Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, June 15, 2007
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Senator Harry Reid
June 14, 2007

Reid Denounces Doe For Using State Water To Drill At Yucca Mountain

Washington, DC — U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada today released the following statement on the news that the Department of Energy stole water from the state to drill rigs at Yucca Mountain.

“News that the Energy Department has been stealing water from our state is a slap in the face to the people of Nevada who overwhelmingly oppose building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.  Using state water resources to lubricate even one drill bit in the pursuit of turning our state into the nation’s nuclear dumping ground is one too many.  We cannot allow the federal government to use Nevada’s water supply to sell us down the river when it comes to nuclear waste.  I will continue to leverage my leadership position in the Senate to prevent nuclear waste from being shipped to Yucca Mountain.”

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Congressional Quarterly
June 15, 2007

Proliferation Threat Seen in Nuclear Power Expansion

By William Scally

Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and mounting stockpiles of plutonium pose a significant risk of nuclear proliferation and diversion of materials to terrorists, a nuclear power fact-finding group said Thursday.

In a report released by the Colorado-based Keystone Center public policy organization, the group said expansion of nuclear power in ways that substantially increased the likelihood of the spread of nuclear weapons “is not acceptable.”

The report emerged from analysis and deliberations by the Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding (NJFF) panel of 27 experts in the environmental, utility, nuclear power, academic and other fields over the past year.

Four of the participants discussed the findings at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the non-profit Foundation for Nuclear Studies and Sens. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, and Ken Salazar, D-Colo.

Besides proliferation and other concerns, the report looked at the number of new nuclear power plants that would be needed worldwide to achieve significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and long-term nuclear storage. Concerns about climate change are bringing a new focus to nuclear power as an alternative to the use of fossil fuels.

But the report said nuclear proliferation challenges increased with growth of the industry.

If growth in commercial nuclear power plants also resulted in construction of fuel cycle facilities in countries that do not now possess nuclear weapons, the risk of proliferation would increase, a report summary said.

It said proliferation could occur by the actions of national governments and non-state, possibly terrorist, organizations.

NJFF participants agreed that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards had “critical shortcomings” and were currently insufficient to provide timely detection when weapon quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium were diverted.

The summary said the Bush administration’s nuclear energy initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), is not a strategy for resolving either the radioactive waste problem or the weapons proliferation problem.

The program was unlikely to succeed because it required deployment of commercial-scale reprocessing plants, and a large fraction the U.S. and global commercial reactors would have to be fast reactors, the report said.

It said that to date deployment of commercial reprocessing plants had proven uneconomical and fast reactors had proven to be uneconomical and less reliable than light-water reactors.

The GNEP program could encourage developments in non-weapons states and training of plutonium experts that could pose a grave proliferation risk, the report said.

The report said the NJFF members reached no consensus on the likely rate of expansion of nuclear power in the world or in the United States over the next 50 years.

To achieve meaningful emission reductions equal to 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year by 2050, they said, would require the industry to return to the most rapid period of growth — 1981 to 1990 — and sustain this rate of growth for 50 years.

About 21 new 1,000-megawatt reactors would have to be built each year for 50 years, including about five in the United States, the report said.

The NJFF participants agreed that spent nuclear fuel would ultimately have to be placed in long-term disposal facilities, with the best option being a deep underground geologic repository.

They said delivery of the first nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, a decade behind schedule because of political, technical and legal challenges, would likely not take place until beyond 2020.

Because of the Yucca experience, the report said, the search for a second or alternative site would benefit from a different approach.

Older spent nuclear fuel that must be stored on an interim basis could be stored safely in either spent fuel pools or in dry casks, the NJFF group said.

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MoneyWeek
June 15, 2007

How to solve the problem of nuclear waste

Garry White

This block contains material chemically identical to high-level waste from reprocessing. A piece this size would contain the total high-level waste arising from nuclear electricity generation for ONE PERSON throughout a normal LIFETIME.

Small isn’t it? You’d never believe that it would fit in the palm of your hand – but it can.

So, the amount nuclear waste that needs disposing of is not actually as large as some people think. But it is still dangerous. However, progress has been made on safe disposal methods and I do not believe they are as much of a problem as the anti-nuclear lobby would have us believe.

Indeed, the World Nuclear Association has said that it believes it is a lack of understanding of the science involved which is the main cause of public concerns. It argued that the industry needed to better understand the public psyche rather than the onus being on the public to understand the industry more.

Nuclear waste disposal: pie in the sky

Any discussion about nuclear waste management always appears to raise the prospect of space disposal – why don’t we just blast the stuff into space? I believe this is an entirely impractical suggestion – and not only because of the cost. Imagine a rocket of nuclear waste misfiring over Cape Canaveral. The results of such an explosion are too dreadful to consider. I just can’t see it happening.

Initially, high-level radioactive waste is stored in fuel pools so the shorter-lived isotopes decay before further handling. Note that radioactive waste is the only type of toxic waste that gets less toxic with time. So, storage is the key.

To store radioactive waste for long periods of time the waste needs stabilising. This is usually done by the process of vitrification, as in the photograph above. Vitrification is a process of converting a material into a glass-like amorphous solid. The solid is free of any crystalline structure and this is the process that takes place at Sellafield, under the watchful eye of Henry the One-Headed Shrimp.

The process of vitrification forms a substance that is highly resistant to water. This is patently a good thing. The spent fuel is then stored for a very long period of time. I will come onto the storage issue in a moment, but there’s something I want to talk about first – and that is scientific progress.

The pace of scientific progress over the past 100 years has been astonishing. I believe that the pace of scientific development over the next 100 years will be just as astoundingly fast. Science will find better and better ways to dispose of nuclear waste as they continue with their quest.

Indeed, there is already a process that has been invented that is even better than vitrification. It is currently being used by the US military, but it is expected to hit the commercial nuclear market soon. It was invented by an Australian in 1978 and it is called Synroc.

Synroc is regarded as the single most effective and durable means of immobilising various forms of high-level radioactive wastes for disposal. So far…

Synroc is a particular kind of "Synthetic Rock" invented in 1978 by Professor Ted Ringwood of the Australian National University. It is an advanced ceramic comprising geochemically stable natural titanate minerals which have immobilised uranium and thorium for billions of years.

Nuclear waste disposal: Nature leads the way

These can incorporate into their crystal structures nearly all of the elements present in high-level radioactive waste and so immobilise them. In short, it is a form of synthetic rock that immobilised the radioactive isotopes just like Mother Nature does. After all, radio active elements exist naturally all over the world. We didn’t invent them with the invention of nuclear power.

A lot of work has gone into finding places to store these treated products – with the first expected to be ready to take waste by 2010. There are even talks about a global repository which would be built in either the Russian taiga or the Australian outback.

Indeed, although there has been some substantial antagonism towards this idea in Australia, there is movement on the issue. Just last months a group of Australian Aborigines agreed to have a nuclear waste dump placed on their outback land in return for millions of dollars in benefits.

Under the deal, the dump will be built on land leased to the government by the Ngapa clan at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory, who will get it back in 200 years when it is declared safe. As can well be expected, there was a bit of controversy about the decision with protesters declaring that:

"This is the first step to making Australia a global nuclear waste dump. It's Howard's vision for the country."

Well, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. The vast central area of Australia is not much use for anything else, after all.

Nuclear waste disposal: America’s repository is under construction

You probably haven’t heard much about Yucca Mountain – but you will soon. It is a large ridge in the US State of Nevada - and it the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other radioactive waste.

Should everything go correctly, Yucca Mountain will be ready to accept nuclear waste by 2017. Currently work is being carried out to determine whether Yucca Mountain is suitable. The proposed repository zone will cover 1150 acres, be 300 metres below the surface of the mountain and 300 metres above the water table. The waste will be encased in a multilayer stainless steel and nickel alloy package covered by titanium drip shields that function also as rock shields.

Yucca Mountains is the moist extensively studied geological area in the world. No other rocks have been examined so closely. So far, the geology looks good and things look on track for Yucca Mountain to finally accept waste in 10 years’ time.

However, there is another way of storage that is altogether neater. This is called Remix & Return and I believe it offers the potential to deal with the waste in the most environmentally safe way possible. It involves recreating nature, which cannot be a bad thing.

Nuclear waste disposal: Diluting toxicity

Remix & Return involved blending high-level waste with lower level waste and mill tailings to the level that is below the original radioactivity of the uranium ore dug up from the ground. This can then be used to “fill in” empty uranium mines.

This will mean that no high-level waste will be left to be disposed of and it will provide extended work for miners as the mine is filled up after it has come to the end of its natural life. The radiation generated by the stuff placed back in the ground will be of the same level or lower than the original uranium ore. This sounds like a truly elegant solution to the problem.

Remember we are not creating uranium out of thin air. Uranium ore in its natural setting also leaks radon gas and other radioactive substances.

So, the question of disposing of nuclear waste is an important one, but I believe it not an insurmountable obstacle. We will find better ways of disposing of the waste over the next 10 or 20 years. I do not think the waste issue is something to be feared. We will find a solution.

--By Garry White for his ‘Garry Writes’ newsletter. To find out more about his monthly newsletter, Outstanding Investments, which expands on his views and makes specific recommendations in the resource, infrastructure and biotech sectors, click here: Outstanding Investments

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 14, 2007

Water use faces challenge

Federal agency drilling at Yucca Mountain

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

The Department of Energy is using the state's water to drill bore holes at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, a use the state engineer's office calls "unacceptable" and a state oversight agency calls "stealing."

State Engineer Tracy Taylor issued a cease-and-desist order on June 1 against the Energy Department. But he also gave the agency a reprieve on his own order while federal officials submit information he requested on the drilling program and the water use. He is expected to make a decision on re-entering the cease-and-desist order in a few days.

State Nuclear Project Agency Executive Director Bob Loux said the water was being used to operate drill rigs at Yucca Mountain in violation of a court-approved agreement.

The agreement allows DOE to use the state's water only for flushing toilets, fire suppression, dust control and similar activities but not for scientific investigation of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"From our view, they've been stealing water for Yucca Mountain," Loux said by telephone from Carson City. "They created their own injury by going out there and drilling without the state engineer's permission."

Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas, declined to comment on Loux's claim, saying the issue is "a potential matter for litigation."

Loux said his office learned about the situation shortly before the June 1 order.

Taylor's June 1 letter to Scott A. Wade, acting director of the Yucca Mountain Site Operations Office, reads: "I have been advised that the U.S. Department of Energy is currently engaged in a bore hole drilling project at the Yucca Mountain site in violation of the stipulation in effect. ... The use of water for such purposes is unacceptable."

Loux said the Department of Energy took an unknown amount of water from two wells near the site over many months. The bore hole work was expected to be completed in August, and that would require an additional amount of water, bringing the total that DOE used for drill rigs to 8 million gallons, Taylor said.

The water is used to cool and lubricate drill bits and in collecting samples from mud.

Loux said samples collected from the holes are needed for data about surface facilities where DOE plans to handle spent nuclear fuel assemblies and temporarily store some above ground to age them or cool them before entombing them inside the repository.

"They asked to use more water for drilling purposes," Loux said. "We asked for the information, and now that we have the information, we're going to review it."

Taylor said he never granted DOE permission to use the state's water for bore hole exploration. According to Loux, DOE claims the water is needed to operate rigs for drilling up to 80 bore holes to gather data needed for a license application that Yucca Mountain Project officials intend to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008.

Loux contends the data should have been collected during the site characterization process which ended on July 9, 2002, when Congress overrode then-Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project, allowing DOE to proceed with the licensing process.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires DOE to submit a license application within 90 days after the congressional approval, but DOE has missed several deadlines it had set.

In December 2002, the state and DOE entered into an agreement approved by U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt that allowed DOE to use a limited amount of water for showers, restroom facilities, dust suppression and emergencies such as fires.

In 2000, then-State Engineer Michael Turnipseed denied the department permanent rights to 140 million gallons per year of groundwater, saying it was not in the state's interest to allow the government to build and operate a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

In 2003, DOE again sought permits for 140 million gallons per year. Turnipseed's successor, Hugh Ricci, denied that request on the same grounds.

In the meantime, DOE had stockpiled more than 1 million gallons of nonpotable water.

Hunt signed an order allowing DOE to refill and hold 290,000 gallons of potable water in four tanks. The water for drinking, showers, restroom facilities and emergency use is treated at the site.

Later, Hunt put a stay on the permanent water use case pending resolution of the federal EPA radiation safety standard and other potential litigation and legislative matters.

In April 2005, he wrote in court papers that "it is not necessarily a foregone conclusion" that the project would ultimately be approved and licensed. "If it is not, the (basis) for the water permits would no longer exist."

In 2005, with Hunt's approval, state and federal attorneys agreed the Department of Energy could continue using the state's water for safety and sanitary purposes but not for scientific investigations of the site or to build a repository.

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Globe and Mail
June 14, 2007

Ottawa backs nuclear industry on waste

Natural Resources Minister to announce today support of long-term underground storage plan

Shawn McCarthy
Global Energy Reporter

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn is set to revive a long-stalled plan to bury Canada's nuclear waste in underground storage facilities, a plan seen as crucial to the industry's hoped-for expansion.

Mr. Lunn - a staunch champion of the nuclear industry - is to announce today the government's support for the 2005 report of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization that supported the eventual, long-term underground storage of spent fuel from the country's fleet of Candu reactors, sources said yesterday.

The minister is expected to kick off a process to select an underground storage site, with research and consultations that could take years to complete.

Industry officials say the government's support for the long-term storage plan is an important vote of confidence, as the nuclear sector and the Ontario government gear up for major expansion plans, part of a much-touted global "nuclear renaissance."

"This is most critical for us," said Murray Elston, president of the Canadian Nuclear Association. "It will allow us to answer persuasively those people who say the nuclear industry has no idea what to do long term with the waste."

The nuclear industry has struggled worldwide with the criticism that it produces a waste stream that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, with no adequate means of storing it.

In the U.S., plans for an underground storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., remained stalled despite support from Congress and the Bush administration.

Gord Edwards, director of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, said Mr. Lunn's endorsement of underground waste storage represents a public relations coup for the nuclear industry.

Despite the long-term plan, the risk of a catastrophic event will grow if the industry expands, he said. That's because it takes at least 30 years before the fuel can be moved underground and so the amount of radioactive waste kept on the surface will rise.

"In the face of a growing nuclear industry or even a static nuclear industry, this is not really a solution to the catastrophe problem at the surface," Mr. Edwards said. He said any kind of major explosion - such as a terrorist attack - at a surface storage site would release radioactive clouds as deadly as those at the Chernobyl reactor that melted down in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

Ottawa and the nuclear industry - led by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. - have been working for decades on a long-term storage solution. In 1998, a federal report concluded that underground storage of nuclear waste was technically feasible but could not be sold politically because of the high level of opposition from Canadians.

The nuclear waste management panel, appointed by the former Liberal government, recommended 18 months ago that the government "proceed in a deliberate and consultative way to isolate the used fuel in a deep underground repository." The waste would be monitored and remain retrievable.

Nuclear waste consisting of spent fuel bundles from Candu reactors is now stored at nine reactor sites, primarily in Ontario but also in Quebec, New Brunswick and Manitoba. The spent fuel is stored either in pools of water to cool down the radioactive elements, or in dry storage for older bundles.

At the end of 2004, there were some two million spent fuel bundles in storage at reactor sites across the country, containing nearly 36,000 tonnes of uranium.

The report said it would take 60 years for the waste to be "cool" enough to permanently sequester it underground. In the meantime, the government should consider a plan for centralized storage either above ground or in shallow underground facilities, where the fuel would be easily retrievable in the event it was needed.

The industry is keen to maintain access to the waste because it represents a source for the future, when uranium deposits have been depleted and prices have escalated.

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The Australian
June 14, 2007

Nuke power 'won't curb global warming'

By Lisa Lambert in Washington

NUCLEAR power would only curb climate change by expanding worldwide at the rate it grew from 1981 to 1990, its busiest decade, and keep up that rate for half a century, a report released in the US said today.

Specifically, that would require adding on average 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, all the while building an average of 7.4 plants to replace those that will be retired, the report by environmental leaders, industry executives and academics said.

Currently, the United States, the world's top nuclear power producer, has 104 plants that generate 20 per cent of the country's electricity.

Nuclear power, which has near-zero emissions of carbon dioxide, has recently come back into fashion as an alternative to generating electricity from coal and other carbon-based sources that contribute to global warming.

While the report also supported storing US nuclear waste at power plants until the long-stalled Yucca Mountain repository opens, 10 dumps the size of Yucca Mountain would be needed to store the extra generated waste by the needed nuclear generation boom.

That outlook was too optimistic in light of how many new nuclear plants were on the drawing board, the report said.

The needed rate of expansion would be faster than during the industry's first 40 years and than the Energy Information Administration's forecast for the next 30 years in the United States.

Some individuals differed, though, on how much the industry will expand, and said it could still make some type of impact.

Twenty-seven individuals from organisations spanning a broad ideological spectrum, including the Natural Resources Defence Council and GE Energy, spent nine months on the report, called The Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding.

The group, which was brought together by the nonprofit Keystone Centre, said that as companies limit generating electricity from coal and other fossil fuels, there will be more financial incentives to build nuclear power plants.

The Keystone panelists also said that US President George W. Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership could help countries and groups interested in building nuclear weapons obtain plutonium, the key ingredient in those munitions, which could help spread nuclear weapons.

While the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organisation of scientists focused on the environment and security, had trouble with most of the report, it agreed with assertions on GNEP.

"By promoting the commercial production and use of plutonium, the Bush administration is facilitating the spread of nuclear bomb materials around the world," said Edwin Lymann, a scientist working on security issues for the group.

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Bellevue Leader
June 13, 2007

Hagel: Energy bills seek 'real world' changes

By Jake Thompson
World-Herald Bureau

WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Tuesday that he hopes Congress can pass far-reaching energy legislation this year, but it may take longer.

"You've got to work it hard . . . and there's an endurance effort here, " Hagel said. "You have to stay with it."

Hagel introduced four bills Tuesday that he said offer a comprehensive energy initiative. They are aimed at providing "real world," market-driven improvements in the nation's energy use, supply and production, he said.

Although not a member of the Senate Energy Committee, Hagel said he will seek to have his proposals included as amendments to any energy legislation the Senate passes.

Some of his key proposals would:

• Require the U.S. energy secretary to survey government, private industry and academia to identify the nation's top 10 energy "problems to be solved" and steer more research and development money to them.

• Establish an independent commission to find ways to eliminate regulatory barriers to improving energy security.

• Offer new tax incentives for "cellulosic" ethanol plants burning such material as switch grass, for new investment in clean and renewable energy such as wind or geothermal power, and to promote new energy-efficient technology.

• Require an additional 20 percent of the nation's electricity to be produced from clean sources such as nuclear or hydroelectric power by 2030.

• Establish a public-private commission to upgrade energy efficiency standards for appliances.

• Allow Yucca Mountain in Nevada to begin receiving spent nuclear waste from power plants for storage.

• Raise vehicle fuel economy standards 4 percent a year only if the technology exists to meet that target.

In a speech Tuesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hagel told an audience of about 275 that world energy demand will require an investment of $16 trillion over the next two decades.

"We need more energy, and we're going to need a lot more energy over the next 20 years just to stay current with the energy needs we have," Hagel said.

He said 2 billion of the 6.5 billion people on Earth live in poverty. If their energy needs aren't addressed, they could be "very easy prey" for extremists who see a much different world than most people, he said.

"Energy brings together every interest of every human being in the world," Hagel said.

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UC Berkeley News
June 12, 2007

Geochemist Harold Helgeson has died at 75

Robert Sanders
Media Relations

BERKELEY – Harold C. Helgeson, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, whose models of geochemical processes deep underground today guide companies exploring for ore, minerals and oil, died on May 28 after a brief battle with lung cancer.

A resident of San Francisco, Helgeson died at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley at the age of 75.

Helgeson is widely regarded as the founder and preeminent practitioner of theoretical geochemistry. A thorough researcher, demanding teacher and avid sailor, he transitioned from a field geologist prospecting for minerals and gems in Africa to a theoretician modeling the geochemical processes in rocks that create metallic ore deposits and oil.

"These models apply to any underground situation involving water moving through aquifers, like the migration of groundwater, pollutant migration, and at higher temperatures and pressures the reactions of volcanic and metamorphic waters deep in the earth," said Dimitri A. Sverjensky, a professor of geochemistry at The Johns Hopkins University who was a post-doctoral fellow under Helgeson in the 1980s. "He dealt with the origins of all hydrothermal processes, that is, hot water and metallic ore deposits of scarce elements like gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper and molybdenum. He invented the theory to describe the chemistry of water-rock interactions that everybody now uses."

According to William McKenzie, a retired consulting geochemist and Helgeson's long-time friend and collaborator, Helgeson's data and theoretical models are used by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists to predict the transport of radionuclides under Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the proposed repository of the nation's radioactive waste.

Known for his detailed - and long - theoretical papers, this past year Helgeson completed a 300-page paper summarizing 17 years of research that turns the reigning theory of how oil is generated underground on its head. According to Sverjensky, Helgeson and his coauthors argue that the oil extracted today from wells is just the first pressing of more extensive deposits deeper underground. This theory predicts large, untapped oil reserves in the Earth, which may be difficult to extract.

"It is a revolutionary idea about the origin of petroleum, very extensively documented with incredibly detailed calculations backing it up, so, right or wrong, it will stand as a phenomenal effort," Sverjensky said.

Coauthored by McKenzie; Denis L. Norton, formerly of the University of Arizona; Laurent Richard of the University of Nancy, France; and UC Berkeley geologist Alexandra M. Schmitt; the paper is to be printed in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta later this year.

According to Sverjensky, Helgeson was larger than life. He traveled and lectured extensively, his lectures known for their complex diagrams, clarity and the sheer force of their delivery. He enjoyed socializing and discussing science into the early morning hours, Sverjensky said, adding, "Few hosts could keep up with his schedule, but they never forgot the experience."

"He'd take people sailing on his boat in the bay and be gone for two days," McKenzie said. "When he returned, they'd all be wiped out, but Helgeson would show up in his class and teach his lecture."

"He was the quintessential bon vivant who loved to ski and sail, listen to Jimmy Buffett and cheer the Giants from his season seats. He loved to spend many, many hours in lively scientific or social discourse at long, long lunches," said his wife, France Damon Helgeson. "'The purpose of life,' he would always say, 'was to have lunch!'"

"The mark he has left on geochemistry is profound, ranging from significant theoretical advances, to his many excellent students, to the oft-told Helgeson stories," wrote Susan L. Brantley, president of the Geochemical Society.

Helgeson was born on Nov. 13, 1931, in Minneapolis, Minn., and grew up in St. Paul. After completing his B.S. in geology at Michigan State University in 1953, he worked for a year as an exploration geologist for Technical Mine Consultants in Canada, prospecting for uranium, then served for two years in the Korean War as a photo-radar intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and was based in Wiesbaden, Germany.

After his military service, he spent four years as a mining and exploration geologist for Anglo-American Corp. in South Africa, first in diamond exploration for the De Beers company's subsidiary in what is now Namibia, and then as an underground mining geologist at the President Steyn Gold Mine in Welkom, and the Nkana Copper Mine in Kitwe, Zambia. According to Sverjensky, it was while very deep underground in one of these mines that Helgeson suddenly realized he might find a different career appealing.

He returned to the United States in 1959 and entered Harvard University as a graduate student, studying under Robert M. Garrels, a pioneer in low-temperature geochemistry who became a close friend. Helgeson received his Ph.D. in 1962, and his thesis, published as a book in 1964, laid out the foundations of the field of theoretical high-temperature geochemistry.

After a stint as a research chemist for Shell Development Co. in Houston, Texas, where he investigated geothermal fields, Helgeson in 1965 joined Garrels at Northwestern University, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor. Over the next five years, he, Garrels and Fred T. Mackenzie published a series of definitive papers on the theory of water-rock interactions at low and high temperatures and pressures, and Helgeson published a paper providing the first internally consistent thermodynamic data needed to apply that theory.

One of Helgeson's great achievements, McKenzie said, was conceiving and then constructing a predictive model of water-rock interactions over the huge range of temperatures and pressures inside the earth.

"He realized that he didn't have enough data for all the minerals and aqueous species, and that it would take a thousand chemists a thousand years, at least, to do all the experiments to measure those properties," he said. "So what he did was calculate them."

By doing this, he demonstrated the value of theoretical calculations that could be used as tools, along with the more traditional field and laboratory investigations, to gain insight into geochemical processes.

Helgeson joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1970, expanding his work into a comprehensive, predictive approach for inorganic and organic species and biomolecules that was scrupulously documented in papers between 1974 and 2007. In recent years, he became interested in the interaction of life with physical processes underground, helping to create the emerging field of biogeochemistry, and applying his knowledge of theoretical chemistry to biological problems, including protein folding, metabolic activity in hydrothermal systems, and the origin of life.

"Although many found these papers intimidating, those who made the effort to read them found them to be models of clarity and scholarship," Sverjensky said. "Helgeson always maintained that he was writing for posterity."

He pioneered the application of computers to the modeling of geochemical processes using the results of his calculations. The computer codes produced in his theoretical geochemistry laboratory, known as "Prediction Central," are now used by geoscientists and engineers around the world.

"Working with Helgeson on a daily basis, one marveled at the tenacity of his efforts to reconcile experimental and observational data with theory, and found one's own assumptions constantly challenged by his pervasive drive to see beyond how nature appears to be organized to a deeper, sometimes counterintuitive, fundamental meaning," said Everett L. Shock, professor of geochemistry at Arizona State University and a former student of Helgeson's.

Helgeson served as a director of the Geochemical Society from 1973 to 1976. He received the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society in 1998 and the Urey Medal from the European Association of Geochemistry in 2004.

Helgeson is survived by his wife, France Damon Helgeson of Santa Cruz, Calif., and three children: Christopher Helgeson of Mountain View, Calif.; Kimberly Helgeson of Hollywood, Calif.; and Broghan Helgeson of Santa Cruz, a student at Tufts University.

A departmental and family memorial is planned for the fall.

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San Jose Mercury News
June 11, 2007

Nuclear-power dilemma: It's carbon-free, but comes with big questions

By Sarah Jane Tribble
Mercury News

DIABLO CANYON - The nuclear power plant nestled on the cliffs of Central California's scenic coast has for decades been a remnant of our energy past, rife with memories of protests and lingering security concerns.

That is changing.

As California grapples with global warming, energy-industry leaders, environmentalists and policy-makers are subtly - but significantly - starting to shift their thinking about the controversial power source.

"Nuclear power has to be part of the solution," Stanford University President John Hennessy said at an alternative-energy gathering in Sunnyvale this spring. "Can we really understand the notion of risk? Nuclear plants vs. carbon emissions - which will kill and has killed more people?"

The audience applauded.

Unlike natural gas and coal, nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gas and is becoming an alternative-energy dark horse.

In California, however, with its strong environmental stance and a 31-year-old ban on construction of new reactors, nuclear power faces immense political and practical hurdles.

Later this month, the state's energy commission plans to tread carefully when for the first time it will review new ways to handle the radioactive waste produced by nuclear energy - the biggest legal obstacle to building new plants in California. One possible option could be to reprocess, or recycle, the waste.

"We want to understand how the issues have changed regarding reprocessing - if in fact it's a viable option or not or just another pipe dream," said John Geesman, a member of the California Energy Commission. "And this is a field filled with pipe dreams."

Moving ahead: New plants considered elsewhere in U.S.

Other states - where nuclear energy isn't as controversial - are moving more quickly. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 28 new nuclear reactors during the next two years.

That construction boom is spurred by a growing demand for electricity, volatile natural gas prices, concerns about global climate change - and federal subsidies. There are 104 operating nuclear reactors in the United States, producing about 20 percent of the country's electricity. The last one opened in 1996.

Dennis Spurgeon, the Bush administration's senior nuclear technology official, said new plants could be running by 2015.

"It's not a pipe dream; it's happening," said Spurgeon, whose experience in energy dates back to the Ford administration. "The existing reactors are very safe. The new ones are even better."

And while many planned nuclear plants have never been built because of the high construction costs and lengthy review processes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes there's enough momentum that some of the expected plant applications will result in construction.

"This time, we are taking it very seriously," said agency public affairs officer David McIntyre. "Our agency has been reorganized to prepare for these applications coming in. We're hiring people right and left. Congress has given us a budget increase."

Even some environmentalists are willing to consider nuclear energy.

"We think global warming is such a tremendous planetary problem that we're not going to refuse to look at it," said Karen Douglas, director of the California climate initiative of Environmental Defense. However, the group does not support an expansion of nuclear-power capacity until issues such as safety, security, waste and nuclear-weapons proliferation are resolved, she said.

Critics such as the Natural Resource Defense Council's Ralph Cavanagh, who has staunchly defended the California moratorium, said talk of a nuclear revival is "as predictable as the spring." He said there are still concerns about waste disposal, the lingering threat of nuclear proliferation and the high costs of building plants.

"The nuclear renaissance tends to be built around idle talk by people with vague ideas around economic development," Cavanagh said.

Other opponents, including Julie Enszer of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, also raise concerns about the safety of nuclear waste. Americans are still worried about the potential for accidental exposure to radioactive nuclear waste, she said.

"People in the U.S. are still opposed to nuclear power and that hasn't really abated since the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island" in Pennsylvania in 1979. Since then, California in particular has led the nation in the anti-nuclear movement, she said.

"People around the country look to Californians to carry that mantle," she said.

State's perspective: Governor's appointee says debate is needed

As the nation enters a new nuclear era, the California Environmental Protection Agency's Dan Skopec said climate change provides the perfect opportunity to revisit the controversial power source.

"We need to have a debate on nuclear," said Skopec, who was appointed undersecretary for the agency by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In California, one of nine states with laws that hinder nuclear-power-plant construction, about 13 percent of California's energy currently comes from two operating nuclear plants, PG&E's Diablo Canyon and Southern California Edison's San Onofre Generating Station.

There are two separate pushes for more.

A group of Fresno business leaders formed the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group, which plans to introduce a statewide ballot measure next year seeking to override California law and allow voters to decide if they want a $4 billion nuclear plant in that area.

"If your goals are going to be cheap energy to keep the economy rolling and to stop global warming and provide clean energy, the available options at this point in time are very few," John Hutson, president and chief executive of the group.

If approved, the plant could be built in four years, he said.

Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who has infuriated many in the environmental community because of his stance for nuclear power, said he is "very supportive" of the Fresno strategy.

"If it isn't done, California will never meet its CO2 objective in a million years," Moore said.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, proposed a bill this year that would lift California's statewide construction ban.

Not surprisingly, the bill died in committee. DeVore said he'll bring it back year after year.

"When rate payers have blackouts and brownouts and they see their residential energy costs spike through the roof, eventually they will call for a real solution," DeVore said.

Until now, California has been able to rely on low-cost coal to provide about 16 percent of its energy. But this year, state regulators effectively banned coal because they ordered utilities to buy power that is as clean as that produced by the latest generation of natural-gas-fired turbines. Coal is not.

The state needs to find replacement power, but faces tough choices. Natural gas is cheap but produces carbon dioxide. Renewable sources such as wind and solar produce no carbon but are intermittent.

That leaves nuclear energy.

Wind, now the cheapest of renewable energies, is expected to cost 6.8 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2020, according to the Federal Energy Information Institute. Natural gas, by comparison, would cost 5.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Nuclear energy would cost 6.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. All these figures include the cost of plant construction.

Advocates argue that not including construction costs, nuclear power is the cheapest option of all. The California Energy Commission's most recent estimates put nuclear power's current cost at 1.4 cents to 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Industry view: PG&E intends to seek out-of-state power

From the outside looking in, the prospect of California trying to cut carbon without more nuclear power seems idyllic at best and impossible at worst, according to business and political leaders nationwide.

"We don't believe that conservation and renewables combined will be sufficient to meet demand in our market for an extended period of time," said Brad Peck, spokesman for the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear plant in Washington state that feeds a small amount of power to Northern California. "You simply can't conserve yourself into prosperity."

The leader of PG&E Corp., the parent company of Northern California's largest utility, agrees. "We need all of the options to meet this huge challenge and, therefore, nuclear ought to be on the table," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Peter Darbee.

The utility doesn't plan to push for a new nuclear-energy plant in California, he said, but will purchase power from out of state.

Tom King, chief executive of PG&E's utility unit, Pacific Gas & Electric, said the company doesn't want to force nuclear reactors on its customers until the public's perception of nuclear energy changes.

"We think it's important that we take the time to educate people ... before we put a stake in the ground and say we need nuclear."

Diablo Canyon: Safety, security efforts at California plant

At PG&E's Diablo Canyon, those efforts are in full swing.

During a recent tour for the Mercury News, an engineer and the communications director repeatedly noted safety and security measures. There are metal detectors and guards, like the ones at airports, searching bags before employees enter the plant. A military-style police force with automatic weapons makes rounds in the spent-fuel area. And the plant itself is a fortress, protected by rolling landscape on one side and a rock barrier on the other.

Public tours stopped after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The industry initially for a long time wasn't interested in necessarily educating the public," said Pete Resler, Diablo Canyon's communications director. He wants to change that.

Resler's renewed interest in winning over the public also could be attributed to a looming deadline for his plant.

Diablo Canyon may have to shut down by 2010 if it doesn't win approval for more storage space. The plant provides 2,300 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 2 million homes.

Nuclear waste: Radioactive material increases health risks

Diablo Canyon illustrates nuclear power's biggest challenge: radioactive waste. Radiation exposure, such as the kind that can be caused by nuclear waste, increases the risk of health problems, including cancer.

While nuclear power produces a relatively small amount - Diablo Canyon's 22 years of waste would fill a pool about the size of a basketball court - dealing with it raises big concerns.

Most nuclear reactors store waste on site in cooling pools or storage cylinders that prevent radiation leakage. Eventually, the plants will run out of storage room.

The federal government approved Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a long-term storage site, but it has faced opposition from Nevadans and some environmental groups who contend that it could not safely store the waste for thousands of years. It is now unclear when or if the storage facility - the only spent-fuel storage space approved by Congress - will open.

As an additional option, a growing number of industry advocates are offering the idea of recycling the waste, arguing that reprocessing or recycling could cut the volume of waste by allowing about 94 percent of the spent fuel to be reused.

France, which gets 75 percent of its energy from nuclear power, has a successful recycling operation, and the United States is studying the option. Spurgeon said the United States could open a reprocessing facility sometime after 2020.

Opponents say reprocessing would encourage nuclear proliferation, but nuclear supporters like University of California-Berkeley nuclear engineering Professor Per Peterson said such concerns need to be re-evaluated.

"The whole logic of abstaining from a technology so that others would not pick it up no longer makes sense," Peterson said.

Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu, who is also the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, echoes the desire to rethink nuclear. He reasons that despite the fears and concerns about the energy source, nuclear power must be considered because it does not produce greenhouse gas during generation. Anything, he said, would be better than carbon-spewing coal plants.

And what of the people who don't want to consider nuclear energy in the hope that less controversial solutions like renewable energy and conservation will be enough?

"If you start thinking like that, then you doom yourself," he said.

--Contact Sarah Jane Tribble at stribble@mercurynews.com or (408) 278-3499.

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Decatur Daily
June 10, 2007

Browns Ferry vulnerable to attack

Terrorism wasn’t a threat when plant was designed

By Eric Fleischauer
eric@decaturdaily.com
256-340-2435

Suspended more than 60 feet above ground at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, three cooling pools contain more than 2,000 tons of radioactive material.

If a terrorist attack or accident breached one of those pools, causing the water to pour out, fire or meltdown could make Decatur, Athens and even Huntsville uninhabitable for decades, experts say.

The Browns Ferry pools, built in the early 1970s, were not designed to withstand terrorist attack.

“In those days, we weren’t thinking about suicide attacks and sabotage,” said David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was a reactor engineer at Browns Ferry Unit 1 from 1980 to 1983.

Scientists who have studied the issue concluded a spent-fuel pool fire would contaminate, with cancer-causing radiation, up to 10 times the area contaminated in the 1986 failure of the reactor at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.

“They’re vulnerable as hell,” Peter D.H. Stockton said of the Browns Ferry spent-fuel pools. Stockton is a former special assistant on nuclear issues to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Most nuclear plants store spent fuel in pools at or below ground level, greatly reducing the likelihood of a rapid loss of coolant. The uncovered 35-by-40-foot surfaces of the spent-fuel pools of Browns Ferry’s three reactors are on the same floor. They are near the top of the 152-foot reactor building. The floors of the pools are three stories above the ground.

The pools were designed to withstand natural calamities, including earthquakes, Browns Ferry spokesman Craig Beasley said.

The walls and floors are made of reinforced concrete from 4 to 6 feet thick. The water in each pool is 40 feet deep. They are centrally located in the reactor building, which faces the Tennessee River.

“At the time they were built, the idea of an airplane, like we experienced in 2001, was probably not thought of,” said Beasley. “Those pools are designed to withstand quite a bit of punishment, though.”

As designed originally, the Browns Ferry cooling pools were to have been loosely packed.

“If water had been lost from one of these pools, then air would have been able to circulate relatively freely around the spent fuel, thereby cooling the fuel,” explained Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies. That changed, however, with delays in the creation of a national spent-fuel repository. Considered imminent when Browns Ferry was built in 1974, no such repository exists. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the location of choice, but political and scientific hurdles leave its status in limbo.

“If water is lost, in almost all conditions, you will then have a fire that releases extremely large amounts of radioactive material,” Thompson said. “For practical purposes, it’s a given.”

Thompson co-authored a National Academy of Sciences report last year on spent-fuel pool vulnerability.

Each Browns Ferry reactor uses 764 15-foot-tall fuel bundles at a time. TVA replaces the fuel bundles, each of which weigh 600 pounds, every six years. The spent fuel goes to the cooling pools, where it must remain for almost five years before its heat and radiation have subsided enough to permit dry storage.

In harm’s way

More than two decades after the Chernobyl event, that area is uninhabitable within 19 miles of the plant. Athens is eight miles from Browns Ferry. Decatur is nine miles away. Also within 19 miles of the plant are Elkmont, Rogersville, Moulton, Courtland and Priceville.

“The uninhabitable area would be considerably greater than from the Chernobyl event,” Thompson said. “It could run into thousands of square miles.”

Radioactive material from a spent-fuel pool would travel much farther than it did from Chernobyl’s reactor because of the comparatively high levels of radioactive cesium in the pools. Cesium is lightweight, so it would travel great distances in the Tennessee Valley’s prevailing winds, which blow to the east.

“Huntsville would be in a bad way,” Lochbaum said. “It’s very much in harm’s way should this occur.”

Even with Chernobyl’s much lower cesium levels, Lochbaum said, some areas up to 100 miles from the reactor remain uninhabitable.

Cesium burns at a temperature below that of the ignition point of the zirconium sheaths, so massive amounts would boil into the atmosphere in the event of a spent-fuel pool fire, Thompson said.

The possibility of a spent-fuel fire could be eliminated, even with Browns Ferry’s above-ground pool design, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not requiring the solution and TVA is not pursuing it.

Possible solution

The solution, advocated by the National Academy of Sciences in a report issued last year, is to empty the spent-fuel pools of all fuel more than five years old. The spent fuel, NAS said, should be transferred to dry casks that TVA and other nuclear plant owners maintain on site.

Congress asked NAS to prepare the report.

“We saw no good safety reason for doing that,” said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah. “The NRC has maintained and continues to maintain that fuel can be stored safely both in spent-fuel pools and dry casks. They both meet the regulations, and they both provide adequate protection.”

Browns Ferry already has three such casks. Beasley said TVA plans to fill another five casks with spent fuel this year.

Like most nuclear plants, though, TVA is doing little more than keeping up with its fuel usage. The spent-fuel pools remain full.

The main reason for the NRC’s rejection of the NAS proposal is expense. A dry cask holds 15 to 20 tons of spent-fuel rods, a tiny percentage of the rods stored in the pools. Securing spent fuel in the heavy-duty containers costs about $1 million per cask.

“You’re going to have to move the fuel to the casks eventually,” Lochbaum said. “We think now is the time to make that happen, to make the plants a little bit less vulnerable to terrorists.”

Thompson thinks part of NRC’s reluctance to impose the requirement reflects a nuclear industry attitude.

“Partly it’s money,” Thompson said. “Partly it’s that this is not an industry that likes to admit error.”

The dry casks are transportable, so in the event Yucca Mountain opens, spent fuel will have to be moved into the casks for rail transport. If Yucca Mountain does not open, the spent fuel will have to be moved to casks to make room for newer spent fuel.

NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said dry casks have vulnerabilities.

“The NRC thinks dry casks and spent-fuel pools are equally secure and equally safe to the public,” Hannah said. “Spent fuel now is better protected than it ever has been.”

Beasley said moving spent-fuel rods to casks can expose workers to radiation, so TVA does this as little as possible.

Cheaper approach?

While the NAS proposal — emptying the pools of all spent fuel more than five years old — would be ideal, Thompson said a cheaper approach probably would solve the problem.

“Use low-density racks for the spent fuel, as per the original design,” Thompson said. “That would prevent fuel ignition in almost all scenarios.”

There are options that might keep even densely packed, dry spent-fuel rods from igniting, but they generally require that workers have access to the pools.

“There is no way that operators or emergency personnel could remain there to retain control,” Thompson said. “In the immediate vicinity of the pool, personnel access would be impossible” because of the heat and radiation.

Two of the Browns Ferry pools are connected by a canal, said Lochbaum. The canal is about half the depth of the pool. A rapid loss of water from one pool could cause a partial loss of water in the adjoining pool. The remainder of the water could boil off in the extreme heat, causing that pool to ignite as well.

Stockton, now senior investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, said three categories of terrorist attack concern nuclear engineers and safety experts.

Airplanes. A 9/11-style jetliner attack is the worst-case scenario. Not only would it breach the pools, it would make impossible any effort to control the heat. A small plane loaded with explosives would do the same, he said.

Projectiles. While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission discounts the possibility, Stockton and other experts fear that an explosive projectile, such as a platter charge or an anti-tank missile, could breach the cooling pools. Platter charges need no firing device and are relatively easy to make. The Army uses them to destroy bridge supports.

Stockton said the fact that Browns Ferry is within the line of sight of many non-secure areas, on and across the river, makes it particularly vulnerable.

Ground attack. The surfaces of the spent-fuel pools are open. Some studies suggest a ground attack would result in a loss of coolant if the attackers dropped knapsack-contained explosives in the pools. The weight of the water above the explosives would direct the charge at the pool floor, increasing the likelihood of a rupture.

“With the pools up as high as they are and relatively exposed, they do make attractive targets,” said Lochbaum.

NRC’s Hannah said the various theories on spent-fuel pool vulnerabilities are not compelling.

“Under certain scenarios you can postulate a situation where you would have some damage to a spent-fuel building,” Hannah said. “I can’t get into details, but there are a number of things that would preclude that from happening.”

Hannah said above-ground pools remain an option for any new plants that are built, “but I don’t know if we may look at enhancing or changing those regulations. At this point, we’re not reviewing applications, so we’re not looking at those particular aspects.”

The risk of a spent-fuel fire is not limited to terrorist attack. Some experts focus on the risk of an accident when fuel rods are removed from the pools. A crane above the pools lifts up to 68 tons of fuel in two canisters. One canister weighs 19 tons. Beasley said he did not how much the other, larger canister weighs. The issue is whether a dropped canister would fracture the pool floor, causing a rapid loss of coolant in an above-ground pool.

Thompson is critical of TVA for spending $1.8 billion when, for a few million dollars, it could eliminate the spent-fuel vulnerability.

“TVA is supposed to serve the public interest,” he said. “I would have thought that’s one utility that should be more seriously thinking about the spent-fuel pools.”

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Orlando Sentinel
June 10, 2007

Editorial : Changing course

Our position: Nuclear is the best major power source for Florida's future.

When the Florida Public Service Commission unanimously rejected a proposal this past week from Florida Power & Light to build a massive coal-fired power plant in Glades County, Gov. Charlie Crist's reaction was telling. He called it "the right decision for the environment, the right decision for the Everglades and the right decision for Florida."

It doesn't take a soothsayer to divine that utilities are going to have a hard time, at least for the next four or eight years, winning the state's blessing to build new coal plants to keep up with Florida's growing demand for electricity. But state officials will need to be open to other options -- including nuclear power.

FPL's proposed coal plant would have been cleaner burning than older ones in the state. But even the cleanest coal plants spew huge quantities of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as well as other pollutants that contribute to smog and acid rain. They also emit mercury, a toxin that taints waterways, harms wildlife and endangers public health.

Environmentalists especially objected to FPL's proposed plant site 70 miles from the Everglades National Park. But there are sensitive ecological areas throughout Florida. There may be no environmentally correct location anywhere in the state for a coal plant of the size that FPL planned in Glades County.

Coal is abundant in the United States, and the current cost of producing electricity from it is relatively cheap compared to other energy sources. But Public Service Commission members rightly expressed concern that the cost could rise if, as expected in the next few years, the federal government imposes taxes or other measures to curb carbon-dioxide emissions.

FPL officials said rejection of the utility's coal plant would lead it to build cleaner-burning natural-gas-fired plants. But FPL already generates about half its electricity that way, and its executives have pointed out that becoming more dependent on natural gas will make its customers more vulnerable to hurricane-related supply disruptions and price spikes. Foreign suppliers of natural gas, including some of the same hostile or unstable countries that produce oil, are now considering their own OPEC-style cartel.

It makes sense for utilities to pursue an array of options to keep up with Florida's demand for electricity, including alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass. They also need to continue promoting conservation. But the state's population and economy are growing too fast for those options alone to do the job.

Which is where nuclear power comes in. Five nuclear plants now generate about 14 percent of the electricity in Florida, but construction of new plants here and across the country has been largely stalled since the accidents at Three Mile Island, Pa., in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986.

Nuclear power is ripe for a resurgence because the plants produce almost no greenhouse gases. Both FPL and Progress Energy Florida are considering building new reactors in the state.

The biggest strike against nuclear power remains the hazardous waste it generates. The opening of a national repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is years behind schedule. Until it or some alternative is available, plants will continue to store waste on site, as they've been doing for decades.

It's absolutely critical that utilities exercise extreme care in designing, operating and safeguarding nuclear plants and any waste storage on site to protect the public from accidents or terrorist attacks. State and federal regulators must be watching closely. Congress also needs to keep an eye on the industry. Anything short of the highest standards is unacceptable.

No energy source, including nuclear power, is without drawbacks. But given all the immediate environmental problems posed by fossil fuels, and the limitations of other alternatives, it would be foolish to exclude nuclear power from Florida's energy future.

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Houston Chronicle
June 09, 2007

Going underground for a greenhouse gas solution

By Tom Fowler
tom.fowler@chron.com

DAYTON — While world leaders made pledges to cut greenhouse gases at this week's G8 Summit in Germany, Sue Hovorka was in the backwoods of East Texas working to help them keep those promises.

For more than 10 hours Thursday, the University of Texas geologist, her colleague Tip Meckel and a team from the company Praxair toiled in the heat and haze, using sensitive gas-detection equipment around a pair of inactive oil wellheads.

Their goal: to find even the slightest hint that the carbon dioxide they injected 4,000 feet underground two years ago had made it to the surface at the heavily wooded site near the Trinity River.

Known as the Frio Brine Project, the site is on the leading edge of Department of Energy-funded studies looking into carbon sequestration, the process of injecting CO2 — a byproduct of burning fossil fuels — deep into the ground.

Carbon capture and storage could be part of the solution to global warming, which many climatologists attribute at least partly to a greenhouse effect that occurs when carbon dioxide and other gases trap heat in the atmosphere.

The hope is that CO2 can be stripped from the emissions of power plants and other users of fossil fuels, shipped by pipeline and injected deep underground into old oil and natural gas fields or brine formations.

The idea may seem simple, particularly because companies have been injecting CO2 into the ground to force oil and natural gas out of hard-to-reach formations for decades.

But no one has tried to keep so much CO2 in storage, particularly the millions of tons that would need to be injected to keep up with annual CO2 emissions. The U.S. generates about 6 billion tons of CO2 per year from all sources, according to the Department of Energy.

Not easy, and not cheap

Experts say it also isn't going to be easy or cheap.

The notion of putting power plant byproducts deep underground may sound a bit like the controversial Yucca Mountain, Nev., storage site for spent nuclear fuel. But Hovorka said the two aren't anything alike.

CO2 isn't considered a toxic or hazardous substance like uranium, she said. And once CO2 is injected into a formation, like the brine reservoir near Dayton, it is hard to get it back out.

About 20 percent of it dissolves in the brine, creating a weak acid much like what puts the fizz in a carbonated soda. The rest is trapped in the sand and rock of the formation through a process called phase trapping, Hovorka said. It's a process similar to a sponge soaking up a fluid, except that it's much harder to wring the gas back out.

"It's like getting grease on your tie," Hovorka said. "You can't just rinse it out with water. You have to use another chemical to separate it."

During Thursday's tests researchers found traces of CO2 in the soil around the wellheads, but after hours of testing they determined it came from a tiny leak in the wellhead.

Avoiding aquifers

A more likely hazard from CO2 injection would be if the salty water it displaces in the brine were pushed into a fresh water aquifer that was being used for drinking water, Hovorka said. That can be avoided by using brine formations that aren't near drinking water sources.

Finding such formations shouldn't be hard. Between brine formations like the one Hovorka is working with and oil and gas reservoirs, there may be capacity for as much as 500 billion tons of CO2 storage in the U.S., according to studies done by the University of Texas' Bureau of Economic Geology. South Texas alone has capacity to store an estimated 171 billion metric tons of CO2.

Hovorka and Meckel hope to take their work to the next level this fall. That's when they will begin working with Denbury Resources to inject 1 million tons of CO2, or roughly the annual output of a coal-fired power plant, into an underground formation in Mississippi.

The technology for carbon capture and storage already exists, and in some instances has been used for decades, said Mark Morey, a director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. But it can add a lot of cost to a project.

The greatest cost in the process is carbon capture, or removing the CO2 from the fuel of a power plant before it is burned or from the exhaust afterwards. Morey says a typical coal plant can cost between $50 and $60 per megawatt hour to build and operate, but adding the capacity to capture the CO2 can add an additional $25 to $30 per megawatt hour, he says.

The cost of transporting and storing the CO2 underground would be $10 to $15 per megawatt hour, Morey said, but that's assuming the pipeline and storage infrastructure were already in place. For companies to invest in such systems there would have to be an economic incentive, such as a tax on carbon emissions greater than the cost of capture and storage.

Even if the penalties for emitting CO2 were high enough to convince companies to capture it, a number of serious legal liabilities also would keep companies from rushing into the storage business, said Tim Bradley, head of Kinder Morgan's CO2 business.

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Las Vegas Business Press
June 08, 2007

Contractor with local ties acquired for $2.6 billion

By Tony Illia
tonyillia@aol.com
303-5699

URS Corp. of San Francisco last week announced the purchase of Boise, Idaho-based rival Washington Group International for $2.6 billion in cash and stock. The deal unveiled May 28 creates the nation's fourth-biggest engineering and construction company, with $8.6 billion in annual revenue, an $11 billion backlog and 54,500 employees in 50 countries. Both companies have Las Vegas offices responsible for several landmark local projects.

WGI, for example, last summer completed the $82.6 million, Interstate 215/515 "Spaghetti Bowl" interchange in Henderson. It also built a $31.6 million, five-mile section of the Las Vegas Beltway that was completed in 2004, and performed a $33.7 million Interstate 15 widening in 2002.

In 1989, the firm came to town to perform site work and grading for the Lake Las Vegas Resort in Henderson. Yet its local roots run much deeper. WGI, formerly named Morrison Knudsen Corp., helped build the 727-foot-tall Hoover Dam, which opened in 1936.

URS, meanwhile, most recently developed ridership forecasts for a Las Vegas Monorail extension to CityCenter. It also designed numerous pumping stations, pipelines and reservoirs for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

"The combination with Washington Group is the next logical step for us to take," said Martin Koffel, URS chairman and CEO, during a recent conference call. "This has created a single-source provider."

The deal places the company in a better position to capitalize on renewed global interest in nuclear power as an alternative energy source, which it pegs as a $100 billion market over the next decade. WGI additionally has a major division that does nuclear cleanup and remediation work for the U.S. Department of Energy. It has previously provided design and construction management services to the Yucca Mountain Repository.

The buyout can also help URS win lucrative oil and gas contracts, a $2 trillion market over the next 10 years. It will additionally make the combined company a more formidable bidder for U.S. Department of Defense contracts.

WGI, under the deal, will become a stand-alone division of URS. But it will still remain under the current leadership of WGI President Stephen Hanks. Further integration could, however, occur at a later time, Hanks said in the May 29 analyst call. The acquisition is expected to save $50 million to $55 million a year by working together.

"Our businesses complement each other, and we have highly compatible cultures," said Hanks. "This transaction will create a new leader in the engineering and construction industry."

The boards of directors of both companies unanimously approved the deal, which calls for WGI stockholders to receive $43.80 in cash and 0.772 shares of URS stock for each company share. The transaction is valued at $80 per share, a 14 percent premium over WGI's most recent stock price. Both companies trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Upon completion of the transaction, WGI stockholders will own approximately 31 percent of the combined company. URS shares gained $1.89, or 4 percent, to $48.78 on news of the deal, while WGI stock surged $11.89, or 17 percent, to $81.86.

Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst Alex Rygiel placed an "Outperform," or "Buy," rating on URS following news of the deal. "The acquisition significantly improves URS's position within the global E&C industry -- particularly oil and gas, power and nuclear -- while enhancing its position within the infrastructure market and government sector," he said to investors.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services was less enthusiastic. It said on May 29 that it might downgrade its debt rating on URS Corp. further into junk, following the announcement. URS had total debt of $168 million as of March 31, and the acquisition raises that to $1.5 billion, according to S&P.

"The acquisition grants URS some improved business capabilities, such as additional scale, diversity, and nuclear power expertise," S&P said in a statement. "However, the increased leverage will weaken the company's financial risk profile."

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 08, 2007

County buying pickups for $144,766

PVT

TONOPAH -- Nye County Commissioners went shopping for vehicles Tuesday, spending $144,766 among two Pahrump dealerships.

The commission approved the purchase of two Chevy Silverado pickup trucks for $45,892 from Pahrump Valley Auto Plaza for Commissioners Peter Liakopoulos and Butch Borasky. Borasky said he wanted a safer and more convenient vehicle to drive to commissioner meetings in Tonopah.

A bid was accepted from the Saitta Trudeau dealership for a Dodge Ram 1500 quad cab pickup for the Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office, at a cost of $25,764. This purchase will be paid out of the Independent Scientific Investigations Program, used to oversee the Yucca Mountain project.

The county will also tap into that fund to buy three Jeep Commander Sport four by four pickups from Saitta Trudeau for $73,111.

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The Indypendent
June 08, 2007

Two Ways of Life Vie for the Future & How Capitalism Plundered a Continent

By Jessica Lee

History has shown that behind most Indigenous struggles is an imperial conquest for resource extraction. Five-hundred years ago the relationship between Europeans and the Indigenous people they “discovered” in the “Americas” revolved around enslavement and exporting natural resources from their lands, leading to rapid economic development and the Industrial Revolution back in Europe.

The legacy of colonialism pitted two ways of life against each other — one in which the world was defined by private property and monetary value and another based on bioregional harmony and sustainability.

In the United States, a legacy of broken treaties, forced migration and assimilation, the creation of reservations and now trust and royalty agreements, have crushed native Americans under the racist wheel of progress and profit.

To this day, tribes across the United States continue to resist, and struggle for autonomy against corporate interests in mining, timber, energy generation and waste storage. The U.S. Department of the Interior (in which the Bureau of Indian Affairs exists) estimates tribal reservations contain as much as 30 percent of all coal in the western united States, 4.2 billion barrels of oil, 17.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and as much as 37 percent of all uranium. At times, several tribes have found themselves fighting against the same transnational company such as when the Dine, Hopi and Zuni people fought campaigns against Peabody Coal.

Toxic dumps are frequently placed on Indigenous lands, for example, nevada’s Yucca Mountain, which is sacred to several tribes, is now a repository for nuclear waste.

Global warming poses a double-edged threat. Although they bear little responsibility for causing climate change, Indigenous people are already suffering from the effects. For example, Newtok villages in Alaska are sinking under as permafrost melts. Coastal and island communities around the world are flooding and erosion. Record droughts plague tribal lands in the Southwest.

The proposed “solutions” to climate change, such as carbon trading, nuclear power and “clean” coal technologies, will only intensify further mining, air pollution from power plants and toxic dumping on Indigenous lands native American tribes are actively engaged in the global warming dialogue and have organized gatherings to discuss potential climate consequences on their lands and communities, the most recent on the Cocopah Reservation in Arizona December 2006. Moreover, they hope to promote the significant role Indigenous people will play in shaping how Americans address and generate active responses to combat climate change.

“Native Peoples carry not only sharpened skills of observation, specialized environmental knowledge and time-tested ecological wisdom embedded within various aspects of our traditional cultures,” asserts a November 1998 report prepared for The Native Peoples-Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop, “but also the awesome responsibility to speak from the broader base of human experience sadly lacking in those merely concerned with the commodification of this planet…” Coal-fired Navajo generating Station near Page, Arizona, is fueled by eight million tons of coal each year from the nearby Kayenta mine owned by Peabody Western Coal Company.

1492: Christopher Columbus makes contact with Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, noting “they could easily be commanded and made to work, to sow and to do whatever might be needed, to build towns and be taught to wear clothes and adopt our ways.” Over the next 150 years, Spain, Portugal, England and France establish commercially-driven colonies throughout the Western Hemisphere.

1607: With backing from London investors, Jamestown, Virginia is founded by 105 colonists. Unable to subdue the local indigenous population, the English begin importing African slaves in 1619 to work their tobacco plantations.

1621: One of the first treaties between colonists and Native Americans is signed as the Plymouth Pilgrims enact a peace pact with the Wampanoag Tribe.

1675–76: King Philip’s War erupts in New England between colonists and Native Americans as a result of tensions over colonist’s expansionist activities.

1770s: For the large part, Native Americans fight on the side of the British during Revolutionary War. After the war, they continued to defend their land against “American” colonists.

1790: The Indian Trade and Intercourse Act places almost all interaction between Indians and non-Indians under federal, rather than state control.

1803: The U.S. purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, tripling the size of the young country. The Lewis and Clark expedition that follows initiates the exploration of the West.

1808–1813: Tecumseh, chief of the Shawnees, and his brother The Prophet rally warriors from southern and midwestern tribes to resist further white expansion with the goal of creating pan-indigenous confederation from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. After several years of fighting, their uprising is defeated.

1813-1814: The Creek Indians are forced by Gen. Andrew Jackson to cede 23 million acres of land, opening the southeastern U.S. to slave-owning cotton growers.

1823: In Johnson v. McIntosh, the Supreme Court rules that the U.S.  government holds title to all Native American lands based upon the “doctrine of discovery.”

1830-1840: The 1830 Indian Removal Act leads to the forced transfer of tens of thousands of Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River. By 1840, 420 million acres of land, or 22 percent of the continental area had been secured from Native American tribes for an average of 7.4 cents an acre.

1862: Congress passes the Homestead Act opening western territories to land-hungry settlers.

1867:Treaty of Medicine Lodge — Forces free-roaming Plains tribes to live on small reservations where they can be supervised and ‘civilized’. “I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when I settle down I grow pale and die,” said one Kiowa chief. “This building of homes for us is all nonsense.”

1872: The Mining Act of 1872 is passed by the U.S. Congress. Native Americans, who were not citizens until 1924, were ineligible to make land claims.

1874: Thousands of prospectors invade the Black Hills of western South Dakota following the discovery of gold. Considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux, these lands were guaranteed by an earlier treaty. Several years of fighting break out before another treaty is signed forcing the Lakota to relinquish the land.

1880s: Millions of wild buffalo are slaughtered by white settlers to deprive Plains Indians of the main source of their livelihood.  Eliminating the buffalo also opens the Plains to the cattle industry.

1887: The 1887 General Allotment Act created private property by dividing segments of communal tribal lands and distributing them to individuals, with the Federal government selling whatever was left.

1889: The Oklahoma Land Rush begins with an estimated 50,000 settlers race across the land to claim 1.92 million of land previously guaranteed as a permanent refuge for Native Americans forced to move from the east.

1890: Over 250 years of Indian wars end with the Massacre at Wound Knee in which roughly 300 sick and starving Lakota Indians are surrounded and gunned down by the U.S. Army.

1893: Indian Education Act passes making school attendance for Indian children compulsory. The Bureau of Indian Affairs withholds rations and government payments to parents who do not send their children to school.

1934: Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) makes federal funding available to tribes that adopt U.S.-style constitutions that go against traditional, consensus-based forms of decision-making.

1950s: Government agents broker resource extraction deals that leave Native American tribes with royalty agreements that often pay less than 10 percent of market value.

1969-1971: Members of the newly-founded American Indian Movement (AIM) take over and occupy Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.  The protest brings national attention to Native American grievances for the first time.

1971: The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act extinguishes all aboriginal land claims in Alaska and turns tribal members into shareholders of for-profit corporations.

1973: Several hundred members of AIM engage in a 71-day armed standoff with the federal government at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Over the next several years, dozens of AIM activists on the Pine Ridge Reservation are killed in a dirty war carried out by the FBI and the official Lakota tribal government.

1980: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Lakota Sioux are entitled to $106 million in compensation for the unjust taking of the Black Hills. Some tribal members reject the settlement calling instead for the land to be returned.

2006: Tribal Lands Climate Conference. The first event of its kind, people from 55 indigenous nations meet on the Cocopah Reservation in Somerton, Arizona to share their direct experiences of climate change.

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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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