Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, July 6, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, July 6, 2007
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Contra Costa Times
Friday, July 06, 2007

Nuclear power plants

Contra Costa Times

With a growing demand for electricity and the threat of global warming, the nation will need new sources of energy that do not increase atmospheric carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

There are many new efforts to develop alternative types of energy that are more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels. The problem is that many of these technologies are in their infancy and are not likely to provide a significant portion of our energy for many years.

Also, some of the energy alternatives, such as ethanol, have negative effects, including decreasing the acreage that is used for food production.

In most instances, the alternative fuels are considerably more expensive than fossil fuels and are not as reliable. Solar and wind energy are two examples.

That does not mean we should abandon our efforts to improve and develop solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal and other energy sources.

But neither should we ignore a source of energy that does not produce greenhouse gases, has costs similar to fossil fuels, does not require huge fuel imports and has a long safety record: nuclear energy.

Unfortunately, the United States has turned its back on nuclear power plants for the past couple of decades as oil prices dropped in the late 1980s and 1990s. Also, fears of nuclear energy and the lack of a plan to dispose of nuclear waste dealt a blow to the industry.

That has not been the case in some other countries. France produces almost all of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Japan also meets much of its electricity needs with nuclear power. There is no good reason why the United States should not once again construct nuclear power plants.

In fact, with skyrocketing oil prices and increased dependency on sources of oil and natural gas from the most volatile parts of the world, there is renewed interest in nuclear power.

There are 28 applications for new nuclear power plants nationwide, many of which have a good chance of being accepted. Many states in the South and a few elsewhere, including New York, are open to nuclear power plant construction.

It would be a lot easier to get support for nuclear power plants if Congress would approve the nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But even without it, nuclear power plants should be built.

They are among the safest means of energy production, do not pollute and can compete economically with oil and natural gas. Safeguarding spent nuclear fuel is the only significant downside to nuclear energy, but it is a problem we and other nations can handle.

Nuclear energy proponents believe new U.S. plants can be on line by 2015. For the sake of the environment, energy independence and adequate supplies of electrical power, let's hope the forecasts are accurate.

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Ely Daily Times
July 05, 2007

Water fight at Yucca Mtn.

By Keith Rogers
Stephens Media

The Department of Energy continues to use the state's water for drilling at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site while State Engineer Tracy Taylor contemplates resuming his order to halt the practice, a federal spokesman said Friday.

"He did lift the restriction," said Allen Benson, spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas. "Until he reinstates it, we will continue to abide by the federal district court order that we operate under."

Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Gibbons has remained mum on the issue. The Review-Journal last week asked the governor's communication director about Gibbons' stance on the matter.

"The governor and his staff are looking into this issue and all of its potential ramifications," Communications Director Brent Boynton said Friday.

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 the information he requested on the drilling program and the water use.

Taylor has said he never granted the Energy Depar-tment permission to use Nevada water for drilling bore holes to gather scientific data. Under a court-approved agreement, the Energy Department is only supposed to use the state's water for flushing toilets, fire suppression and dust control.

The Energy Department does not have approval to use Nevada water for scientific investigation of the site, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Bob Loux, Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency chief and a critic of the Energy Department's effort at Yucca Mountain, has said the federal entity is using the water to cool drill bits and collect samples from what will be 80 bore holes by the time the effort is completed.

The samples are being gathered from deep below where the Energy Department wants to put surface facilities for handling and aging spent nuclear fuel.

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Brattleboro Reformer
July 04, 2007

Duration of spent fuel storage at VY depends on Yucca Mtn. approval

By Bob Audette
Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- Two years ago, the state Legislature gave Entergy permission to store spent fuel in above ground dry casks at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

During hearings to allow the facility, Entergy warned the state it would run out of storage space by 2008 if it wasn't allowed to pull its oldest fuel out of the spent fuel pool and put it into containers of steel and concrete. Spent fuel from the plant, which has operated since 1972, has been stored in deep pools of cooling water as a temporary measure until a federal repository for the waste can be established.

Such a facility at Yucca Mountain, which would be operated by the Department of Energy, has been held up for years, subject to litigation from the state of Nevada, environmental groups and anti-nuclear organizations.

In 2002, Congress approved and the president signed into law the Yucca Mountain Development Act, which completed the site selection process and authorized the construction of a repository at Yucca Mountain.

Shortly after the president signed off on the site in 2002, Nevada formally objected to the court of appeals. Most of its objections were tossed out but the court did rule in favor of one of the state's complaints related to radiation standards at the proposed site.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and 1987 required the federal Department of Energy to locate and build a deep, mined geologic repository for high-level waste and, with the Department of Transportation, develop a system to move the waste from nuclear power plants to the repository. To pay for the repository, electric utility customers have been paying a surcharge of 1/10 of a cent for every nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed. Through mid-2006, the fund had reached more than $28 billion.

Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the DOE has indicated it will submit a proposal for the Yucca Mountain facility to the NRC for approval sometime next year. The process could take three to four years, he said. DOE has said it would like to open Yucca Mountain between 2017 and 2020.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes "there is reasonable assurance a federal repository for spent fuel will be available in the first-quarter of this century," said Sheehan. According to the Waste Confidence Rule issued by the NRC, he said, fuel can be stored safely at Vermont Yankee for at least 30 years after the plant shuts down.

Though the spent fuel will eventually belong to the Department of Energy, "dry cask storage falls under our jurisdiction," he said.

Sheehan called the dry casks "very large robust structures" with steel reinforced concrete similar to the containment vessel that wraps around Vermont Yankee's boiling water reactor.

"They have a permit to store waste that is generated by the end of 2012," said Sarah Hoffman, adding a popular misconception in Vermont is that the waste won't be stored in Vernon for longer than 20 years. "There's no outside date for how long."

At one time, because of its granite formations, the state of Vermont was on a short list of sites for a nuclear waste repository, said Hoffman. Because it was on the list, the state legislature passed a law requiring its approval to store any waste in the state.

Entergy, which currently has a 20-year license extension request before the NRC, needs to receive approval from both the state Legislature and the state's Public Service Board to extend that license to 2032, said Hoffman, even if the NRC approves it.

"With the plant comes the waste," she said, which could become a sticking point for Entergy's relicensing effort.

"When the Legislature is looking at the issue of relicensing, it will also look at new waste created by any kind of extension or certificate of public good," she said.

As far as DOE's promise to take possession of the spent fuel in the next decade, Diana Sidebotham, the president of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, said she has heard it before and doesn't believe the federal government's assurances.

"This waste will be on the site for a very long time," said Sidebotham.

"We think fuel can be safely stored on site for up to 30 years after the plant ceases operation," said Sheehan, adding "we are confident that there will be a repository" before then.

But one nuclear waste expert called dry cask storage at Vermont Yankee "de facto permanent."

Kevin Camps, with Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said even the commissioners of the NRC are split on whether Yucca Mountain should be the place for nuclear waste.

"Yucca Mountain is looking ever more likely not to open," he said, meaning waste could be stored in Vernon for much longer than the public may think. And the nuclear industry can't be trusted, he said. In Minnesota, a nuclear plant operator was given permission to install 17 dry casks. In 2003, it came back and asked for more than 60 more storage containers.

"If you let them start, they're not going to stop," said Camps. "Especially with a company like Entergy," which knows that "there are federal laws that would give the federal agencies the right to override a state's authority."

Dry cask storage construction in Vernon is currently underway, said Larry Smith, spokesman for Vermont Yankee. Sometime in the fall, he said, technicians will begin to move spent fuel from cooling ponds into the storage containers.

As far as when the spent fuel will be removed from the site in Vernon, said Smith, "we can't speculate on when the Department of Energy will take the fuel."

"Our responsibility is to be good stewards of the fuel that is on site now and have it ready to be taken whenever that is," he said.

As part of its dry cask agreement with the state, Entergy agreed to pay $2.5 million into the state's clean energy development fund.

--Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.

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E/The Environmental Magazine
July 02, 2007

A Nuclear Phoenix?

Concern about Climate Change is Spurring an Atomic Renaissance

By Jim Motavalli

Sitting in the belly of the beast—Dominion’s 2,000-megawatt Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Connecticut—the company’s chief nuclear officer, Dave Christian, seems an unlikely environmentalist. But he says concern about climate change is what got him involved in the peaceful pursuit of the atom in the first place.

“I started studying climate science in the 1970s after reading a book [published in 1974] entitled Technology, Society and Man by Richard C. Dorf,” Christian says. “It was a very thoughtful study of the feedback mechanisms that go into global warming.”

Dominion is the kind of big power player that has long had an antagonistic relationship with the environmental movement. In addition to Millstone Units 2 and 3 (Unit 1 was shut down in 1998), the $45 billion company operates two nukes in Virginia, owns 7,900 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines, 6,000 miles of electrical transmission lines and 965 billion cubic feet of underground natural gas storage.

The case for Dominion as a friend of the Earth is based on a few simple facts: It generates 45 percent of Connecticut’s electricity and 30 percent of Virginia’s without taking a huge toll in smokestack-emitted global warming gas. In fact, there are no smokestacks, because (aside from the occasional release of radioactive material) the only thing nuclear power plants vent is steam. What’s more, in contrast to the modest current capacity of wind and solar power, nukes can produce very large amounts of electricity—enough to counter global warming by taking highly polluting coal-burning plants offline even as electricity demand increases.

Nuclear advocates will be the first to tell you that their U.S. plants avoid the emission of almost 700 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Worldwide, it’s two billion metric tons. Given this reality, some prominent environmentalists have signaled a cautious détente with the nuclear power industry. While stopping short of endorsing the Bush Administration’s push for hundreds of new nukes in the U.S., they say that nuclear power merits reconsideration. But they’re being met by equally powerful arguments from the scientific community that nuclear power has never been and never will be a solution to global warming.

The Big Push

As worldwide emissions soar, people wait for a white knight. Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote recently, “We Americans want it all: endless and secure energy supplies; low prices; no pollution; less global warming; no new power plants (or oil and gas drilling, either) near people or pristine places. This is a wonderful wish list, whose only shortcoming is the minor inconvenience of massive inconsistency.” Growing awareness of this inconsistency makes it difficult to dismiss the technology out of hand.

Nuclear power has already won some powerful allies in the environmental community. Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense says, “We should all keep an open mind about nuclear power.” Jared Diamond, best-selling author of Collapse, says, “To deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power,” which should be “done carefully, like they do in France, where there have been no accidents.” To which Stewart Brand, another apostate green who founded The Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth Review, adds, “The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.” James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory about the planet’s self-regulating systems, has called for, to quote The Independent, “a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power.” Actor Paul Newman visited New York’s Indian Point plant and praised its climate role. In many cases, these environmentalists see nuclear as only a temporary fix.

There’s no questioning the credentials of these environmental leaders, but other nuclear cheerleaders are suspect. For instance, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has been widely quoted supporting nukes, but he left Greenpeace many years ago, turned 180 degrees, and has supported many anti-environmental initiatives. He is now the co-chair (with former Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Christine Todd Whitman) of an industry-funded initiative called the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. Not all the newspapers and magazines printing his commentaries have noted that he’s on the payroll.

The industry is moving ahead with its attempt to revive commercial nuclear power, but it’s unlikely to happen quickly. Dave Christian of Dominion says that although 30 new nuclear power plant licenses are pending, the first of these probably won’t be online until 2015 or 2016. “The success of the industry moving forward depends on how these first units work out,” he says.

Christian acknowledges that the chance of some of those license applications succeeding is only five percent. “They’re taking a leap of faith,” he says. It may be that the funding issue alone derails the nuclear push: A Standard and Poor’s report last year priced nuclear at $1,500 per kilowatt—twice the cost of a new coal plant. And cost overruns, it said, “are highly probable.” The base price for a plant is $3 billion today.

Most of the proposed new nuclear stations are in the Southeast, and (partly to minimize local antagonism) most are on the site of existing units.

Targeting the South

Entergy Nuclear operates New York’s Indian Point as well as nine other stations. At a recent press conference, Steve Melancon of Entergy stood in front of a PowerPoint map of the U.S. dotted with proposed new plants: in New York, North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Virginia. According to Melancon, Entergy, in conjunction with eight other utilities, has settled on two existing locations to apply for combined construction and operating licenses: Grand Gulf, near Port Gibson, Mississippi and Bellefonte, near Scottsboro, Alabama. Actual operations would not begin until at least 2014.

It’s not surprising that Port Gibson (spared by Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War because it was “too beautiful to burn”) is 80 percent African-American, rural and something less than affluent, with a third of the population living below the poverty line. And it’s also not surprising that some city residents welcome the revenue it brings to an otherwise impoverished community.

Moft Headley II, who is both a former Port Gibson county supervisor and the father of a current one, says that the Grand Gulf nuclear plant has been a “good neighbor” that has “made it possible for the county to do some positive things it otherwise couldn’t have done,” including fixing up a building on Main Street and constructing a new library. “We’re hoping we get the new plant,” says Headley, “because the few industries we had around here have all dried up. We don’t worry about safety too much because we’ve never had any plant accidents.”

There’s no constant in nuclear plant sitings. Scottsboro, Alabama, site of the famous 1931 “Scottsboro Boys” case is today an almost exclusively white community with a median family income of $42,000. It has never tasted revenues from nuclear power, and local officials seem primed by the prospects of 400 permanent jobs and 2,000 construction positions. “Many of us grew up watching that plant get built, so we’re excited about finally seeing it operate,” Goodrich Rogers, president of the Jackson County Economic Development Authority, told Greenwire.

The Cost of Nukes

There are 103 operating nuclear reactors in 31 states, capable of producing 100 gigawatts, or some 20 percent of U.S. power needs. Dominion’s Christian says many of these plants are aging, and if we let them retire after 60 years, they’d have to be replaced with an annual input of 3.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas or 200 million tons of coal. Replacing nukes is also an issue for the activists who want to shut down the two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear power station in New York. Of similar size to Millstone, Indian Point generates 2,000 megawatts of electricity—enough to power two million homes.

Calling for a shutdown, increasingly vocal Westchester County residents hired a consultant to prepare a feasibility study, and Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) commissioned a National Academy of Sciences report on the subject, which was released last year. It concluded that replacing Indian Point was feasible, in part by “repowering” existing coal or fuel-oil plants to run on cleaner fuels such as natural gas. But it could cost $3 billion, says Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano.

Meanwhile, Indian Point has hardly been making a good case for its continued existence. After a transformer fire early last spring forced it to shut down for the second time in a week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) downgraded its safety assessment.

Is nuclear power cheap? The industry likes to cite a figure of 1.72 cents per kilowatt-hour, cheaper than climate-aggravating coal. But Michael Levi, a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, calls this “a specious claim” because it “ignores the capital costs.” Including these expenses, an influential Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report entitled “The Future of Nuclear Power” prices nuclear at 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, markedly more expensive than coal at 4.2 cents.

The MIT report, released in 2003, says that nuclear power “is not now cost competitive with coal and natural gas,” but it concludes that nukes “could be one option for reducing carbon emissions.” However, the industry’s “stagnation and decline” makes that unlikely.

Taking the Scare Out

To get the public to accept a major expansion of nuclear power, the industry will have to convince Americans terrified by the specter of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and intentional terrorism-related sabotage. Don Miley, a pro-nuclear spokesman for the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), stood on a hotel patio in downtown Idaho City and, before an audience of horrified reporters, knowingly exposed himself to radiation. Miley was exposing himself to Coleman lantern mantles, “Fiesta” dinnerware, and an old “Exit” sign—all made with radioactive materials. It was cheap theatrics, but each item set off a Geiger counter. On average, Miley said, Americans receive 360 millirems of naturally occurring radiation per year, just from the sun, rocks and soil. If you’re an airline pilot, it goes up to about 1,000 millirems. A smoker gets 1,300 with or without a frequent flyer card. In 14 years working at INL, close to a nuclear reactor, Miley says he’s been dosed with only 13 millirems of extra radiation. In one trip to the dentist, he adds, he took in 150 millirems.

Hours later, the delegation was taken inside INL’s Advanced Test Reactor, the largest of its kind in the world, and looked down into 20 feet of cool, rippling water, below which lay highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods that could kill in an instant. When Miley was asked if he’d take a swim in this deceptively attractive cooling pond, he offered to don his trunks.

Back in Connecticut, Dominion spokesman Pete Hyde stopped at a padlock-protected fence and pointed across to an unassuming concrete bunker. This was the site of Millstone’s dry-cask nuclear storage, what the company calls an “interim measure” until long-delayed federal storage options are available. The steel-reinforced bunker has five-foot-thick walls. Some 32 highly radioactive spent fuel rods are loaded into a 40-ton steel canister and stored horizontally in the bunker. As many as 135 of these canisters can be stored on site, so Millstone is not likely to run out of storage space soon.

The obvious question, however, is whether these on-site storage facilities are vulnerable to determined terrorist attacks. Hyde says computer simulations show no breach of the fuel (and only an inch of movement in the concrete) when an engine from a commercial airliner hits the bunker at 600 miles per hour.

That may sound reassuring, but a federal National Academies of Science report released in 2005 argued that a high-temperature fire caused by the loss of cooling water in a spent fuel pool could release large amounts of radiation. The report found that dry cask storage of the type found at Millstone is safer, in part because the fuel rods are stored separately.

Meanwhile, plans to relocate America’s nuclear plant waste to a secure federal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada are slowly inching forward. The facility is designed to house 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, including the 50,000 tons already waiting for storage at reactor sites in dozens of states. The project director, Edward Sproat, said that a 2017 start date is now unlikely, and that the waste facility may never be built without increased Congressional funding.

The current plan is to transport the waste to Yucca Mountain, stored in reinforced casks, by truck and rail through 43 states. The watchdog group Public Citizen says this plan would put the waste “within half a mile of 50 million people.” And it adds that “more waste would be shipped in the first year alone than has been shipped in the U.S. in the past three decades.”

These facts led an increasingly skeptical Atlanta Constitution to write, “[W]orldwide, it would take some 2,000 new nuclear power plants, at a cost of over $1 trillion, to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Those plants would require a new Yucca Mountain-sized repository every few years to store the tidal wave of highly radioactive nuclear waste. With no answer to its radioactive nuclear waste, it is clear that nuclear energy will not be the answer to global warming.”

Federal Incentives

The renaissance of nuclear power benefits from significant federal incentives. Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 called for the construction of 1,300 to 1,900 new power plants, many of them nukes, and since then the Bush administration has done what it can to stimulate new construction and licensing. The administration’s energy legislation, enacted in 2005, contains billions of federal dollars for nuclear tax breaks and loan guarantees. A Public Citizen analysis says these incentives add up to $10.1 billion, including $5.7 billion in production tax credits ($18 per megawatt-hour of new generation, up to 6,000 megawatts). The loan guarantees mean that the public could subsidize as much as 80 percent of new reactor costs, the group said.

“There is a tsunami of new nuclear plant applications,” says Dr. Harold McFarlane, president of the American Nuclear Society. The revival is coming after so many years of inactivity that McFarlane notes there are now fewer than 200 nuclear-qualified welders in the U.S.

Still, the industry is forging ahead, aided by an administration determined to streamline the licensing process. Hoping to avoid the debacle, common in the nuclear-phobic 1970s, of fully built plants unable to begin operations, the industry is now seeking to receive both construction and operating permits before it puts the first spade in the ground.

The Mixed Picture

Around the world, the nuclear picture is mixed. Six U.S. reactors have closed since 1996, and seven in Canada are unlikely to operate again. Although a large 10,000-megawatt plant is slated to begin construction in India next year, other countries—including Germany and Sweden—have been working on formal phase-outs of the technology. But even there the future is uncertain. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the phase-out of the country’s 17 plants (which produce a third of German electricity) by 2020 “disastrous,” and some are worried that replacing the nukes with coal or natural gas plants could make it difficult to meet the provisions of the Kyoto Treaty.

The Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have agreed not to build any more plants. (Switzerland, by contrast, failed to renew its nuclear ban in a 2003 referendum.) Nuclear programs in Eastern Europe, South Korea and Japan have slowed pace, but in other countries the technology is going strong. France has 59 reactors generating more than three quarters of the country’s power. Pakistan, Egypt, Finland and Iran each hope to build nuclear power plants, and China plans to increase nuclear capacity.

Nuclear power supplied about 17 percent of the world’s needs in 2002. According to researchers at MIT, global energy demand could grow by 75 percent by 2020. Anti-nuclear activists are deeply worried that public apathy in the 18 years since the devastating Chernobyl meltdown will allow the emergence of a dangerous and radioactive new world.

An Unacceptable Risk?

In spite of its obvious benefits, nuclear power may simply be too risky. Opponents of the nuclear renaissance point to a host of serious concerns. “They’re proposing a replay of a demonstrated failure,” says Paul Gunter, director of the reactor watchdog project at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). “The financial risks have only gotten worse, and our concerns about safety issues are heightened now that these plants are known terrorist targets.”

Alex Matthiessen, director of Hudson Riverkeeper, declares, “In the post-9/11 era, nuclear power plants pose an unacceptable risk.” He points out that NRC studies conclude that a serious accident at one of Indian Point’s two working reactors could cause 50,000 early fatalities.

Al Qaeda operatives have, by their own admission, considered attacking nuclear facilities. And according to Riverkeeper, only 19 percent of Indian Point guards think they can protect the facility from a conventional assault, let alone a suicidal mission. Riverkeeper says that the proposed evacuation plans for the area are woefully inadequate, and the site is vulnerable to an airborne attack. Plant operator Entergy refutes these charges, and says that the 3.5-foot steel-reinforced concrete containment structures protecting the reactor and other radioactive materials are “among the strongest structures built by man.”

The U.S. nuclear industry has avoided serious accidents since the near-catastrophic accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant in 1979. But there have been near-misses. In March 2002, workers repairing a cracked nozzle at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio discovered a football-sized cavity in the reactor. Because of corrosion, all that was holding back the 2,400-pounds per square inch (psi) pressure of the core was a bulging stainless steel liner approximately 3/16th of an inch thick. If the liner had failed, a loss-of-coolant accident similar to Three Mile Island would have occurred.

Millstone also had its share of troubles before Dominion bought it in 2001. In the mid-1990s, the four nuclear power plants run by then-owner Northeast Utilities were cited for more than 100 safety violations in two years. In late 2000, Millstone reported two lost fuel rods. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says, “The [NRC] must stop allowing plant owners to conduct fewer inspections and to defer inspections for economic reasons.”

More recently, in July of 2006, the Forsmark nuclear reactor 1 on Sweden’s east coast experienced a short circuit and went into emergency shutdown. Two of four emergency-cooling diesel engines did not start as expected, disabling control room operations—and thus human control—for a critical 23 minutes. According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, “For critics, the incident shows yet again how vulnerable nuclear power plants are to a failure in electricity systems.”

In early April of this year, operators of the Vogtle Nuclear Plant near Augusta, Georgia received low marks for their response to a simulated nuclear accident. The NRC judged that the emergency director had “overdiagnosed” the problem (a pump shaft breakage that caused metal parts to fall into the reactor coolant system) and gave the plant a “poor” grade.

Nuclear defenders point out that these are the problems of aging Generation II plants, and the new Generation IV units will have many safety and efficiency advantages. Pebble bed reactors, for instance, are now in the planning stages in China and South Africa, and supporters say a meltdown is nearly impossible with that design. Pebble beds simplify waste storage and can be built quickly, they say, without the crippling cost overruns.

Economists question if the technology is cost-effective. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has stated that even if next-generation nuclear plants can be built efficiently, their costs are likely to be two to four times greater than building natural gas, coal or wind plants. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the private firm Standard and Poor’s concluded that investing in loans to build nuclear power plants is an unwise risk. A host of insurance analysts have come to the same conclusion. The last American nuclear power plant to go online, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar, fired up in 1996 after 23 years of construction and billions of dollars of over-budget spending.

A Renaissance under Fire

In its 2003 study, “The Future of Nuclear Power,” MIT researchers concluded that some 1,000 to 1,500 new reactors would have to be built worldwide by 2025 in order to put a serious dent in global warming. There are only 400 atomic power plants online now, and any major expansion would meet a host of economic, political, security and NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) challenges.

Because of planned plant retirements, the industry will have to work hard simply to keep up current nuclear capacity, let alone ramp it up to offset global warming. Current projections by the U.S. Energy Information Industry show very little nuclear growth by 2030.

The uranium supply is also an issue. On the spot market, uranium prices have soared as existing reactors have worked through supplies from mothballed plants. Demand is projected to exceed supply and push prices higher. The shortfall in uranium mining can be at least partly made up in uranium enrichment (an outgrowth of atomic bomb development), but capacity is limited there, too.

Uranium enrichment also aggravates both global warming and ozone depletion. The single remaining uranium enrichment plant in the U.S., Paducah Gaseous Diffusion in Kentucky, emits highly destructive chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used to dissipate heat generated by the compressors. And the plant is fired by two large, extremely dirty coal power plants.

Although nukes avoid the smokestack problem, the nuclear process is not emission-free. The cycle from uranium mining to milling and processing, as well as waste storage and transportation, all involve greenhouse gas emissions.

In his book Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change (IEER Press), Brice Smith admits that, when compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power emits far lower levels of greenhouse gases, even when mining, enrichment and fuel fabrication are taken into account. But to effectively challenge the global warming problem, he says, a new reactor would have to come online somewhere in the world every 15 days on average between 2010 and 2050. Even with this growth, he calculates that the proportion of electricity coming from nuclear sources would grow only slightly, from 16 to 20 percent over the period.

Also, says Smith, a huge nuclear expansion would increase the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The world’s capacity to enrich uranium would have to go up dramatically by a factor of 2.5 to six. A dozen new enrichment plants would produce thousands of tons of highly deadly plutonium each year. And just one percent of that capacity would be enough to support the construction of 210 nuclear weapons per year.

NIRS argues that, in the next 60 years, the industry is capable of building only half the 1,500 new reactors needed to significantly offset global warming, and that the enormous construction costs—estimated in the many trillions of dollars—would be much more effectively spent on renewable energy projects.

“Even under an ambitious deployment scenario, new plants could not make a substantial contribution to reducing U.S. global warming emissions for at least two decades,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists.

--JIM MOTAVALLI is editor of E.

--SIDEBAR--

Living With Radiation
Human Health and Nuclear Exposure

By Jim Motavalli

Inside the “Chernobyl Zone”—an 18-mile circle around the nuclear complex that caught fire and exploded in April of 1986, spewing radiation across 150,000 square miles of European territory—there is an abandoned amusement park, complete with Ferris wheel, that never opened for business.

There were 60,000 people living in the villages and towns around Chernobyl and Pripyat in 1986, and the multi-story apartment blocks they lived in still stand in neat rows, their contents long since looted. These towers were evacuated the day after the explosion, the worst nuclear accident in human history.

Although the streets are mostly empty, new grass pokes through Chernobyl’s broken pavement, and colorful graffiti enlivens some of the gray walls.

Despite radiation levels that set Geiger counters clicking, small but determined colonies of farm families remain in some of the villages surrounding the zone, even though they know the dangers and many of the children are sick. Thyroid cancers are so common that the scars left at the base of the neck after surgery are known as the “Chernobyl necklace.”

Reports of Chernobyl casualties vary considerably, from 50 deaths reported by the World Health Organization to 212,000 cited by the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Many of Chernobyl’s victims will come later, as birth defects, cancer, heart disease, kidney disease and scoliosis are reported among survivors.

Americans exposed to low-level radioactivity after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 have fared much better. A 1999 study of mortality in the Three Mile Island area found no deviation from normal death rates. (Another study, however, showed a statistically significant higher incidence of cancer and heart disease.) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) claims that the Three Mile Island accident, a near-meltdown caused by the loss of cooling water at the reactor core, “led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community,” but given the slow incubation of some cancers, this statement may still be premature.

Several studies indicated that the average radiation dose to people living near the plant was one millirem, a sixth the dosage from a set of chest X-rays. But people living on the site boundary could have been exposed to as much as 100 millirems.

The Nuclear Energy Institute claims that radiation is relatively benign, with no cancer increases noted among people living in areas (in China, India and Brazil) that have natural background radiation several times higher than average. It also says that the radiation exposure for people living near operating nukes is “about the same as watching television.”

But people fear exposure to radiation for a good reason. The effects of significant exposure range from radiation sickness (whose symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, hair loss and uncontrolled bleeding) to cancer (with a latency period that sometimes makes it hard to pinpoint the source of disease) and birth defects.

“All radiation is cumulative,” writes Dr. Helen Caldicott in her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. “Each dose adds to the risk of developing cancer or mutating genes in the reproductive cells.”

Despite industry campaigns, it’s unlikely most people will ever be totally comfortable with nuclear plants as neighbors. An important 2004 study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “there is no compelling evidence to suggest a dose threshold below which the risk of tumor induction is zero.” In other words, in terms of cancer risk, the only safe dose is no dose.

--SIDEBAR--

No Nukes, Go Nukes: Two Views

Interviewed by Jim Motavalli

Dr. Ken Schultz, a registered nuclear engineer, is the California-based operations director for the energy group at General Atomics and a past board member of the American Nuclear Society. His current specialty is developing hydrogen from nuclear power.

Is expansion of nuclear power a feasible way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions?

Yes, it certainly is. Stopping the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) is the first step, and you can use nuclear power for electricity and to produce hydrogen for transportation fuels without it emitting virtually any CO2.

How much greenhouse gas is created by ancillary nuclear processes—uranium mining and milling, transportation, waste storage, etc.? Even with those emissions taken into account, is nuclear power climate-friendly?

In mining uranium or making concrete and steel to build reactors, CO2 is emitted, but the same is true of other climate-friendly energy sources, including solar. In fact, if you look at the lifecycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power they are about on the scale of hydroelectric generation, about half that of solar energy, and much, much lower than emissions from any fossil fuel source.

Is it feasible, given the lack of immediately affordable alternatives, for European countries like Germany to announce nuclear power phase-outs?

Germany announced its phase-out of nuclear energy something like 20 years ago, and in fact they have shut down a couple of nuclear power plants—Sweden has done the same. However, Sweden still produces almost 50 percent of its energy from nuclear, and Germany is similar to the U.S. As the dates come closer to shutdown, these countries realize they don’t have anything to replace these plants with except imported natural gas or coal. I expect we will see many of them, even Germany, quietly changing their minds. I’m a great proponent of solar and wind, but you can’t expect the grid to be stable when more than 20 percent of your power sources are intermittent, and you don’t have something to back them up when they’re down.

Do new generation plant designs offer solutions to making nuclear power a safer, better solution for our energy future?

I think so, but my company, General Atomics, is one of the leaders developing these Type IV plants. It’s safer to work in a nuclear plant than in an office building, in terms of expected industrial injuries. But it’s active safety: there are redundant pumps and cooling systems, and all that equipment has to be paid for. If we could achieve a system of truly passive safety, it would allow us to build a much safer and cheaper nuclear plant. And that’s where the Generation IV designs are going. They’re all helium cooled, with higher efficiency producing more electricity for the fuel you use and the waste you produce. And the higher temperatures they operate at can produce high-efficiency hydrogen, too.

Alden Meyer is director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and is its principal advocate on national and international policy responses to the threat of global climate change. Before coming to UCS in 1989, he served as executive director of the League of Conservation Voters, Americans for the Environment and Environmental Action.

Is expansion of nuclear power a feasible way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions? There is no silver bullet for “solving” global warming, so we should consider all options for reducing heat-trapping emissions. But prudence dictates that we develop and deploy those technologies that achieve the largest reductions most quickly with the lowest cost and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet those criteria.

Moreover, a single major accident or act of sabotage would derail nuclear expansion, so the safety, security, waste and economic problems that now afflict it must be fixed. Instead of expanding U.S. nuclear capacity, we can significantly cut our emissions by reducing energy demand and improving the efficiency of our energy supply. We also can dramatically increase our use of a wide variety of clean, renewable technologies.

A report released last month by the Oxford Research Group found that nuclear power’s carbon emissions “lie somewhere between renewable energy sources and fossil fuels.” The report estimates that while coal—the primary source of electric power in the U.S.—produces 755 grams of carbon per kilowatt hour, the range for nuclear is from 10 to 150 grams per kilowatt hour. Wind power is 11 to 37 grams. Others have found that full life-cycle carbon emissions for U.S. nuclear and solar electric technologies are roughly comparable. Over the long run, however, there is no reason why the nuclear fuel cycle (or renewable energy production) could not be powered largely by carbon-neutral energy sources, creating the potential for virtually no lifecycle emissions. Are there certain conditions (a solution to the storage problem perhaps, or stringent safety standards) under which UCS could support an expansion of nuclear power?

UCS could support the expansion of nuclear power at some time in the future if—and only if—the unique safety, security, proliferation and waste disposal issues associated with the technology have been meaningfully addressed. The NRC needs comprehensive reform.

Is it feasible, given the lack of immediately affordable alternatives, for European countries like Germany to announce nuclear power phaseouts?

This question inaccurately assumes that there is a “lack of immediately affordable alternatives.” Germany and other European countries are aggressively expanding power generation from wind and other renewable resources, even as they pursue a wide range of energy-efficiency improvements in every sector of their economies.

Do new generation plant designs offer solutions to making nuclear power a safer, better solution for our energy future?

While some argue that new plant designs will be much safer, these claims are difficult to evaluate because they are based largely on safety assessments that have not been validated by actual operational experience. While certain design features would correct major safety deficiencies, the associated benefits could be offset by other factors, such as cost-cutting actions that reduce safety margins, lack of operating experience, and the need in some cases to develop advanced materials that will have to perform under punishing conditions.

If nuclear power is not the answer, what is? Can renewable energy be ramped up to meet the climate challenge? What about conservation?

The government should adopt policies that maximize energy efficiency and conservation, increase the use of renewable energy resources, and eliminate barriers to existing non-nuclear technologies that can reduce global warming emissions. Such policies provide the best prospect for the large near-term reductions in global warming emissions that are needed to stabilize the global average temperature at a reasonably safe level. The government should create conditions under which energy prices would reflect the full cost of global warming emissions by setting emission targets and establishing a mandatory revenue-neutral carbon tax or cap-and-trade system.

--Jim Motavalli is editor of E.

---------------------------

Huntsville Times
July 02, 2007

Seeing nuclearterror

Thomas B. Gale

Bush trip recalls Three-Mile Island incident

I see where our president recently arrived in town and headed for the Browns Ferry nuclear plant where he praised the plant for its modern energy production. Forgive me if I am less than thrilled.

On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, I was busy raising a family in Camp Hill, Pa., when - 15 or so miles away in Middletown - Three Mile Island went up. The thing that we were told could never, never happen - happened.

The execs and public relations people of the power company had declared a "general emergency" but went on the air every few hours and swore that nothing was seriously wrong - just a slight problem or glitch with a valve reading. You could actually see them sweat as they lied.

Then the bad news started coming out little by little. On Friday, the governor in Harrisburg recommended all pregnant women and young children should leave the area. That did it.

Luckily, we were northwest of the "incident" and the now-admitted released radioactive drift and, according to the weather news, it was headed southeast.

I was on cafeteria duty in a middle school and watched as parents came in, grabbed their children and left. They didn't bother to check with the front office or the teachers.

Then, we had to comfort the children who were crying because their parents hadn't come for them yet. When the last child left, we were out of there.

Where? Any place northwest. The Pennsylvania Turnpike west was bumper to bumper but at least it was away from the radioactive drift and away from Three Mile Island.

Later, I learned that both the chief of police and the mayor of Middletown had ordered all their people and their families out but they would stay to patrol and look for looters.

No problem. The potential looters left, too!

Eventually, we ended up in northern Pennsylvania, where we could pick up the New York channels and learn what had happened. It had been really bad and they even suspected a partial core meltdown. Decades later, this was proven to be true.

About 10 days later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was contained and we went home.

Of course, it probably will never happen here but there is another problem that bothers me. What do we plan on doing with the spent radioactive fuel rods? Plan on burying them in 2017 in some mountain in a state that doesn't want them? Keep them in water tanks - until when?

It is estimated that there are 50,000 tons of these poisonous, super-hot spent fuel rods. Wait! Here's an idea. Instead of Yucca Mountain in Nevada (which may never open) maybe our president would donate part of his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a repository for these lethal objects. That would prove his dedication to nuclear energy!

After all, they will be mostly harmless in a few thousand years - we think.

--Thomas Gale was a Times community columnist for 2005. E-mail: GALEHuntsville1@aol.com

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
July 01, 2007

Editorial: No balance in this power

Cheney's unprecedented power, secrecy lead some to wonder: Who is really in charge?

Vice President Dick Cheney's resistance to federal oversight of how his office handles classified information is only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to his behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

A four-part series by The Washington Post last week shows in extraordinary detail how Cheney has, with Bush's blessing, changed the scope and political reach of the vice presidency in a way that has given him powers unlike that of any of his predecessors.

Cheney's influence has permeated and guided policy decisions on everything, including presidential authority, the Iraq invasion, military interrogations and matters of energy, tax law and the environment, the Post reports.

"Before the president casts the only vote that counts," the Post writes, "the final words of counsel nearly always come from Cheney."

Vice presidential aides told the Post that Cheney has persistently and consistently pressed for 77,000 tons of the nation's high-level nuclear waste to be buried in a repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Cheney's mission, as always, places industry interests - in this case, those of the nuclear power industry - above the interests of residents and conservationists who seek science-based decisions regarding environmental safety and protections.

The vice president also drove the Bush administration's rewriting of a Clinton-era policy that was designed to protect national forests from logging, mining and development.

Cheney exerted pressure on lower-ranking federal officials and won policy changes that broadened Clean Air Act definitions, allowing power plants to modify their operations without having to install updated pollution controls. Christine Todd Whitman resigned her post as Environmental Protection Agency administrator over the decision in 2003.

Cheney even guided the revision of rules - with virtually no administration review - governing how military prisoners were to be interrogated, clearing the way for using methods of torture that the United States previously prosecuted as war crimes, the Post reports.

And he did all of it with Bush's knowledge and blessing. Former Vice President Dan Quayle told the Post that when he sought to give Cheney some advice about being vice president, Cheney told him that he and Bush had an "understanding" that Cheney would be "surrogate chief of staff." As a result, Cheney has been afforded access to discussions and policy decisions that no other vice president has had.

As Bush embarks on his final 18 months in office, he undoubtedly seeks to define his legacy. But his legacy has been set. In relinquishing so much power to Cheney, that legacy is destined to be a string of ruinous policies that will bring disastrous consequences for years to come.

---------------------------

Contra Costa Times
July 01, 2007

Nuclear energy hot topic once again

By Jay Lindsay
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON—Thanks to global warming, nuclear energy is hot again. Its promise of abundant, carbon emissions-free power is being pushed by the president and newly considered by environmentalists. But any expansion won't come cheap or easy.

The enormous obstacles facing nuclear power are the same as they were in 1996, when the nation's last new nuclear plant opened near the Watts Bar reservoir in Tennessee after 22 years of construction and $7 billion in costs.

Waste disposal, safe operation and security remain major concerns, but economics may be the biggest deterrent. Huge capital costs combine into an enormous price tag for would-be investors.

There is also fervent anti-nuke opposition waiting to be re-stoked. Jim Riccio of Greenpeace said nuclear advocates are exploiting global warming fears to try to revive an industry that's too risky to fool with.

"You have better ways to boil water," Riccio said.

But environmentalists aren't in lockstep on the issue. Bill Chameides, chief scientist for Environmental Defense, said anything that helps alleviate global warming must be an energy option.

"I think it's somewhat disingenuous that folks who agree that global warming is such a serious issue could sort of dismiss it out of hand," he said. "It's got to be at least considered."

The U.S. has 104 commercial reactors which supply about 20 percent of the country's power. The Department of Energy projects a 45 percent growth in electricity demand by 2030, meaning 35 to 50 new nuclear plants will be needed by then just to maintain nuclear's share of the energy market, said Scott Peterson of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's chief lobbyist.

That growing demand, not global warming, "has been the single biggest factor in companies looking at building large nuclear plants again," Peterson said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been notified that several companies will pursue licenses for up to 33 new reactors, with the first one online in seven years at the earliest.

Earlier this year, projects at existing plants in Illinois and Mississippi received permits for their proposed sites, but it's no guarantee they'll be the first projects completed.

Many of the new plants are proposed in areas that already have existing plants where there is more acceptance of nuclear energy. President Bush visited one of those spots recently when he promoted nuclear energy at the Browns Ferry's Unit 1 reactor in Alabama.

But any major expansion will require selling nuclear in new places, where local opposition may be intense and winning approval may be costly.

"This isn't just a bunch of environmentalists who think this is a bad idea," Riccio said. "It's most people who aren't being paid to think otherwise."

Nuclear power is produced when neutrons split the nucleus of uranium atoms, releasing heat which is used to boil water and produce the steam that drives a plant's turbines. The process is emissions-free and the radioactive waste is contained inside the plant.

The waste is currently stored at individual plants, awaiting permanent transfer to the national Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada. But Yucca Mountain has faced stiff opposition and won't open until the early 2020s at the earliest. By then, it will be too small to hold the waste produced nationally.

Recycling used fuel, which contains 90 percent of its original energy after one use, can reduce waste. "Reprocessing" also produces a plutonium that's nearer to weapons grade, raising fears that widespread reprocessing could increase the risks of nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear energy critics also see the plants themselves as devastating terrorist targets—"predeployed nuclear weapons," as Paul Gunter of the anti-nuclear Nuclear Information and Resource Service calls them.

While opponents fear catastrophe, money may be what kills a nuclear revival. Peterson estimates each new plant will cost about $3 billion, but the industry has a history of construction delays and cost overruns.

The 2005 energy bill passed by Congress provides subsidies for the first six plants, which the industry sees as a one-time "jump start," Peterson said.

"If we can't be competitive after those first few reactors, then companies will stop building them," he said. "No one is building nuclear plants because they have a religious belief in nuclear."

The industry hopes new standardized plant designs will help control costs by taking advantage of cheaper, offsite modular construction. Standardization could also allow plants to share parts and work crews, Peterson said.

He said the new designs are also safer because they incorporate the lessons of Three Mile Island, which had a partial meltdown in 1979 after workers misread a valve and mistakenly thought cooling water was getting into the reactor.

The new systems have fewer valves and less piping, relying primarily on gravity to deliver cooling water to the reactor.

Peterson said the industry has proven it can safely store its waste, and will be able to do so until Yucca Mountain is open. Nuclear plants also have elaborate security, including heavily armed guards trained to deal with various attack scenarios, including multiple truck bombings and suicide attack by wide bodied airplane, similar to the Sept. 11 attacks, Peterson said.

Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder who's become a fervent nuclear energy advocate and industry consultant, said the industry needs to prepare for such worst case scenarios, but those shouldn't drive the debate over nuclear energy.

Moore said his former environmentalist allies, some of whom now deride him as a corporate shill, are stuck in a Cold War mentality that lumps together the benefits and dangers of nuclear technology.

"You don't ban the beneficial uses of a technology just because that same technology can be used for evil," he said. "Otherwise we would never have harnessed fire."

Chameides of Environmental Defense said he thinks nuclear power is safe and that the waste problem has a technical solution, but he needs convincing to endorse a nuclear resurgence. He's waiting to see the industry move aggressively to address concerns about waste and security. He's also skeptical the nuclear industry can survive without continued subsidies, which he opposes.

"I'm a scientist not an economist," Chameides added. "I'm willing to possibly be wrong."

---------------------------

San Luis Obispo Tribune
July 01, 2007

Nuclear Renaissance

Reactor trend is to use same site

But local officials want the waste problem settled before allowing extra reactors at Diablo Canyon

By David Sneed
dsneed@thetribunenews.com

After the state’s two nuclear power utilities announced last week they are interested in joining a nationwide nuclear renaissance, local officials said they are concerned about the continuing stockpile of highly radioactive used reactor fuel at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Jack Keenan, Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s chief nuclear officer, told the state Energy Commission on Thursday that new nuclear reactors are part of the mix of energy sources the utility is looking at as it plans its energy supplies for the next 25 years.

Officials with San Onofre nuclear generating station near San Clemente have expressed

a similar interest in new nuclear plants. And several utilities, mostly in the Southeast, have specific plans for new nuclear reactors that they are planning to submit to the federal government for licensing.

Most of the more than 30 new nuclear reactors being planned nationwide will be added to existing nuclear plants rather than building new plants. However, PG&E has not proposed a new reactor at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, said Pete Resler, Diablo Canyon spokesman. The utility is looking regionally as well as in adjacent states for possible locations.

“There are so many factors in picking a new site,” he said. “We haven’t delved too deeply into any of those things at this stage.”

County Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Jerry Lenthall said a permanent solution to the storage of highly radioactive used reactor fuel needs to be found before any new reactors are proposed locally.

“Waste is my number one concern,” Lenthall said. “I’m not happy with having it in my backyard.”

Opening of a centralized underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is at least a decade away. In the meantime, PG&E is constructing an aboveground dry cask storage facility at Diablo Canyon that will give the plant enough capacity to store all the plant’s spent fuel through 2025.

PG&E is a top taxpayer

The state’s two operating nuclear plants provide about 13 percent of the state’s electricity. Additionally, there are two closed nuclear plants that have stockpiles of spent fuel. One is in Humboldt County and the other is near Sacramento.

The county has little authority in permitting new nuclear reactors compared to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gibson said. He added he is “very interested” in seeing a cost-benefit analysis done that would determine the economic feasibility of building new nuclear plants.

Because of Diablo Canyon, PG&E is the leading payer of property taxes in San Luis Obispo County. These taxes mostly benefit county government and local school districts.

Ed Valentine, superintendent of San Luis Coastal Unified School District, said the district would welcome any responsible exploration of clean power.

“If it is responsible and beneficial, then it’s something we would be interested in seeing move forward, but both conditions must be determined,” he said.

Locating and permitting a nuclear reactor is a much more complicated and lengthy process than building another type of power plant. This will limit the number of locations for a new reactor, Resler said.

Possible limitations

Some of the factors PG&E will take into consideration, if it decides to move ahead with a new reactor, include the availability of cooling water, how receptive the local community is and the ability to install transmission lines.

“The bottom line is that it will be a business decision,” Resler said. “That will limit our options greatly.”

Cooling water could be particularly problematic. Diablo Canyon uses billions of gallons of ocean water a day to cool its turbines. However, state and federal regulators are growing increasingly hostile to this so-called once-through cooling because of the damage it does to the marine environment.

PG&E officials maintain that the damage cooling system does to the ocean is minimal and causes fewer environmental impacts than other cooling methods, such as cooling towers.

Rochelle Becker, who heads the watchdog group Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said these environmental issues coupled with a state law that prohibits new reactors until the Yucca Mountain repository is ready will prevent any new plants from being built.

She is concerned that talk of new reactors will distract the public from the more pressing issue of whether Diablo Canyon’s two operating licenses should be renewed. The licenses will expire in the mid- 2020s, and PG&E is expected to apply to renew them for an additional 20 years.

Tribune staff writers Bob Cuddy and AnnMarie Cornejo contributed to this report.

--Reach David Sneed at 781-7930.

---------------------------

Sydney Morning Herald
July 01, 2007

Warning on nuclear waste storage

Anne Davies Herald Correspondent in Washington

AUSTRALIA should allow nuclear waste to be stored in the outback as part of a worldwide effort to secure fissile material and prevent it falling into the hands of terrorists, the former US ambassador on disarmament and weapons of mass destruction, Robert Gallucci, believes.

"The thing that keeps national security strategists awake at night is not nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea," he told the Herald in an interview before his arrival in Australia tomorrow. "It's fissile material in the hands of a terrorist organisation.

"Against that threat we have no answer. We can't deter it; we can't negotiate. You have got to make sure they don't get the material in the first place."

Dr Gallucci, who spent 21 years with the US State Department and is an expert on nuclear proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, will visit Australia this week to talk to government officials and speak at several conferences.

He is now dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University but his experience has included being deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission overseeing the disarmament of Iraq after the first Gulf War and the chief US negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994.

The former president Bill Clinton made him special envoy on disarmament and weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Gallucci's message to Australian officials may not be entirely welcome. He said Australia, because of its geological stability, space and stable political climate, was well placed to become a repository for nuclear material.

"It's not a technical challenge, it's a political challenge," he said, noting that the US storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, approved in 2002, was still not commissioned.

Dr Gallucci said the lack of storage meant that countries that had nuclear reactors were reprocessing their fuel rods and producing additional plutonium or highly enriched uranium, both of which were highly fissile and could be used in a dirty bomb.

"What do you do when you find yourself in a hole? Stop digging. We are in a hole now. The first thing to do is to stop producing more plutonium or highly enriched uranium, and the second thing is to secure all that we have. The third thing is to bury what we have."

Dr Gallucci said the risks of terrorists getting hold of material for a nuclear device were growing with the rise in the amount of fissile material in countries that had inadequate storage and security.

---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 30, 2007

Yucca Mountain team may have to stop using state water

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Gibbons has remained mum on the issue. The Review-Journal last week asked the governor's communication director about Gibbons' stance on the matter.

"The governor and his staff are looking into this issue and all of its potential ramifications," Communications Director Brent Boynton said Friday.

Taylor has said he never granted the Energy Department permission to use Nevada water for drilling bore holes to gather scientific data. Under a court-approved agreement, the Energy Department is only supposed to use the state's water for flushing toilets, fire suppression and dust control.

The Energy Department does not have approval to use Nevada water for scientific investigation of the site, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The samples are being gathered from deep below where the Energy Department wants to put surface facilities for handling and aging spent nuclear fuel. The samples are needed for a license application that the Energy Department intends to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008.

---------------------------

Sacramento Bee
June 30, 2007

Nuke power -- time to re-energize?

By Steve Wiegand
Bee Columnist

Here's what's new on nuclear energy in California:

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But only a bit. The Assembly has killed an effort to repeal the state's moratorium on new nuclear plants, and a bill to make it tougher for the current nukes to extend their life spans is still alive.

But 31 years after legislators and Gov. Jerry Brown imposed the ban, the prospects of nuclear expanding its role in the state's ongoing energy drama remain dim.

The 1976 moratorium requires the state Energy Commission to assure the Legislature that there's a good way to permanently and safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel, or to reprocess fuel rods, before any new plants can open in California.

In 1978 and again in 2005, the commission formally said ixnay. Another report is due to lawmakers and the guv in November. And judging from the tone at two days of commission hearings on the subject this week, the answer is almost certainly going to be the same: No new nukes even started in California for at least a decade.

Nuclear power already plays a sizeable supporting part in the state's ongoing energy drama, although that may be a surprise to people who figured nukes lost their glow about the time Three Mile Island had a meltdown in 1979.

Actually, California still gets about 15 percent of its electricity supply from nuclear plants.

"It's something of a backbone of energy production in the state," said Steven McClary, an energy consultant hired by the commission to help produce the November report.

But the backbone is arthritic, crippled by a daunting burden of scientific debate, bureaucratic bungling and political intransigence.

The federal nuke waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., which was supposed to open in 1998, won't even get an operating license before next year and won't open until 2017 at the very earliest.

A fair number of scientists say the site isn't safe. Nevada politicians -- notably U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- are adamantly opposed and may have the clout to cut much of the funding for Yucca Mountain, and there is an impression the U.S. Department of Energy couldn't organize a one-car funeral, let alone build a nuclear waste dump.

As for recycling waste, the draft report by consultant McClary's firm notes that the Bush administration last year proposed something called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which is supposed to find a way to recycle spent fuel.

That's a marked departure from 25 years of federal opposition to commercial reprocessing because of fears the recycled fuel might be used to make nuclear weapons. But GNEP is still a very iffy proposition, and years, if not decades, away from having any real impact.

So, that leaves California with 2,437 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel within its borders, more than $1 billion in California ratepayer money already spent on getting Yucca Mountain off the ground, so to speak, and no real prospect of turning nuclear plant waste into anything useful.

Of course other states face the same problems. But since they don't have 30-year-old moratoriums that discourage any substantive planning, about 20 nuclear plants are at least being looked at elsewhere in the country.

Maybe it's time to rethink California's 1976 ban. In the last year or so, we've turned down coal and rejected building a liquefied natural gas terminal off the coast. Renewable energy is only going to go so far in a state of 37 million.

And notwithstanding the merits of conservation, changing the kinds of light bulbs we use just isn't going to be enough to keep them lit up.

--Reach Steve Wiegand at (916) 321-1076 or swiegand@ sacbee.com. Back columns at www.sacbee.com/wiegand

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Las Vegas Sun
June 29, 2007

Berkley plans her strategy for green behind the scenes

By Lisa Mascaro <lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com>

WASHINGTON - If ever there was a chance for Rep. Shelley Berkley to shine, this is it.

As the House prepares to take up its massive energy package, the Nevada congresswoman has a unique opportunity to help craft the debate.

The West is on the forefront of energy issues, and Nevada's experience in producing green electricity from the sun, wind and underground steam could serve as an example as the nation tries to pull away from its reliance on fossil-fuel sources.

With her interest in energy issues as well as her own legislation spelling out ways for the nation to go green, Berkley has the background needed to be an advocate among her peers.

But as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several powerful House committee chairmen unveiled their energy package on Thursday, Berkley was nowhere to be found.

Berkley plans to do her heavy lifting offstage, pressing lawmakers through her position on the Ways and Means Committee. Once in a while she will take to the House floor to make her case.

"What I intend to do in the debate on the floor is use Nevada as an example of what is possible," Berkley, a Democrat, said this week. "I'm going to continue to work with my colleagues to make sure as much of my legislation gets through - I don't want my future grandchildren to have to rely on the Saudis to gas up their cars."

The pressure for alternative energy is now on the lower chamber after the Senate last week failed to pass key green-power proposals. Senators agreed to increase fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks for the first time in decades, but they were unable to press forward on other popular renewable energy measures.

Senate Republicans blocked a plan to set a national goal for renewable electricity production, as Nevada and more than 20 states have done. Republicans also shot down a plan to get rid of $30 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and give some of it to green energy producers in Nevada and elsewhere.

As Nevada has been a leader in both, Berkley has a great interest in ensuring her home state's needs get addressed in the energy bill.

Tiernan Sittenfeld, a policy director at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental lobby, said members such as Berkley will be crucial in articulating the issues as House debate moves forward.

"Being from the West where so much is happening on the energy front, she's well positioned to play a lead role," Sittenfeld said.

Last week, as Ways and Means endured an eight-hour session debating tax policy for the energy package, Berkley was pressing for the tax credits needed for Nevada's growing renewable energy sector.

The state is obviously rich in solar capability and geothermal is something of a holy grail in Nevada, where the growing industry plans to have enough plants in development this summer to double production.

Green energy producers have pleaded with Congress to extend beyond 2009 the production tax credits - the 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour they now receive , which amounts to millions of dollars annually.

With those credits to expire at the end of 2008, producers say they cannot continue investing in new plants without the certainty the credits will be there to help their bottom line.

A tax package that would have secured the credits was shot down in the Senate, where Republicans including Nevada Sen. John Ensign said they could not support paying for renewables at the expense of the oil and gas industry, which would have lost tax breaks.

Republicans argued that saddling oil companies with what amounts to new taxes would result in a gasoline price jump that some estimate would be $6 a gallon.

Berkley voted in favor of green tax credits in committee. Fellow committee member Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev, voted against the package because of a $6 billion green power fund that he fears could be used to create more nuclear power plants and therefore more nuclear waste. Nevada's Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for a nuclear waste repository.

"The congressman is definitely open to alternative energy sources," spokesman Matt Leffingwell said. "The problem is if nuclear's being touted as a green energy source, but where does that waste go? Nevada."

Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, said after the disappointing showing in the Senate, his industry is depending on the House to secure the tax breaks his industry says it needs to be a player in the market.

He wants to believe Berkley can play a role for Nevada's green energy producers, but his optimism only goes so far. The fight can be difficult and Berkley, a five-term congresswoman, is still considered young by Hill standards.

"The problem is, she's new to the committee, she isn't in leadership," Gawell said. "Give her a couple of years."

--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.

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Victoria Advocate
June 29, 2007

Good for The Environment?

By Gabe Semenza
Victoria Advocate

Nuclear power plants conjure up two contrasting environmental images.

Those who oppose nuclear power paint a picture highlighted with radioactive leaks, the accumulation of spent fuel, routine releases of toxic isotopes and the potential for catastrophic core meltdowns.

Supporters use a softer brush. They say new plants are safe, non-polluting and a canvas for counteracting global warming.

Those supporters include Exelon Nuclear, a company that announced Thursday that it might build a nuclear plant in Matagorda or Victoria counties. Victoria County is a proposed secondary location.

"Texas needs power," said Craig Nesbit, an Exelon spokesman.

In Texas, nuclear power provides 11 percent of energy consumed. As the state's population grows, so does its energy needs.

The state's electric industry, meanwhile, ranks highest in the U.S. for carbon dioxide emissions, third highest in nitrogen oxide emissions and fifth highest in sulfur dioxide emissions, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Scientists say oil, natural gas and coal plants - 70 percent of U.S. energy sources - contribute heavily to global warming.

William Burchill, a former Texas A&M professor and nuclear power expert, said in a release that these "dirty" energy sources beg for a "cleaner" nuclear power replacement.

"The operating record of current nuclear power plants is excellent," Burchill said, adding that compared to fossil fuel stations, nuclear plants store a very limited number of chemicals.

Nesbit said collectively, the 104 U.S. nuclear plants today - because of their zero emissions - is equivalent to removing 131 million automobiles from the road each year, or 96 percent of "all cars out there."

Nuclear power plants do not emit carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or greenhouse gases, Nesbit said.

"The environmental benefits are so huge."

Core meltdowns

Adrian Heymer, senior director of new plant development for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the probability of a core meltdown "is less than one in 10 million. We've really reinvented the industry."

The institute says nuclear power has a low impact on the environment because it's emission-free and does not burn anything to produce electricity.

"There have been fires, plants coming offline, fires in switch gear rooms ... but none of that resulted in a release of radioactivity into the environment that would result in any impact to health," Heymer said.

Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, a national nonprofit in opposition to nuclear power, said U.S. plants teeter on disasters similar to Chernobyl, the Russian reactor known for its meltdown.

Riccio wrote a report detailing 200 U.S. meltdown "near misses."

"Every one of these reactors has the potential to wipe out the state in which it operates," Riccio said. "I've yet to see any evidence that they're safer. Basically, it's not a viable technology moving forward, especially if you want to affect climate change."

Riccio said that the nuclear industry - "which is fighting for relevance" - is trying to sell nuclear power as part of the cure for global warming. But since nuclear plants require about 10 years for construction, he suggests they can't help to solve a problem he said needs fixing today.

"They are environmental disasters waiting to happen, and you haven't even solved the waste problem yet," he added.

Spent fuel, which has no permanent home in the U.S., worries critics of nuclear power. The U.S. government is constructing a permanent underground repository inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but no one knows if it will open as scheduled in 2010.

Until then, spent fuel is stored on-site.

Nesbit, the Exelon spokesman, said spent fuel is harmless because of the way it's stored at plants. He said the used fuel - pellets the size of your fingertip - are housed in impenetrable, 3-foot thick concrete canisters.

"Spent fuel doesn't have any impact on people," Nesbit said.

Inside the plant, the fuel doesn't explode, he added. That's because less than 5 percent of uranium in nuclear fuel is fissionable, a concentration too low for an explosion.

If the fuel gets out of the coolant area, Heymer said, it still goes through a containment area, which can withstand hurricane-force winds. "Before the public is in danger, you have to have three failures: pressure vessel, coolant area and a failure of the containment. And even if the containment fails, we have measures, if you like, that scrub any release path."

If, after all that, radioactive material is released, those living within 10 miles of the plant - depending on wind - would be in the greatest danger, he said.

If it or any other plant had a major leak, local governments are immediately informed and the community is advised through an emergency alert network.

"They would let us know if something happens," said Bay City Mayor Richard Knapik, who lives in Matagorda County, home to the nuclear plant South Texas Project.

About seven years ago, the plant had a minor leak, but it was contained before it threatened public health, Knapik said.

Riccio's not sold.

"As U.S. corporations contemplate building more nuclear reactors, it is important that our government regulators remember Chernobyl and speak honestly and forthrightly about the very real dangers posed by splitting atoms," Riccio said. "Nuclear reactors are inherently dangerous."

--Gabe Semenza is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6519 or gsemenza@vicad.com

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Victoria Advocate
June 29, 2007

Disposal of used nuclear fuel is a hot political topic

David Tewes
Victoria Advocate

The thought of radioactive material being hauled over public highways alongside the family sedan or by rail past neighborhoods is at the heart of the safety debate.

Fresh fuel going to the plant is no more radioactive than the family dinner table, said Henriks Zeile, an emeritus member of the American Nuclear Society.

"However, used fuel is quite dangerous because it does have quite a bit of radiation associated with it - in fact, lots of radiation associated with it," he said.

But Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, said transportation of radioactive waste is not even a hot topic for now, should the company even decide to build a plant in Matagorda or Victoria counties.

"The debate hasn't gotten into transportation yet because nobody knows where we're going to take it," he said, noting the federal government hasn't established a permanent site where the radioactive material can be deposited.

"I will tell you, however, on a technological basis, the transportation piece is not really an issue at all," he said.

The canisters used to move the material have been mounted on jet engines and crashed into concrete block walls at 600 mph and put into pools of jet fuel and burned for eight hours without any problem, he said.

"These canisters are amazing," Nesbit said. "There's not much you could do to them."

Kevin Kamps with the watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service said he doesn't believe the shipments are as safe as the nuclear industry would like the public to think.

"Even rail shipments are vulnerable to severe accidents or terrorist attacks," he said. "Everyone of those containers on a trail will contain 240 times the long-lasting radiation released at Hiroshima, just to give you an idea of how much deadly cargo is inside."

Even if a fraction of the material was released in an accident or attack, Kamps said, it would be disastrous.

Zeile said multiple agencies are involved in planning routes and determining the best methods for safely shipping the radioactive material.

"It's a very coordinated effort," he said. "The U.S. Department of Transportation identifies the preferred routes. It basically identifies interstate highways and bypass routes around the cities because they don't particularly care to move the stuff through cities."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is charged with approving all transportation security plans for those routes.

"There's satellite tracking put in place for these movements to make sure they know exactly where the fuel is at any one time," he said. "They keep the shipments secret. They don't publicize them anyplace."

Nesbit said spent fuel may have to be moved by truck from a plant to a nearby rail spur.

"But the vast majority of it - 80 or 90 percent of it - moves by rail," he said. "These are unmarked rail cars, and they are heavily secured."

Nesbit said the routes are not published. He said while people might be able to guess the routes, they would not know when the shipments were taking place.

Director Ray Miller with the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which coordinates transportation planning in Victoria County, said he thinks that group should be involved in route selection if a plant is built near Victoria.

"The Metropolitan Planning Organization would be a good sounding board," he said. "You've got a good cross-section from both the county government and city government on the MPO."

Miller said the city is preparing a hazardous materials route plan for Victoria, but it applies to non-radioactive material. He said he'd have to research how material going to and from the nuclear plant would be covered - if at all - by the plan.

"I'd just like to make sure we keep materials classified as hazardous away from the urban centers," he said.

--David Tewes is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6515 or dtewes@vicad.com

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Victoria Advocate
June 29, 2007

Answering some questions about the nuclear plant

Q. IS THERE GOING TO BE A NEW NUCLEAR PLANT built in the Victoria area?

A. Matagorda County is Exelon Nuclear's first choice; Victoria County is the secondary site. "The decision to actually build the $4 billion plant still hasn't been made. We are going to file for a combined construction and operating license and we hope to get it," said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear.

Q. HOW LONG WILL IT BE BEFORE WE KNOW if Exelon Nuclear has decided to build?

A. According to Craig Nesbit, that decision could take four or five years. "If we had to make that call today - yes or no - it would be no because there are certain conditions we must meet, and they're not things that we necessarily have control over."

Q. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CONDITIONS that will be considered in this decision?

A. One key factor is the federal government has not yet developed a permanent site where commercial plants can deposit their highly radioactive wastes. Until that happens, Nesbit said, Exelon will not build a plant in Texas or anywhere else.

Q. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE to bring a nuclear plant on line?

A. "From the day you say you think you'd like to build one, you're looking at close to a decade before you're actually producing power," Nesbit said. Exelon Nuclear anticipates opening no sooner than eight years from now.

Q. WHAT EFFECT WILL A NUCLEAR PLANT HAVE on the air quality of the area?

A. Nuclear power plants do not emit carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or greenhouse gases. Collectively, the 104 U.S. nuclear plants today - because of their zero emissions - are equivalent to removing 131 million automobiles from the road each year, or 96 percent of "all cars out there," Nesbit said.

Q. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF A CORE MELTDOWN?

A. Adrian Heymber, senior director of new plant development for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the probability of a core meltdown "is less than one in 10 million.

Q. DOES THE TRANSPORTING OF FUEL FOR THE PLANT POSE A THREAT to the general public?

A. Spokeswoman Beth Hayden with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said movement of fresh fuel to the plant is not a significant danger. "There is some radiation, but very little," she said.

Q. WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SPENT FUEL? How much of a threat is it to the public?

A. Used, or spent, fuel is highly radioactive. NRC officials say the spent fuel can be safely stored on site. Until a federal repository is built, spent fuel is not transported from the nuclear plants.

Q. WHEN WILL A NATIONAL REPOSITORY FOR NUCLEAR WASTE be completed?

A. According to Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, the U.S. government is constructing a permanent underground repository inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but no one knows if it will open as scheduled in 2010. It faces fierce political opposition.

Q. HOW MUCH WATER DOES A NUCLEAR PLANT need for operation?

A. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water - between 10,000 and 32 million gallons of water a day.

Q. DOES VICTORIA COUNTY CURRENTLY HAVE ENOUGH WATER to supply a nuclear plant without affecting its own supply?

A. I think we do have enough water currently, but that depends on how other industries grow here." said Garrett Engelking, general manager of the Victoria County Groundwater Conservation District.

Q. DOES THE PUBLIC HAVE ANY VOICE IN LICENSING PROCESS of a nuclear plant?

A. The NRC will seek public input before issuing the license. "The NRC will hold hearings at the location itself or in the closest nearby facility," Nesbit said. "It's a very, very open and transparent process. The only things you will have difficulty looking at are the things that relate to security that are highly classified."

Q. WILL A NUCLEAR PLANT BE A TARGET for terrorist attack?

A. Because of the security surrounding nuclear power plants, terrorists normally would look for an easier target to hit," said Bob Watts, director of the emergency management for Matagorda County.

Q. HOW WOULD A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT BUILT in this area affect our local job market?

A. According to Adrian Heymer, senior director of new plant deployment of Nuclear Energy Institute, a project of this size could possibly add anywhere from to 1,800 to 2,000 jobs during the construction phase, with between 450 to 550 permanent employees after completion. Craig Nesbit, Exelon spokesman, estimated the permanent workforce at 700 jobs.

Q. WHAT ARE THE PROJECTED EARNINGS of nuclear plant employees?

A. Information released by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated nuclear and petroleum engineers are the highest-paid specialties, earning nearly $80,000 a year, not including overtime. Adrian Heymer stated, "They tend to have salaries higher than what's in the immediate locality,"he said. "Off the top of my head, a skilled craftsman's salary - including overtime - will easily top six figures."

Q. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT LOCAL TAXES and economy?

A. A plant would boost the local and state economy, Heymer said, because nuclear plants tend to pay about $20 million in taxes a year. "Then you have the overall benefits to the local economy," he said. "Just looking at taxes and overall boost to the local economy, you're looking at about $500 million a year per reactor."

Q. WILL THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NUCLEAR PLANT in this area have any impact on the uranium mining proposed in the area?

A. "A new nuclear plant in South Texas should help mining operations, but is not critical for the success of the mine as uranium is in short supply and demand is high," said Harry Anthony of Uranium Energy Corp.

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Atlanta Daily Report
June 29, 2007

Ga. business re-creates itself as nuclear clean-up company

Perma-Fix Environmental Services’ purchase of company gives Atlanta business a good shot at participating in the $100B clean-up operation of a WWII-era site

By Philippa Maister
Special to the Daily Report

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT that produced the world’s first nuclear bombs during World War II officially ended in 1947. But its lingering effects could produce a steady, 30-year stream of work for a Georgia industrial waste firm that has reinvented itself as a nuclear clean-up company.

This month, Atlanta-based Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc. bought a company that can treat nuclear waste near the site in Hanford, Wash., where the plutonium for the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, Japan, was manufactured.

The Hanford site, which was closed down in the 1970s, represents the largest environmental clean-up in the world and will cost around $100 billion to remediate, according to Perma-Fix’s founder, chairman and chief executive Louis F. Centofanti.

Centofanti said Perma-Fix’s acquisition of Pacific EcoSolutions Inc., called PEcos, this month gives the company a good shot at participating in the clean-up and capturing much of that work. PEcos holds licenses and permits to treat low-level radioactive and mixed waste at its facility adjacent to the site. It also has unique treatment technologies.

The $20-million acquisition also gives Perma-Fix a competitive advantage because the Department of Energy’s years-long permitting process creates a significant barrier to entry.

Founded in 1990 as an industrial waste management company, Perma-Fix in May agreed to sell its industrial waste segment for $9 million to Wayne, Mich.-based Environmental Quality Co. In 2006, Perma-Fix reported $87 million in revenue, of which 56 percent derived from its nuclear business.

Centofanti said the company moved into low-level radioactive and mixed waste management in the mid-1990s to seize opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War.

“The Department of Energy had to clean up a lot of the facilities formerly used for weapons production, and the work seemed an ideal fit for our technology,” Centofanti said. “Our Gainesville, Fla., facility was already treating some radioactive waste, and we felt very strongly that we could compete for the DOE work.”

Instead of using incinerators to dispose of nuclear waste, Perma-Fix uses specific water-based chemical treatments for different types of waste.

Commercial clients like hospitals, research labs, institutions and utility companies account for 40 percent of its nuclear business. These facilities generate low-level waste such as gloves, filters, paper, cleaning rags or obsolete equipment that have been contaminated by contact with radioactive materials. Government work accounts for the remaining 60 percent.

The PEcos acquisition creates an opportunity for Perma-Fix to advance into the treatment, storage and processing of high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford site, Centofanti said. The company is already treating mid-level waste at its facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was developed—and where nuclear weapons development continues under the National Nuclear Security Administration.

He added that Perma-Fix is the only U.S. company with a permit to treat mid-level waste, which has higher levels of plutonium and uranium than low-level waste and may include classified materials.

Perma-Fix plans to extend these capabilities to Hanford. “Our vision over the long run is to move into the treatment of high level waste from commercial reactors,” Centofanti said. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear power plants generate 2,000 metric tons of high-level waste each year.

Robert G. Fontana, a portfolio manager with Portfolio Capital Management in Charlotte, N.C., which has invested in Perma-Fix, said holding the only permit to treat mid-level radioactive waste gives the company an advantage.

“It takes five to seven years to get a permit, and the Department of Energy has years of backlog of this waste that they need to dispose of. At some point, this will be a material opportunity for the company,” Fontana said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is currently reviewing Perma-Fix’s application for permission to treat radioactive polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, chemical pollutants produced by commercial reactors and the government’s ongoing nuclear weapons program. If the application is eventually approved, the company could be the only one in the United States authorized to treat this waste also.

There’s a significant volume of radioactive PCBs waiting to be treated, according to Fontana. He said they are currently being stored by utilities that refuse to provide information. “This could be a large, if unquantifiable, opportunity,” he said.

Centofanti sees another potential future market in Great Britain, where the government is weighing its own nuclear disposal strategy.

The growing interest in nuclear power as a solution to America’s energy crunch also holds promise—provided waste and storage problems can be resolved.

Centofanti—a regional administrator for the Department of Energy under the Carter administration—thinks the solution is in reach, if the government would abandon its opposition to the reprocessing of reactor cores. He said Carter opposed reprocessing, fearing nuclear materials could fall into the wrong hands.

Instead of disposing of nuclear cores untreated in Yucca Mountain, Nev.—as has been controversially ordered by Congress—he said it makes more sense to chemically treat them, extract and reprocess the uranium they still contain, and then store the treated cores.

“Our chemistry would be the right approach to do that, and we could play in that field,” he said. “Reprocessing is already being done in the rest of the word. The expertise is there, and the commercial sector would do it if the government would commit to it.”

--Philippa Maister is a freelance writer.

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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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