or call 565-8951.
Stephanie Tavares covers small business and law for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4059 or at stephanie.tavares@lasvegassun.com.
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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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