Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 2, 2007
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Senator Harry Reid
August 1, 2007
Press Release of Senator Reid
Reid: DOE Hiring PR Firm To Do Yucca's Dirty Work
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada released the following statement after learning the Department of Energy is searching for a public relations firm:
"Nevadans know that the Energy Department has a long history of playing fast and loose with the facts when it comes to Yucca Mountain, but the fact that the Department is hiring a P.R. firm to do its dirty work is yet another example that this project is on its last legs. The D.O.E. and the nuclear industry are desperate to turn Nevada into a nuclear dumping ground, despite the risks it poses to Nevada and the communities through which the waste would travel. The Energy Department should stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars and work on ways to safely store the waste at the sites where it is produced."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 01, 2007
State files court papers to halt Yucca Mountain water use
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Federal officials overseeing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project put themselves in a "legal no man's land" when they used Nevada's water to drill bore holes without permission and shouldn't be allowed to continue, state attorneys said in court papers filed Tuesday.
The Department of Energy "has been using water for at least a year in violation of the understanding the parties had. And now, incredibly, DOE continues to use Nevada's water for a purpose outside the agreement and unsupported in federal law," Nevada's Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said in an interview Tuesday.
"They have the audacity to seek emergency relief (from the courts) based on their own misdeeds," Adams said.
Documents the state filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas constitute Nevada's latest response to an attempt by the Justice Department to persuade Judge Roger Hunt to block a cease-and-desist order issued by the state.
A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 15 on the Justice Department's emergency motion on behalf of the Department of Energy which, despite the cease-and-desist order, has continued to use Nevada's water from wells near the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department needs the water to finish collecting rock samples needed for a license application the agency intends to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008.
"Merely because DOE finds itself in a legal no-man's-land of its own making does not justify the preemption of Nevada water law," wrote Senior Deputy Attorney General Michael Wolz, who represents State Engineer Tracy Taylor and Allen Biaggi, director of Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Adams, who represents the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, stated in her filing that "the public interest in holding public officials accountable for deliberate or reckless violations, and in respecting the sovereignty of the State of Nevada, outweighs the speculative harm to DOE associated with a possible delay in meeting a self-imposed and completely artificial schedule for filing a license application."
The Energy Department has claimed that it will suffer contractual damages in the range of $90,000 per day if the drilling project is curtailed, but Adams said that's no reason to allow the drilling to continue.
"In any event, DOE's monetary loss is predicated entirely on DOE's unilateral decision to hire drilling contractors for an unauthorized use of water for a purpose outside the parties' agreement," Adams wrote.
She concluded that the department is not entitled to a preliminary injunction to use Nevada's water for its bore hole drilling project.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, states in an affidavit that the Energy Department engaged in "an effort to 'fly under the radar' by uniquely failing to communicate" with Nevada's counsel or directly with the state engineer.
Loux cites an internal Energy Department memo that describes the ongoing drilling program as "site characterization activities."
"If DOE were to lose its legal challenge and were not allowed to use ground water on the site, the department could truck in water, which would only delay, not terminate the project," the Feb. 17, 2005, internal memo notes.
Based on the federal nuclear waste law, the site characterization work for which the Energy Department is using the water, to cool and lubricate drill bits and to create mud for collecting soil-and-rock samples, ended five years ago, the state contends.
At that point, the department had 90 days to file a license application for construction of a nuclear waste repository and surface facilities at Yucca Mountain but failed to do so.
"DOE, because of its failure to comply with the NWPA (Nuclear Waste Policy Act) and specifically the congressional mandate to file a license application within 90 days, now finds itself in an unauthorized middle ground where it is neither in site characterization nor the construction stage," Wolz wrote.
"There is certainly no authority that would allow DOE to begin completely new studies such as its bore hole drilling program during this period," he wrote. "Nevada law cannot be deemed to have been preempted by federal law where there is no federal law requiring or even allowing the bore hole drilling program."
Keith Saxe, assistant chief of the Justice Department's Natural Resources Section, won't comment on the Yucca Mountain water issue.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 01, 2007
DOE evaluating media consultants
Contract forthcoming for Yucca public outreach
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is seeking to develop new media and public outreach strategies for when it unveils a long-delayed license application to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
The department is evaluating contract bids for advisers who would help managers on the Yucca Mountain program formulate messages and polish presentations in advance of making the application public.
Spokesman Allen Benson said DOE officials are looking to translate a highly technical science undertaking into terms that can be understood by lay people when it rolls out its license bid to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, possibly next June.
A contract firm also would advise on updating the Yucca Mountain Web site and other supporting materials such as fact sheets and DVDs, and explore new opportunities in streaming video, according to contract documents. Also, the firm would evaluate "an existing community education program and special programs for public schools."
The Energy Department's public communications have been scrutinized and criticized by opponents of the nuclear waste program. Its new bid also drew criticism Tuesday.
"At a time when DOE is crying the blues that they don't have enough money, the notion that they are going to spend an undisclosed amount for what is no more than a PR campaign seems a bit ludicrous to me," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Berkley said Nevada lawmakers should call in Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to seek more information on DOE plans.
"If they are wasting taxpayer money by conducting a PR campaign, we need to ramp up our own efforts in Nevada to provide accurate information," she said.
The House passed an amendment in June cutting off funding for a portal on the Yucca Mountain Web site that describes the nuclear waste project in terms for youngsters after Berkley charged it was thinly veiled propaganda. Congress has yet to take final action on the amendment.
In years past, Nevada leaders sought to restrict DOE advertising for public tours of Yucca Mountain. The tours were conducted for several years but eventually were canceled when the program ran into budget shortages.
Well-known local figures have done public relations work related to Yucca Mountain, among them KLAS-TV reporters George Knapp and Bryan Gresh who in 1991 went to work on behalf of nuclear energy interests. Knapp returned to the station a few years later.
Benson maintained DOE is not launching a "public relations" campaign.
"This is not public relations. That is not what we do," Benson said. "We do not do PR. We inform. We communicate. We take technical information and explain it to the public.
"The license document at this point is going to be between 7,000 and 10,000 pages of highly technical information," Benson said. "The department needs to explain this kind of thing to the public."
Among other things, Benson said, DOE officials have committed to a multi-day public presentation to explain its Yucca research and the license process. The in-depth presentation was suggested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said.
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said DOE officials will try to create public momentum for Yucca Mountain as it heads into a multi-year NRC license review.
"They really are trying to create a climate surrounding the time when the license application gets submitted, to make it seem like a big deal and that they are really headed down the road now," he said.
Nuclear waste burial at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas was supposed to be ready in 1998 but has run into a series of delays because of problems within the program, legal challenges and budget cuts engineered by critics.
A DOE review panel is examining contract bids that were due on July 9. Benson said he did not know when a contract will be awarded. The Energy Department proposed a deal consisting of a base year and four option years, with costs to be determined through the bidding process.
The state of Nevada has a contract that expires this fall with Brown & Partners Advertising, a Las Vegas communications firm, for Yucca Mountain news releases and other assignments.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 01, 2007
Editorial: Pull the plug already
Provision of energy bill that allows expansion of nuclear power should be discarded
It was revealed this week that the Senate's recently passed energy bill could make companies eligible for tens of billions of dollars in federally backed loans to build nuclear power plants.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who wrote the legislation, has said that the provision is intended to provide federal loan guarantees only for the most cutting-edge, state-of-the-art power plants.
In reality, the provision grants the Energy Department the authority to approve virtually unlimited numbers of federal loan guarantees for power plants that use "clean" generating technologies. Under existing law, Congress sets the amount of such loans annually.
According to a story by The New York Times on Tuesday, nuclear industry officials say that under the new bill, loan guarantees could be available to companies proposing to build 28 nuclear reactors, which are considered "clean" in comparison to coal-burning plants. The provision also could allow guarantees for power plants using so-called "clean" coal-burning technology or renewable fuels, the Times reports.
Nuclear industry officials say they need government loan guarantees because banks and investors will not provide funding for the plants without them.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a strong supporter of the nuclear industry and also of this poorly written provision, has said that congressional limits on the volume of loans isn't necessary because power companies would have to pay a fee upfront that covers the cost of the guarantee.
But this isn't simply about money. Without a law that requires annual oversight and consideration by Congress, the Energy Department could open the floodgates for construction of more than two dozen nuclear power plants in a nation that is running out of room to store nuclear waste. The Energy Department's only solution to that problem is the preposterous notion of opening a repository for high-level nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain - an ill-conceived proposal dying a slow and warranted death.
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Ely Daily Times
August 01, 2007
As We See It
Reid forsakes Nevada's interests
Harry Reid's heart is in the right place.
It's the location of his head we question.
His recently announced opposition to the White Pine Energy Station, the Ely Energy Center and a third coal-burning power plant near Mesquite doesn't make much sense environmentally or economically.
And blocking the plants will do nothing to slow global warming, despite the urging of the senator's highly attuned conscience.
It's as if Reid is unaware of what's going on in the broad world outside of the Beltway.
China is building two to three new coal-burning power plants per week, and by many accounts has surpassed the U.S. as the No. 1 producer of greenhouse gases on the planet.
The Chinese government admitted Tuesday it has failed to meet its self-imposed conservation targets, initiated last year. Chinese industrial energy use is 3.4 times the world's average, according to Beijing.
And China's total energy use is soaring, as well, despite the conservation effort, as the Asian giant's economy continues its 28-year boom.
China's economy grew 11.9 percent last quarter, it's largest increase since 1995. So don't expect to see China cut back any time soon, as Sen. Reid expects Nevada to do.
But the Chinese government understands something beyond Sen. Reid's apparent grasp.
It is pressing all of its many local utility companies to shut down their older, more polluting power plants and build more efficient plants with newer technology.
That's exactly what Sierra Pacific Resources claims it's trying to do. The utility needs more power to keep up with Nevada's growth. But it also has older plants that should be taken off line.
We could understand if the senator were demanding proof that all of these newer plants were going to be state of the art and ready to adapt to the developing improvements in carbon dioxide capture and sequestration.
But, no. Reid says the plants would still be filthy.
We would like to see some data from SPR. How much pollution are the current plants emitting? How much less would the EEC produce?
We'd also like to see the senator's counter proposal for building a huge wind farm across the Nevada Test Site that would replace all of Nevada's coal-generated power and adding solar panels to a few hundred thousand Nevada homes.
The senator must have some cost figures and answers to minor problems like transmission lines and the additional problems of putting batteries into the energy-crisis mix. And good geothermal locations seemed to be limited.
We don't believe Reid's opposition reflects reality. Doing as he demands won't save the planet and it could lead to incredibly high electric rates for our neighbors getting their electricity from Nevada Power or Sierra Pacific. And there's the possibility of brown outs if the utilities are not allowed to meet the growing demand. So why is Reid taking the position?
We believe Reid's judgment has been irrevocably tainted with national politics. Nevada issues no longer count as much as they did before he moved to his party's leadership.
Since his first days in the Senate, Reid has fought hard to keep the nuclear waste dump out of Nevada. In that fight he has done whatever he must to gain more power in the Democrat Party.
As he rose in rank, to keep that position, he has pandered to the extreme left, which includes the environmental left.
Reid wants to deliver Nevada as a blue state for the 2008 presidential election, so he's following the example of the majority of presidential hopefuls in his party. He caters to the extremists.
That's where the money and volunteers come from -- but at the cost of accepting their draconian agendas,
We hope the majority of Nevadans see Reid's position as the political theater it is. He no longer represents Nevada interests -- except, of course, for opposing Yucca Mountain.
But was that worth selling his soul for?
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Physics Today
August 01, 2007
Letters
Planning needed for US nuclear weapons
Jim Dawson's Issues and Events piece "Future of US Nuclear Weapons a Tangle of Visions, Science, and Money" (PHYSICS TODAY, February 2007, page 24) piqued my interest. I agree with Bruce Tarter, the former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whom Dawson quotes: If the proposed new bomb, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, is to survive 12 Congresses and as many as four administrations, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had better have a detailed plan in place. The fact that the House of Representatives voted in June to halt funding for the RRW is no surprise.
Look at what's happening with the Yucca Mountain repository because of the lack of a detailed plan. Is the nuclear waste going to be buried hot or cold? Are titanium drip shields going to be used or not? Are the canisters going in tunnels, or will they be buried en masse on the repository floor? No one knows. Congress's interest in the repository was flagging long before Nevada's Harry Reid assumed the helm in the Senate. Look for Yucca Mountain to suffer the same fate as the RRW.
Ron Bourgoin
bourgoinr@edgecombe.edu
Rocky Mount, North Carolina
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KRNV
July 31, 2007
Governor Gibbons Appoints Clark County Commissioner to Nuclear Panel
Gov. Jim Gibbons had quietly made another appointment to a Nevada panel fighting a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. But unlike his last choice, the new appointee isn't likely to cause an uproar among dump foes.
Susan Brager, a Democrat who also is a Clark County commissioner, was named to the state Commission on Nuclear Projects was announced Monday. She replaces former Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams.
Brager says the federal government's proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain --quote-- "does not seem safe to me."
Brager's appointment follows the governor's short-lived appointment of a pro-dump Nye County commissioner, Joni Eastley, to the panel.
Before attending a single meeting, Eastley abruptly resigned as Gibbons was about to carry out his pledge to rescind her appointment.
Eastley says the governor's office had asked her repeatedly to apply. Gibbons said he had been assured she wasn't a dump supporter, but Eastley said she was never asked about her stance on Yucca Mountain.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 31, 2007
NEVADA COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR PROJECTS: Brager appointed to board
Clark County commissioner to replace Myrna Williams
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Gov. Jim Gibbons had quietly made another appointment to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, but unlike his last one, the choice that surfaced Monday isn't likely to cause an uproar among opponents of the nuclear waste repository planned for Yucca Mountain.
Susan Brager, a Democrat who is also a Clark County commissioner, was chosen by Gibbons to replace former Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams, whose term on the state panel expired June 30.
"I will be looking into the issues of the situation and make sure I will be able to make wise decisions," Brager said Monday.
The federal government's plan for Yucca Mountain "does not seem safe to me," she said.
She returned Monday from vacationing in Southern California to find a letter from Gibbons' Boards and Commissions staff congratulating her on her appointment.
As was the case when Gibbons appointed Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley two weeks ago to fill Michon Mackedon's seat on the Nuclear Projects Commission, the latest appointment was news to the commission's chairman Richard Bryan, the former U.S. senator and former Nevada governor.
Bryan said he was pleasantly surprised by the appointment of Brager.
"I think Susan Brager will be a fine addition to the commission and she replaces Myrna Williams who was stalwart in opposition to the dump," he said.
The commission has traditionally and outspokenly opposed the Department of Energy's effort to bury highly radioactive spent fuel and defense waste in the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Gibbons' short-lived appointment of Eastley, whose pro-Yucca views have been documented in several news articles, raised concerns among Nevada's congressional delegation which had been kept in the dark about the governor's choice.
Before attending a single meeting, Eastley abruptly resigned as Gibbons was about to carry out his pledge to rescind her appointment if he found out she was a Yucca Mountain supporter.
Gibbons communications director, Brent Boynton, said that Eastley's seat had not been filled as of Monday.
He confirmed, though, that Joan Lambert had been reappointed to serve another two-year term through June 30, 2009.
Steve Molasky's term also expired June 30. "Even though he was not formally reappointed, he continues to serve at the pleasure of the governor," Boynton said of Molasky.
The terms of Bryan, Larry Brown and Paul Workman, expire on June 30, 2008.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 31, 2007
Nevada opposes use of state water for Yucca Mountain dump
By Brendan Riley
Associated Press Writer
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - A state lawyer urged a federal judge Tuesday to reject the federal government's bid for an injunction to clear the way for continued use of state groundwater for drilling near the planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear waste dump.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams, in a memo submitted to U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas, said the federal Department of Energy has "unclean hands" in trying to override traditional state authority.
The DOE "unilaterally appropriated the water in deliberate and reckless disregard for state law and an agreement among the parties" for a bore-hole drilling program, Adams said.
The public interest in holding the DOE accountable "outweighs the speculative harm to DOE associated with a possible delay in meeting a self-imposed and completely artificial schedule for filing a license application" for the dump, Adams added.
Justice Department attorneys say the drilling is essential for the DOE to show the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a valley near the site picked for the radioactive waste repository is safe from floods and earthquakes.
Keith Saxe, Justice Department assistant natural resources chief, wouldn't comment on the continued use of water after state Engineer Tracy Taylor reinstated a July 20 cease-and-desist order.
"We speak in the courtroom with our papers," Saxe said after the Justice Department filed its emergency request with Hunt. The judge has scheduled an Aug. 15 hearing on the matter.
The Energy Department plans to temporarily store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel in football-field-size buildings in Midway Valley before entombing it nearby in tunnels beneath Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The state has been trying to get inspectors to the area to ensure compliance with Taylor's order. But Justice Department lawyers say inspectors won't be allowed to the site - within the secure federal Nevada Test Site - unless Taylor agrees not to use the inspection to bolster his cease-and-desist order.
The Energy Department plans to include data about subsurface features with a license application Yucca Mountain planners expect to submit by June 2008. Officials argue that delays in collecting the data would push the timeline off a self-imposed schedule.
The plan for the dump, which would contain 77,000 tons of the nation's most highly radioactive waste, has been delayed by legal challenges, money shortages, scientific controversies and political opposition.
The Energy Department was obligated to start accepting waste from nuclear utilities around the country beginning in 1998, but the dump site wasn't picked until 2002 and the site won't open until 2017 under the best-case scenario.
--On the Net:
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
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Las Vegas SUN
July 31, 2007
New appointee named to Nevada anti-nuke dump panel
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Gov. Jim Gibbons had quietly made another appointment to a Nevada panel fighting a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. But unlike his last choice, the new appointee isn't likely to cause an uproar among dump foes.
The appointment of Susan Brager, a Democrat who also is a Clark County commissioner, to the state Commission on Nuclear Projects was announced Monday. She replaces former Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams, whose term on the state panel expired June 30.
"I will be looking into the issues of the situation and make sure I will be able to make wise decisions," Brager said, adding that the federal government's proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain "does not seem safe to me."
Brager returned Monday from vacationing in Southern California to find a letter from Gibbons' Boards and Commissions staff congratulating her on her appointment.
Brager's appointment follows the governor's short-lived appointment of a pro-dump Nye County commissioner, Joni Eastley, to the panel to replace longtime member Michon Mackedon.
The appointment of Eastley, whose pro-Yucca views have been documented in several news articles, raised concerns among Nevada's congressional delegation which had been kept in the dark about the governor's choice.
Before attending a single meeting, Eastley abruptly resigned as Gibbons was about to carry out his pledge to rescind her appointment if he found out she was a Yucca Mountain supporter.
Eastley said later that the governor's office had asked her repeatedly to apply for a seat on the panel. Gibbons said he had been assured she wasn't a dump supporter, but Eastley said she was never asked by the governor's office about her stance on Yucca Mountain.
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
Series: The Power Generation Gap
Can nuclear power help solve global warming? Soaring energy costs? Only if we’re convinced it’s safe. Editor-at-large David Whitford travels cross-country in search of our nuclear future.
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
Going nuclear
The industry is gearing up to build its first new plants in decades. But are we comfortable with that? Join Fortune's David Whitford on a road trip into America's nuclear future.
By David Whitford
Fortune editor-at-large
(Fortune Magazine) -- "We were at heightened security - we were at red," recalls Al Griffith, spokesman for the utility that owns the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.
I'm standing with Griffith on a lawn of plastic grass (real stuff doesn't grow here?) inside the "owner-controlled area" at Seabrook, the outermost of three security zones. It's a glorious late-spring afternoon. Blue sky, scudding clouds, wind whipping across the tidal flats. Griffith is wearing wrap-around Nike sunglasses and a white polo shirt featuring Seabrook's flying-duck logo. Nice tan on this guy. I follow his gaze past coiled strands of concertina wire, beyond a black-windowed BRE (bullet-resistant enclosure) on stilts, to the salt marsh, which serves as a natural buffer between the reactor complex and the New Hampshire resort town of Hampton Beach.
It was a Friday night, Griffith continues: March 21, 2003. One day after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The whole country was on red alert. In Seabrook fog lay heavy on the marsh. Just before 9 P.M., something out there, something deep in the darkness, triggered the "perimeter intruder detection system." At nearly the same moment, on the opposite side of the 900-acre complex, an unfamiliar vehicle approached a checkpoint. When armed guards waved the vehicle down, the driver suddenly reversed direction. Plant security, confronting what it now believed to be a simultaneous incursion by two unidentified intruders, tripped the alarm and declared a "security event." Local police sealed the exits. The armed heavies from the Seacoast Emergency Response Team arrived in force. "It was craziness," says Griffith, who was out drinking with friends that night when his pager went off. "Total lockdown." Griffith, besieged by media calls, didn't sleep for three days.
Four years later the identity of the marsh intruder remains a mystery, although authorities have narrowed the list of suspects. It was a "heron or turkey or some damn thing," says Griffith. And the occupants of the suspicious vehicle? Two skittish underage kids on a beer run who somehow missed the turnoff to DeMoulas Market Basket, then panicked and fled.
Listening to Griffith's story, I'm not sure whether I should feel reassured or alarmed. What I do know is that 54 years after President Eisenhower envisioned a future in which the awesome power of the atom would "serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind," a lot of us are still spooked. Griffith's own mother is so unnerved by what her son does for a living that she refuses to set foot inside the plant, which, by the way, has a visitor center, a nature trail, and a museum frequented by schoolchildren.
"We have found in demographic studies that particularly older Americans - they associate nuclear, the 'N word,' with explosion, with bombs, with war," says Griffith. "It's a difficult branding issue." The July 16 earthquake in Japan, which caused a fire at the largest nuclear-power complex in the world, tipped over barrels of contaminated material, and spilled hundreds of gallons of low-level radioactive water into the sea, reminded us that it's not just branding - the product has flaws.
Factor in all that, plus the daunting economics of nuclear power and the still-unsolved puzzle of how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, and you begin to understand why it's been more than three decades since the last successful attempt to license and build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. got underway.
It may surprise you to know that nuclear power has stayed with us all these years, stubbornly clinging to about a 20% share of U.S. electricity generation - about the same as natural gas but lagging far behind coal at 50%. (Globally, nukes have a 16% market share.) And while no new plants have come online since 1996 (construction began on that one in 1973), suddenly we're hearing lots of talk about a nuclear revival - or "renaissance," as the boosters call it. In June, Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), told a fired-up gathering of industry leaders in Atlanta that he's expecting applications for 27 new reactors over the next two years. "There is no serious opposition," says Tony Earley, CEO of Detroit's DTE Energy (Charts, Fortune 500), which hopes to file at least one of those applications. "This train is moving."
A lot of the push is coming from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which is stuffed with generous subsidies for nuclear power and other alternatives to fossil fuels. Among them: billions of dollars in tax credits, loan guarantees, and insurance to cover licensing delays. Big corporations know which way the political wind is blowing. Texas power utility TXU (Charts, Fortune 500) won support from environmentalists for a $32 billion buyout deal in February in part by scrapping plans to build a fleet of coal-fired generating plants and pledging instead to build as many as five jumbo nuclear plants. GE (Charts, Fortune 500) and Hitachi, meanwhile, have created a multibillion-dollar partnership to build reactors, betting not only on power-hungry Asia but also on new thinking in the U.S. "It's hard to believe simultaneously in energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions without believing in nuclear power," GE CEO Jeff Immelt told reporters in July. "It's just intellectually dishonest."
Probably the earliest a new reactor could come online in the U.S. is 2015, and even that seems optimistic. There is plenty of opposition, despite what Earley says. And anything could happen over the next decade or so to knock the train off its track. A terrorist attack on a nuclear facility anywhere in the world would halt all progress overnight. So would another Chernobyl. But right now the momentum is swinging nuclear's way. Among the many green-light factors: rising natural-gas prices; soaring electricity demand; the looming prospect of a carbon tax; a new, streamlined regulatory process; and growing acceptance by environmentalists that nuclear energy, which emits no greenhouse gases, could have a vital role in saving the planet.
This developing story has continental sweep, a huge cast of characters, multiple moving parts. So much of what we think we know we haven't reexamined in years. If we're going to try to reconcile nuclear power's cloudy past with the industry's bright vision of the future, we need to see for ourselves. Road trip, anyone?
Pausing now at a stoplight on Highway 1 as I'm leaving the Seabrook plant, I consult the GPS, turn the wheel of my little SUV toward the setting sun, and go. Already I have lots of questions. Who has the skill and know-how to build all those new plants? Where will we put them? How are we going to pay for them? Is the technology really safe? What about the waste? I'm just getting started. Two weeks, I figure this'll take. Seven thousand zigzaggy miles through America's nuclear past, present, and future. The most important lesson I will learn: Things are not always as we remember them.
How bad was Three Mile Island?
I'm on the river road south of Middletown, Pa., when I come upon a handsome blue historical marker commemorating "the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident." (You haven't lived until you've beheld a roadside monument to an event that occurred during your lifetime.) Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is right there across the road, the iconic towers rising from a fern-shaped island in the Susquehanna River. Reminds me of the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower. Similar hyperboloid sweep, but that's not what's so striking. It's the weirdness - the sudden, disorienting displacement of a familiar mental image, derived from 1,000 pictures, by the thing itself.
Those towers carry a lot of symbolic weight, almost none of it appropriate. There's nothing specifically nuclear about them, for one thing. They're just cooling towers. A lot of coal-fired electricity plants use the same technology. That engine roar coming from the towers that sounds like a giant waterfall? That's all it is, water falling: 200,000 gallons per minute at about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, but not radioactive. And that's just water vapor coming out of the tops, of course, not poisonous smoke.
What's more, the towers played no part in the accident, even if they did wind up on the cover of Time. That whole drama began and ended several hundred feet away inside the Unit 2 containment building - starting before dawn on March 28, 1979, and unfolding over several days - and yes, it was undeniably scary and bad. There was an explosion inside the building, a partial meltdown of the reactor core, purposeful venting of radioactive gases, and a voluntary evacuation covering five square miles. The PR was inept, inflaming public fears. (Strange but true: The China Syndrome was playing in first-run theaters that week. As the tension builds, a nuclear engineer tells Jane Fonda that a meltdown could render an area "the size of Pennsylvania" uninhabitable.)
The cleanup took 14 years and cost $1 billion. Unit 1, while undamaged, did not reopen until 1986. Unit 2 is a sarcophagus, still highly radioactive, sealed tight until somebody figures out what to do about the remnants of hot fuel scattered around the basement of the containment building.
But guess what? No one died at Three Mile Island. No one even got hurt. Hard evidence simply does not exist that any living thing, animal or vegetable, was significantly harmed by the small amount of radiation released during the accident. Even in the most extreme cases, the exposure was less than anyone living in the area receives from natural sources. Eric Epstein, head of the citizen's group Three Mile Island Alert, whom I met for lunch at Kuppy's Diner in nearby Middletown, is certainly no fan of nuclear power, which he describes as a "very expensive economic adventure" and an "economic boondoggle." "They're still married to hubris," Epstein rails. "They can't get past their own arrogance." So where does Epstein live? Twelve miles from the plant. "I like the area," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "I encourage people to move here."
The other thing you can't pin on Three Mile Island is the blame (or credit, depending on your point of view) for halting the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. In 1974, President Nixon predicted we'd have 1,000 commercial nuclear reactors operating by the end of the century. Not even close. No more than 250 were ever ordered, only 170 filed for permits, just 130 opened, and 104 remain. What happened? Construction delays, cost overruns, high interest rates, systemic safety issues, a whole lot of no-nukes protesters, and a surprising dropoff in electricity demand, all of which predate 1979. Three Mile Island didn't kill the nuclear dream. It was just another nail in the coffin.
Can the industry be trusted?
On to Washington. David Lochbaum is a respected critic. He was smitten at an early age by the magic of the atom. He has thrilling childhood memories of visiting the world's first nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, in the shipyard at Newport News, Va., and hearing about all the cool peacetime projects that his dad was working on at Westinghouse, like plutonium-powered artificial hearts and floating nuclear power plants. None of those projects came to fruition, but no matter. "It seemed nuclear had a lot of promise," says Lochbaum. "I wanted to follow that up."
Trained as a nuclear engineer, Lochbaum spent 17 years working in nuclear power plants across the South. What finally ruined it for him, he says, was the industry's lackadaisical attitude toward safety. When his bosses didn't respond to his concerns, he went to the NRC. When the NRC failed to act, he took the issue to Congress as a whistleblower, and in 1996 he crossed over to the other side, becoming director of the Nuclear Safety Project with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in Washington, D.C. I met him in his cramped office on H Street, working well past dark one Thursday evening. Behind his desk is an old wall map labeled "Nuclear Power Reactor Sites in the United States - March 1979." Still largely accurate, I can't help but notice.
Lochbaum says he'd never have taken this job if UCS were an abolitionist outfit, but unlike Greenpeace, for instance, UCS is not opposed to the idea of nuclear power. Its concerns are more practical: that we'll ask too much of nuclear and it will fail to deliver for any number of reasons - political protests, disappointing technology, terrorism. UCS's bottom line: We should focus society's resources on renewables, conservation, and efficiency, not nuclear.
Especially, Lochbaum would argue, given the nuclear industry's propensity to screw up. Lochbaum said something to a reporter in June 2001 that he thinks "in hindsight was probably bad judgment." But it was clearly revealing. The question had to do with plant security - how a terrorist might cause trouble. "Buy a comfortable chair," Lochbaum riffed. "Buy a big-screen TV. Buy plenty of snacks and beverages. Sit back and watch sports while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry undermine safety until they cause an accident." In other words, Lochbaum says, "it's not the antinukes, it's not an overzealous regulator that's been the industry's worst nightmare - it's themselves." While he believes most plants are run "very well" (Lochbaum's favorite nuclear operator is Dominion (Charts, Fortune 500), with two plants in Virginia and one each in Connecticut and Wisconsin), he sees a "widening gap between the haves and have-nots." His suggestion: more regulation and more enforcement.
Can we build them fast enough?
Next day, right around the corner at the Nuclear Energy Institute, I ask the industry's chief lobbyist, Alex Flint, what he thinks of Lochbaum's prescription. Good for the industry? Flint, who wears an impressive power suit and a bright-yellow tie, peers at me through thin-rimmed glasses for several long seconds. "My guys have over $100 billion worth of capital tied up in nuclear plants," he says finally. "They're concerned about the vagaries of overzealous regulators." He goes on: "We're going to submit combined operating and licensing applications at the end of this year for a number of plants. We estimate it'll take 42 months to get through the licensing process. We estimate it'll take us 40 months after we get the license to bring a plant online and actually start getting revenue." The only way that works, he says, is with a "broad base of support for nuclear power where we don't care who is in office one year or any other year. The industry has a time line that's longer than most politicians' time lines."
In fact, that consensus may already exist, thanks to the complex politics of global warming. Flint doesn't line up with environmentalists on every issue, but on climate change he's a true believer. ("I won't let my wife buy a beach house because I don't believe the water level will stay where it is until I get the mortgage paid off. That's my personal view.") So if Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton want to talk about nuclear power as a solution to global warming, Flint is happy to have that conversation.
Bottom line: Flint, who was majority staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee when the Republicans were in control, says the last time he tried to count the hard-core antinukers in Congress, "I couldn't get to 20." Even Al Gore is wavering. Gore pointedly ignored nuclear power when he addressed ways to reduce carbon emissions in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, but in March he told a House committee hearing, "I'm not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear. I think it's likely to play some role."
Flint knows that nuclear power all by itself can't solve the climate crisis. The industry will be hard-pressed to simply preserve its global market share as electricity production booms over the next half-century, much less steal share from fossil fuels. In the U.S. alone, according to a new study by the Council on Foreign Relations, given the age of the existing nuclear fleet, "the replacement rate would be on the order of one new reactor every four to five months over the next 40 years." This in an industry that's been dormant for 30 years, at a time when commodity prices for steel and concrete are soaring, and when qualified welders are almost as hard to find as nuclear engineers.
"I get very frustrated with people who say it takes too many nuclear plants to solve our climate problems," says Flint. "It takes a lot fewer nuclear plants than it does other technologies." Any way you look at it, he says, the investment required to meet the projected growth in demand for electricity in the U.S. is on the order of $750 billion to $1 trillion. "So the greatest issue for me is, How is that investment going to be made? Is it going to be made in coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar? Yes, it takes a lot of nuclear power plants, but it takes a lot of anything."
What's the worst that could happen?
Turns out we had a near miss not long ago in the Midwest. I leave D.C., heading west and north, up through West Virginia and into western Pennsylvania, over the spine of the Appalachians. PENNSYLVANIA PRESENTS THE FUTURE OF COAL, the billboard says, CLEAN, GREEN ENERGY. And here and there, up on the ridgelines, stand small clusters of wind turbines, like scouts in an advancing army. Next day I arrive in Oak Harbor, Ohio, then head for the shoreline of Lake Erie. At the turnoff to Turtle Creek Marina I pull over by the side of the road and just sit for a while, staring at the cooling tower that looms above the Happy Hooker bait shop.
Unless you live around here, or in Toledo, 30 miles west, or possibly in Cleveland or Detroit, both less than 90 miles away, the name Davis-Besse may not mean anything to you. That's just lucky. During a refueling outage at Davis-Besse in 2002, employees discovered a "large cavity" about the size of a football in the head of the pressurized vessel that houses the reactor core. The cause of the cavity was later traced to leaks in nozzles that penetrate the interior of the vessel head. The water in the nozzles was slightly acidic. When it evaporated, it left behind boric acid, which over time ate through the 6 1/2-inch-thick carbon-steel head all the way down to 1/4-inch-thick stainless-steel cladding. As the hole widened, the internal pressure on the cladding intensified.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab have since determined that if the plant had continued operating, the cladding ultimately would have burst. (Plant owner FirstEnergy (Charts, Fortune 500) says it would have found the leak in time to take "appropriate steps.") Had the cladding burst, the core would probably have suffered a meltdown, releasing about the same amount of radioactivity as at Three Mile Island - only this time it would not have been contained. "They came very close to an accident that would have been much worse than Three Mile Island and not as bad as Chernobyl," says Lochbaum. "You don't ever want to be in a place where those are your bookends."
Both the leakage and its corrosive effects were known issues. The industry committed in 1989 to investigate such leaks. Yet somehow Davis-Besse escaped detection until it was almost too late. What's more, in April 2000 an NRC inspector was handed a truly ugly photograph of the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head covered in acidic crud. No one saw it again until after the accident. The episode cost the utility company around $600 million.
Can the no-nukes movement regroup?
Sunday afternoon in Bexley, Ohio, east of Columbus. I'm standing on a quiet, tree-canopied street at the top of Harvey Wasserman's driveway, waiting for him to come outside, meanwhile reading the bumper stickers on his cars: BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED; CELEBRATE DIVERSITY; THE DEATH PENALTY IS DEAD WRONG. Makes sense. Three decades ago Wasserman was a leader in the Clamshell Alliance, the grassroots movement that delayed the opening of the Unit 1 Seabrook nuclear reactor for many years while making sure Unit 2 was never completed. Today, it happens, is the 30th anniversary of a landmark Clamshell victory - the release of 550 demonstrators who had spent two weeks locked up in New Hampshire armories. It was a huge win for the burgeoning movement. Wasserman was at Seabrook that day, handling communications with the press. Now he's a college professor, an author, a father of five daughters, and a Volvo driver living in the suburbs, but the fire still burns.
"I was present at the creation of the antinuclear movement," Wasserman tells me by way of introduction, once we're settled at a picnic table. "I actually coined the phrase 'No nukes.' It came through my typewriter." His opposition to nukes has not wavered since he was living on a Massachusetts commune in 1973 ("All those stories you've heard about hippie farms are true"), helping lead his first successful protest. "Not safe," he says now, "not economical, not green, not a solution to global warming." He gleefully searches for another phrase. "We have been trying for 30 years to drive a stake through the heart of this industry, but it doesn't seem to have one!"
In his book Solartopia!, Wasserman envisions a clean-energy future in which all our energy needs are satisfied by solar, wind, hydro, and biofuels. "If we put our minds to it, we could have all of that before they bring the next nuke online," he says. "The finances are going in the opposite direction of the nuclear power industry. Where do you find on Wall Street people lining up to invest in nuclear plants? No one can simultaneously argue for a free-market economy and for nuclear power. You can't! You cannot do nuclear power without massive federal subsidies. It's just not going to happen."
Before I leave, Wasserman has one more point to make: "I do intend to make it as difficult for them as possible. I will tell you that the antinuclear network is very much intact. It's a geezer battalion - I'm 61." He is silent for a moment, remembering. "In '77, I was 31. It was just so much fun. Some people are actually looking forward to doing it again. Those of us who can still walk will be back in droves, with our kids. This is not going to be a walk in the park for these guys."
Who will build them if they come?
Follow the Ohio River in the direction the current flows, all the way to the toe of Indiana, through Evansville and into tiny Mount Vernon, past the Civil War statue on the village square (a Union soldier; across the river he'd be a Reb) and out the other side of town, and you come to BWXT's Mount Vernon facility, the only factory in America that can still build large-scale nuclear components.
GE and Westinghouse used to do a lot of that kind of work too, building complex reactor vessels from massive forgings born in the steel mills of eastern Pennsylvania and shipping them worldwide. Both have since shed their nuclear manufacturing divisions and today focus on design. That leaves BWXT, and in time it will have to go to Japan Steel Works for its forgings.
When the bottom fell out of the market in 1978, the Mount Vernon plant went from employing 1,400 people to a ghost factory, ultimately allowing its coveted "N" security stamp - required for nuclear work - to expire. It got the stamp back a year ago, and already things are picking up. Right now Mount Vernon is working on two 60-ton replacement reactor heads for PG&E's Diablo Canyon facility in California. Plant manager Michael Keene and his boss Rod Woolsey, VP of the nuclear division, take me on a tightlipped tour of the factory floor, refusing to say much about the gleaming steel reactor vessels - some as big as circus elephants, others more like whales - I observe along the way. "Government" is all I can get out of them. Workers circulate on bicycles. No hardhats, which seems odd. Until I grasp that if anything in this pantheon topples, it will flatten my whole body, not just my head.
Back in D.C., BWXT lobbyists are working hard to juice the order flow, angling for legislation that would open up foreign markets to U.S. manufacturers and pushing for someone to stand up on the national stage and articulate a thrilling goal say, 30 new nuclear plants by 2030. Pointing out that much of the domestic nuclear industry is down to at most a single supplier for every major type of component, they're also asking for tax credits to train new workers and tax incentives on capital improvements. "If we can't do this type of blue-collar work," BWXT's chief lobbyist, Craig Hansen, told me, "we might as well throw our hands up and say we are no longer a manufacturing country." His pointed warning: "We may exchange one form of energy dependence for another form of energy dependence."
What will happen in an emergency?
I'm following another river road, this one tracking the Mississippi near Hahnville, La., 20 miles west of New Orleans in what used to be rice and sugarcane country. Now it's an industrial zone. There's a big Union Carbide chemical plant in Hahnville, and right next door, a nuclear plant, Entergy's Waterford 3 reactor, and outside Waterford 3, a hair-raising public-information billboard, headlined WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN AN EMERGENCY AT WATERFORD 3?
"If there is a problem, state and parish officials will decide how severe it is. Most problems will not affect you. If the experts decide there is a serious emergency, however, you may have to protect yourself. Stay as calm as you can. You will have some time to take the needed steps. Remember that nuclear plants do not explode.
"Do not use your telephone. Do not call or go to your children's school. Cover your nose and mouth with a handkerchief or other cloth. Close the windows and doors if you are in a building or car.
"What if you are told to SHELTER IN PLACE? Go inside your house or some other building. Stay inside until your radio or TV says you can leave safely. Keep your pets inside.
"What if you are told to evacuate? Get your family together and prepare to leave. Pack only what you will need most."
Reading that, my heart goes out to Ann Jupiter, who has lived in the shadow of Waterford 3 since it was built in 1985. "It's always scary," she told me when I stopped to visit. "When it ain't doing nothing, it's scary."
What's it really like inside a nuclear power plant?
More than halfway through my journey now, crossing Texas today from Bay City on the gulf to the New Mexico border, I'm thinking about all the nuclear plants I've seen so far - a total of 14 reactors in nine states - and what I've learned.
I've learned that nuclear power is concentrated along the Eastern Seaboard but that Illinois has more nuclear plants (11) and generates more nuclear power (nearly 95 million megawatt-hours) than any other state.
I've learned that nuclear plants are almost always off someplace by themselves, which makes sense. People don't want to live next to one if they can help it. Animals don't care, though. In fact, animals find a lot to like wherever there's a nuclear plant, starting with the absence of human beings. Plus nuclear plants don't make a lot of noise. They don't poison the air with dirty smokestacks, the way coal plants do. They don't kill birds, the way wind turbines sometimes do. No wonder so many nuclear plants are surrounded by nature preserves.
I've learned that the inside of a nuclear plant is all cramped corridors and shiny floors and exposed pipes. That you have to wear earplugs in the turbine room and a hardhat almost everywhere, but that the earplugs go in your pocket and the hardhat comes off when you and your escort knock on the control room door and ask permission to enter. Nothing dangling - that's the rule in the control room - and nothing that might fall off our head and trip a switch that's better left untripped.
I've learned about the etymology of SCRAM, an acronym reportedly coined by Enrico Fermi, who presided over the world's first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942. Fermi stationed a colleague, Norman Hillberry, next to the rope used to raise and lower the control rods, with an ax. Hillberry's job, if called upon, was to chop the rope with a single swing, immediately halting the reaction. Hillberry's title, the story goes, was Safety Control Rod Ax Man. I didn't see any axmen in the control rooms I visited, but I saw plenty of red SCRAM switches - same thing. Sometimes they're labeled "RX Trip." Give one a 45-degree clockwise yank, and the control rods plunge into the core and the reactor shuts down in seconds.
I've learned that since Three Mile Island, every nuclear plant in America has at least two inspectors from the NRC onsite at all times. They have the best passes available, offering free run of the plant, anytime, anywhere. And since Three Mile Island, I've also learned, every control room operator spends a week in training and testing at regular intervals in a customized simulator room, identical in every detail to the control room where the operator works.
I've learned that a nuclear plant is like a refrigerator it hums along pretty well all by itself, with minimal human intervention, except when you have to shut it down. Then you have a lot of work to do. I've learned that spent fuel rods are stored in 40 feet of water; that while a fuel-rod pool room is technically an RCA (radiation-controlled area), you can walk right up to the edge of the pool and look down in there and gaze upon the fuel rods in their honeycomb tombs, hot and glowing from the radiation still in them, and not worry about getting sick. But if you were to tumble into the pool and dive down to the bottom and touch one, you'd never make it back to the surface.
Will we have to rely on a foreign source of fuel?
I arrive around lunchtime in tiny Eunice, N.M.? Pretty bleak, this place, at least to my Eastern eyes: all pump jacks and natural-gas lines, otherwise not so much as a bump on the landscape. "It's good when it's good" is how Brenda Brooks from nearby Hobbs assesses the local economy, "and it's really bad when it's really bad." Which helps explain Brooks' new job. She's director of communications and community affairs for Urenco, a European consortium that's building the first advanced fuel-enrichment plant in the U.S., just 4 1/2 miles east of Eunice. The hope in the U.S. is that the new factory will help lessen our reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium, much of which now comes from Russia. The hope in Eunice is that it will bring a measure of economic stability to the region, once it's up and running in 2009 and employing 300 people. Already, says Brooks, there are hundreds of construction workers on site, most of them living in overstuffed trailer parks in Eunice and Hobbs. Community resistance was minimal, but Urenco was taking no chances. The company flew community leaders to the Netherlands to see an identical plant that has been operating safely for years. "There's a day care across the street, and there's nobody running around with four legs and horns growing out of their forehead," says Brooks. "It's all cool."
Where will we store the waste?
The Yucca Mountain tour starts here in Las Vegas, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "There is a billion or two dollars' worth of science studies, but there's no nuclear waste out there," says Allen Benson, publicity director. Benson has been here 11 years, so he has given this rap a few times before. Says there's room at Yucca Mountain for "70,000 metric tons" of nuclear waste. (Which tells you something right away. It tells you that the origins of this hoary federal program date all the way back to that hopeful period when it seemed possible that Americans might be persuaded to convert to metric weights and measures. He means 77,000 regular tons.) "Whatever happens with nuclear power, nuclear renaissance, what have you," says Benson, "we currently have about 55,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel already, which something has to be done with." Absolute best-case scenario: Waste starts arriving in 2017. "That means everything occurs as we need, we get the appropriations we need - but it does not account for litigation. There will be litigation. We have no illusions about that." Nye County, the vast chunk of desert mountainscape that encompasses not only Yucca Mountain but also a former nuclear bomb test site, is not the issue. Nye County has been cashing Energy Department tax-equivalency checks for years - in 2007 it got $11.25 million, or about one-third of its operating budget. But nine other counties are contiguous to Nye including Las Vegas County - and the law says they all get their say. Already the NRC has built a dedicated facility in Las Vegas, out near the airport, just to host the hearings. Those get underway late next year.
The costs so far are staggering: About $9 billion since the inception of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1983. But that's just the beginning. What Benson calls the "total system life-cycle cost" - covering final regulatory approval, complete construction, the transport of radioactive waste to the site, and the storing of said waste in such a way that all interested parties are satisfied that it won't be disturbed for at least 10,000 years - that total stands at $58.5 billion. "We're working on a revised total-cost analysis," says Benson. "It will be higher." Yucca was supposed to begin receiving waste in 1998. When that didn't happen, the utilities were forced to make other plans. Existing spent fuel pools, like the ones I've seen, are at about 80% of capacity and projected to reach 100% by 2015. The next option is what's known as dry cask storage - basically, burying the spent fuel rods onsite. And Plan B, if Yucca Mountain never gets approval to begin receiving waste? There is no Plan B.
The drive to Yucca Mountain from Las Vegas in the Energy Department van takes about two hours. We park at the north entrance to the tunnel, don hardhats, and poke our heads inside. It's U-shaped, I'm told, and five miles long, but we venture just far enough to escape the heat. According to the plans, one day this tunnel will be the path down which sealed canisters of radioactive waste travel to their final resting place 1,000 feet below the ridgeline of the mountain. Construction of the tombs, however, has yet to begin, pending licensing approval. Other than testing, all progress at Yucca has been stalled since 1997.
What can a convert teach us?
Stewart Brand is a greenie from way back. Creator of the Whole Earth Catalog in his hippie days. Taught a generation about organic farming and composting toilets and how to live off the land. His house is a tugboat in San Francisco Bay, but his office is in a flowery, forested nook in Sausalito, Calif. Brand greets me all dressed in black, right down to his sandals - that's his style. White hair, what's left of it. Blue-gray eyes. A reading chair in the corner of his office and a grandfather clock. Many shelves of books, meticulously organized. Knows right where to find the ones he wants, pulls them out while we talk, drops them on the table, thunk.
"What did you think of Yucca Mountain?" he wants to know. Weird, I say. Dickensian. Probably doomed.
"Depending on how you count it, somewhere between $6 billion and $13 billion has been thrown down that rat hole," he says, and for that he blames ... himself. "Me and my fellow environmentalists," he means, "who said you've gotta prove that this is absolutely, perfectly safe for 10,000 years. You can't do scenarios for 10,000 years - everything flies apart. One hundred fifty or 200 years from now, humanity will either be pretty much unrecognizable, hovering around in terms of communication and starting to speciate new kinds of Homo sapiens, or if not that, we'll be back in the Stone Age, in which case a bit of radiation in Nevada is the least of our problems. So the whole thing, I think - not entirely intentionally - was set up as a self-defeating proposition."
There are alternatives. Brand got involved a couple of years ago with Canada's national debate on what to do about its nuclear waste. The solution Canada came up with? Rather than stash it for 10,000 years, put it away for 175 years, specifically seven generations. "Basically put it there while we think about it," says Brand. "See what other options come along. Each new generation of nuclear reactor is safer and cheaper and smaller and smarter than the previous one, and that will probably continue. Likewise whatever we might want to do with the spent fuel." Brand, if you haven't figured it out, is a convert. Or in his words, a "mild nuclear proponent." For Brand, the only real issue is global warming. And nuclear power, he believes, may be our best option. "From coal you get carbon dioxide. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide. The difference in consequence is enormous. In the context of carbon dioxide, suddenly spent fuel looks pretty good."
Brave nuke world?
The end of my journey brings me all the way back to the beginning, to the Idaho National Laboratory in southern Idaho. It was here, on Dec. 20, 1951, that Walter Zinn, a veteran of the Manhattan Project, fired up Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 and illuminated a string of four 75-watt light bulbs; the next day he lit the whole building. That was the first time atomic power had ever been used to generate electricity. Today EBR-1 is a tourist attraction. Not a very popular one - only about 5,000 visitors a year - but here it is, the original reactor vessel (you can stand on the head; it was decommissioned in 1964), the control room (retro, of course, but so are the new ones), and a string of replacement bulbs the tour guide assures me look just like the originals. High on the wall behind the reactor, preserved behind glass, are the chalk signatures of the 17 scientists and one janitor who were present that day. Afterward one of the scientists, Reid Cameron, climbed back up the ladder and sketched a crude illustration to go with the list of names, something he thought emblematic of their achievement. I can't make it out at first. Some kind of wild-eyed creature whose breath is the wind. Turns out it's the devil.
Over the years Idaho Lab scientists have designed and built 52 test reactors. Three are operational today, including the largest test reactor in the world. The mood at the lab these days is more hopeful than it's been in decades. Phil Hildebrandt, who's working on so-called Generation IV reactors - far-off technology that's safer, more reliable, and more versatile (with potential applications in the coming hydrogen economy) than anything that's out there today - says, "This is not unlike what we did 55 years ago with the Shippingport reactor in Pennsylvania. It's where government and the commercial world partner to develop things that are difficult for the commercial world to develop by itself."
Kathryn McCarthy, 45, a staff scientist at the lab since 1991, would be happy just to see one new plant built before she retires. "I'm sort of from that generation where we haven't done anything real," she says. "I've done lot of things on paper, a lot of testing. But to actually see that move to the next step and have a plant come online would be a huge deal, it really would."
Flying home that night, I'm thinking about what I've learned. I'm remembering what Stewart Brand said when I left him in Sausalito. Two important things. To his old friends in the antinuke movement, "Don't let up for a minute. Keep bearing down. But take in hand the other things that need to happen besides solar and wind and biofuels to actually get ahead of a problem that is already far ahead of us." And to his old enemies? "I'm sorry. I was wrong, you were right. I'm sorry."
--Research Associate: Patricia Neering
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
Rethinking Three Mile Island
It was billed as the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident, but how bad was it really?
By David Whitford
Fortune editor-at-large
Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the first of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- Ralph DeSantis was home in bed before dawn on March 28, 1979 when his phone rang. It was his shift supervisor at Three Mile Island (TMI), calling from the plant. "'We have an emergency at Unit II and it's serious,'" is the first thing DeSantis remembers hearing. Then he heard the alarms going off.
Twenty-eight years after the worst accident in the history of the US nuclear power industry, the alarms are still going off, and the consequences are still being felt. That's why I made TMI one of my first stops on a two-week, 7,000-mile road trip through the past, present and future of nuclear power in America.
DeSantis showed me around. He still works at TMI, although his job has changed. He used to be a security guard. Now he's a flack, a function which - and this is hard to believe - did not exist at Three Mile Island before the accident.
Somebody had to manage the crush of reporters, DeSantis stepped in, and that's what he's been doing ever since. So there's one small consequence of TMI: a new career for DeSantis, not to mention greatly expanded job opportunities for flacks throughout the industry.
TMI also confirmed a lot of people's worst fears about nuclear power, including, I'll admit, my own. I never really examined those fears again until recently, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. After TMI, nuclear power sort of fell off the radar in the United States. Whatever your feelings 30 years ago, chances are you still feel the same way.
Impact on health
I think the question we need to ask ourselves now is pretty simple: Is it time to take a fresh look at nuclear power? One of the experts I talked to before I began my trip was Andy Kadak, a professor in the top-ranked nuclear engineering department at MIT. I asked Kadak, What were the health consequences of TMI? "Nothing," he insisted, "Practically speaking, nothing."
Then he addressed Chernobyl. "That was a worst-case scenario. Ten kilometers were significantly affected, but were cleaned up. Thirty kilometers were made into a restricted zone, but now people are coming back, rightly or wrongly. There was radiation distributed around the world - but it was probably less than what was emitted by nuclear weapons testing back in the '50s or '60s. It was clearly unacceptable.
"But I don't think it gets any worse than that. You had a burning fire throwing up this radioactive debris and distributing it all over the planet. It doesn't get worse than that." Kadak's conclusion: "Even in the worst-case scenarios it's very hard to see a global nuclear nightmare occurring because of a nuclear accident."
Putting things in perspective
Kadak and others led me to James Lovelock's fascinating book, "The Revenge of Gaia." Lovelock is a British environmental scientist who has come to the hard conclusion that the unprecedented challenge of global warming leaves us no choice but to make a massive global investment in nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse gasses.
Are there safety risks associated with that? Well, sure, but here's how Lovelock puts those risks in perspective.
How many people died at TMI, Lovelock asks? Zero. How many at Chernobyl? According to an authoritative study conducted by the United Nation's World Health Organization 19 years after the accident, no more than 75 people died at Chernobyl. And remember, that was a worst-case scenario.
What about the long-term risks of cancer for those exposed to radiation from Chernobyl? The United Nations Scientific Committee on the the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reported last year that "among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up to the year 2002 about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades."
There were consequences, in other words. The risks are real.
But Lovelock then asks us to consider China's Yangtze Dam, a huge source of squeaky clean hydroelectric power. "If the dam burst," Lovelock points out, whether because of an earthquake or an act of terrorism, "perhaps as many as a million people would be killed in the wave of water roaring down the course of the Yangtze River."
A million people. Why is that an acceptable risk, and nuclear power is not?
--Email: dwhitford@fortunemail.com
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
America's nuclear revival
The industry is coming alive in the Midwest's Ohio Valley. Fortune tours the hot spots.
By David Whitford
Fortune editor-at-large
Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the second of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- One thing I've learned on my 7,000 mile journey through America's nuclear past and present is that when you're driving around scouting for a power plant -- any kind of power plant -- first locate the high-voltage transmission lines. (If you stand directly under those lines, sometimes you can hear the electricity cackle and spatter like rain drops on the roof.)
Then check the lay of the land. Then follow the downward slope to the water. Could be a river you're looking for, could be a lake (natural or man-made). Could be the ocean. But here's the rule: No water, no steam; no steam, no power.
That's how I found myself late one Friday night (maybe it was Saturday morning), twisting and turning on steep, curvy roads, descending into Shippingport, Pennsylvania, an old ferry crossing on the Ohio River. All I could see in the darkness were the faint outlines of cooling towers, festooned with blinking red lights.
Came back the next day to have a look around. A surveyor's stake, set just across the river in Ohio on August 20, 1785, marked the "point of beginning" for plotting the public lands of the United States. That's noteworthy, since Shippingport also marks a different kind beginning point. It's the site of this country's first large-scale commercial nuclear reactor.
Designed by Westinghouse, built in partnership with the Navy, and operated by Duquesne Light Company, the Shippingport reactor began generating electricity in December 1957 and was decommissioned in 1982. (The towers I saw belong to two new nuclear reactors in Shippingport, Beaver Valley 1 and 2, and a coal plant, all operated by FirstEnergy.)
"Atoms for peace"
All that remains of the original plant's history, a security guard tells me when I stop to ask, is the shell of the old control room and a photograph of President Eisenhower -- architect of the "Atoms for Peace" policy -- on the wall at the new training center.
Fifty years after Shippingport, signs of the US nuclear revival are popping up all over this part of the country. In Piketon, Ohio, for example, east of Cincinnati, the former government entity USEC, which is now private, is demonstrating the latest in US owned-and-operated technology for enriching uranium.
USEC hopes to begin supplying enriched Uranium to nuclear fuel fabricators as early as 2009. "What we're trying to do as quickly as we can is position ourselves for the growth of nuclear power," says a company spokesperson.
A market surge
BWXT, formerly Babcock & Wilcox, also hopes to supply the burgeoning industry. The company's cavernous facility in Mount Vernon, Indiana, across the Ohio river from Kentucky, is the only factory in America that can still make large-scale components for nuclear power plants.
Last year BWXT signed an agreement to team up with with French nuclear giant Areva to build reactor vessels for US utilities. Ed Woolsey, the recently retired VP of BWXT's nuclear division who showed me around, told me he expects to be operating at capacity by 2015.
"There is we believe a real strong market that's emerging, and we're preparing ourselves to be in play for that market," he says. "Our biggest challenge is to screen, hire the people, train the people and have them ready to go once the work gets here."
--Email: dwhitford@fortunemail.com
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
The high cost of going nuclear
Power companies are lining up to build new plants after a decade of stagnation. What's standing in the way?
By David Whitford
Fortune editor-at-large
Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the third of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- If the companies that supply nuclear power plants are ready for a revival, the utilities that will operate the plants are champing at the bit.
Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said he's expecting license applications for 27 new nuclear reactors in the next two years. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, says it could be as many as 31.
This is a huge development, considering it's been more than three decades since the last successful attempt to license and build a new nuclear power plant in the United States got underway, and more than ten years since that plant went online.
I asked MIT professor Andy Kadak how to account for the recent flurry of new activity. "One is that nuclear plant performance has dramatically improved," he said. "In the early 1980s the capacity factor" - how much electricity the average nuclear plant generates, expressed as a percentage of capacity - "was in the low 60s. Today it's the low 90s. We used to have refueling outages that lasted 90 days. Now they do it in 27. Good ones are 21.
"Utilities are making a lot of money from nukes today. That's given the utility CEOs confidence to say, 'Look, these plants are running well, we're making money and if we buy into nuclear, there's no reason not to expect similar performance in the future if we run them as we know how to run them now.'
"That's a big plus. The other thing is deregulation. It forced utilities to be competitive in terms of how much their power costs. That was a factor driving efficiency and lowering operating costs. Then came the new designs. Vendors innovated and made reactors simpler and safer."
Barney Beasley, Chief Executive of Southern Nuclear, added one more key factor: Soaring demand, especially in the fast-growing South, where more than half the new plants are planned.
"Obviously in Georgia we're experiencing a lot of economic growth, a lot of population growth," Beasley said, while showing me around Southern's Vogtle generating station in the piney woods outside Waynesboro, Ga.
Already Vogtle has two huge Westinghouse reactors generating more than 1000 megawatts each; Southern wants to build two more, doubling capacity. "Our projection over the next 20 years in terms of population is we're going to add another entire Atlanta in the state of Georgia," Beasley continues. "We are going to have to provide large base-load units to provide the power."
The largest remaining obstacle to such plans? Cost. Consider a typical scenario in which a utility with a $9 billion market cap wants to build a nuke plant with a $5 billion price tag. "You put that on your balance sheet," as one former utility executive explained to me, "and you know what Wall Street would do with your bond ratings."
The cost factor is the background to the generous set of nuclear subsidies contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among them: a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for early movers, capped at $6 billion; regulatory risk insurance to cover licensing delays, potentially worth $2 billion; and federal loan guarantees that could pay up to 80 percent in the event of default. (Only the risk insurance applies specifically to nukes; the others cover wind, solar and biofuels as well.)
But at least one utility executive - CEO David Crane of NRG Energy, which plans to add two new reactors to its existing South Texas Project, near Bay City, Texas - thinks the industry may be asking for too much help from taxpayers.
"People in nuclear industry complain that everyone remembers Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," he said. "On the other hand, the nuclear plants remember that, too. They're cautious. They want everybody else to take all the risks.
"Guys, get over it," he said. "Sure, nuclear plants are expensive. And power companies are not as big as oil companies. But one of the things about being in business is you get a reward for taking a risk. I just get the sense that while the industry likes to say, 'The government is not doing enough, the government is not doing enough,' it's time for the industry to step up."
--Email: dwhitford@fortunemail.com
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
The trouble with nuclear waste
It's not easy building a home for spent radioactive material. The proposed site at Yucca Mountain has been underway for over 30 years.
David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
(Fortune) -- The drive to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository from the Energy Department's office in Las Vegas takes about two hours. It's a freaky ride, past fast-growing Pahrump, Nevada, now a bedroom community for Las Vegas; past Nellis Air Force base, where unmanned spy drones -- Predators and Raptors -- fly test flights; past the gunnery range and the old atom bomb test site.
Next I'm within spyglass range of Area 51 (you know, where the government stores aliens in giant freezers), then headed through Lathrop Wells, the last inhabited outpost on the way to Yucca, with two gas stations and a brothel; to the perimeter guard house, and we're in.
Mike Voegele, former chief scientist at Yucca Mountain, now retired, points out landmarks on the barren, toasted landscape -- remnants of the other uses this desolate patch of desert has endured in years past. The surplus missile silos left over from the Cold War, for instance, are unearthed now and lying on their sides and converted into offices.
And Little Skull Mountain, away on the northern horizon, is the site of what Voegele describes as "my personal favorite test done in the whole United States." It was there that the Air Force once stood a tunnel boring machine on its end and buried it under 50 feet of broken rock, simulating conditions that would result if the Russians bombed us before we could bomb them.
"The ballistic missile office wanted to know, even if we were all dead, if the machines could wake up and fire back a retaliatory strike," says Voegele. "They demonstrated that you could excavate a vertical hole inside of a mountain and get [a missile] out through the broken rock. The boring machine is still sitting up there, with an Air Force flag painted on it."
We peek inside the five-mile tunnel they finished drilling 10 years ago. But it's just a tunnel; not much to see. Yucca Mountain has been under development for more than three decades. If it ever opens -- and that won't be until 2017, at the earliest -- 77,000 tons of nuclear waste will one day travel through this tunnel to their final resting places 1,000 feet below the ridgeline of the Mountain. But that's a big if. Construction has been stalled since 1997, pending regulatory approval. The outlook is bleak.
The highlight of the trip is the visit to the top of Yucca Mountain. Up a steep and winding gravel road, really just a shaving on the crust of the mountain. The driver struggling to stay on course. Some slippage in the steepest parts. No guard rails, of course. Help me remember: Did the safety officer cover situations in which the tour bus goes tumbling into the abyss?
Death Valley views
Finally, we arrive. Very windy at the top. Desolate and strange. Big views west across the desert floor to California and Death Valley. We all stand around for a few minutes, contemplating eternity, or at least the next 10,000 years. This place was chosen as our nation's nuclear waste repository in large part because no one lives anywhere near here, and likely no one ever will; this place will never change. Freaky thought. Then it's time to go.
The conversation among the engineers on the long ride back to town turns to water, of all things. There's not nearly enough of it in Las Vegas. But there are all kinds of crazy of schemes floating around. Schemes that to their ears have even less chance of ever being realized than Yucca Mountain does.
"There's a group of people saying you could build a pipeline from rural Nevada north of Las Vegas to the California coast, about 230 miles," says Richard Tosetti. "Pump in the saltwater, build a nuclear plant, desalinate the water while you cool it at the plant and then pump that fresh water to Vegas. There's a group out there putting together a plan!"
Tosetti's laughing hard now, and so is Voegele. These two, jaded from long experience, know what its like to confront horrendous engineering and regulatory obstacles for decades; they have a pretty good idea what the proponents of this crazy water project are up against. "I'll tell you," says Tosetti, once he finally stops laughing. "I'll take my chances on this job."
--Email: dwhitford@fortunemail.com
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CNNMoney
July 31, 2007
In search of safe nukes
The Idaho National Laboratory is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy.
David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
(Fortune) -- There is a remote valley in southeastern Idaho -- 890 square miles; desolate, dry and stunningly beautiful -- that is the place to go for atomic lore. It's the home of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), where on December 20, 1951, scientists succeeded for the first time in converting nuclear power into electricity. They lit four 75-watt light bulbs. The next day they lit the whole lab.
Other experiments were less successful. Outside the building housing Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 (and the light bulbs it illuminated), in the corner of the parking lot, sit two dinosaur-like relics of the Cold War.
"Back in the 1950s," my guide explains, "the US fully believed that the Soviets had built nuclear powered airplanes. At the time we did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles and we could not refuel bombers in flight yet, so that was seen as a priority for the Air Force: to build a nuclear powered bomber that could stay in the air for weeks or even months at a time."
So INL scientists designed and built two air-cooled nuclear reactors/jet engines, and they worked, sort of. "Only problem was the weight-to-thrust ratio still didn't quite pan out because the reactors" -- at 226 tons each -- "were enormous." In other words, they'd never fly. President Kennedy scrapped the program in March 1963.
By then the United States had plenty of missiles it could throw at the Russians, of course, and had learned how to refuel bombers in flight, and by the way had developed fresh intelligence on the Russian nuclear air fleet. Like WMDs in Iraq, it seems, they never existed.
Today INL researchers are working on several initiatives that will help define nuclear power's future. One is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, which the Bush administration has been pushing for the past couple of years. GNEP has several goals. One is to reduce nuclear proliferation by providing fuel suitable for nuclear power plants (but not nuclear weapons) to nations willing to submit to international oversight.
Another is to reduce the volume of nuclear waste by reprocessing spent fuel so that part of it can be reused. GNEP wouldn't eliminate the need for a nuclear waste disposal site like Yucca Mountain, whose development has been stalled since 1997. But it could give us another couple of decades before we have to open another Yucca Mountain. It could also mean that whatever waste we're left with will have a much shorter radioactive life, and therefore won't need to be stored as long.
Next generation
Other INL researchers are helping to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors, known as Generation IV -- potentially safer, more reliable and more versatile (with applications in the coming hydrogen economy) than anything available today. Project director Phil Hildebrandt is hoping to deploy a Gen-IV demonstration reactor by 2018 and have a design that's ready for commercialization by 2025.
Admittedly, that's an optimistic timetable. On the other hand, we're talking about an industry that went from powering four light bulbs to generating 16% of the world's electricity in 50 years. Even David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a staunch critic of the nuclear power industry, rates that an extraordinary accomplishment.
Then he draws his own conclusions, relating to wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy not yet discovered. "If we look forward 50 years," says Lochbaum, "I don't see why we can't make the same kind of [progress], or even better, with renewables."
--Email: dwhitford@fortunemail.com
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Port Folio Weekly
July 31, 2007
Power Surge
Locally and across the nation there’s growing support for nuclear energy. Even some environmentalists are on board. But is it really our best option?
By Jim Morrison
Inside the reactor control room at Dominion Power’s Surry Nuclear Plant this morning, Donald Masiago is watching a computer screen that shows the operating capacity of Unit 2. While the deviations on the solid graph appear to be mountainous, this a little deceiving. The scale is set to operate between 99.9 percent and 100.1 percent, so he’s looking at capacity changes in the hundredths of percentage points.
There was a time when nuclear reactors ran at 50 or 60 percent of capacity. Several were shut down in the 1990s because they were no longer economically feasible for their operators. But the message here is that things have changed; the industry has grown up and deserves a second look. "We’ve just gotten better running these units," says Matt Adams, Surry’s station director and safety chief who is serving as my tour guide.
That’s the mood I’ve encountered all morning during a tour of the Surry station. It seems to reflect not only the industry’s optimism, but the public’s perception of nuclear power.
Once, those distinctive cooling towers were symbolic of an industry that represented a looming threat to civilization: Sooner or later, people feared, an accident would cause reactors to melt through the Earth’s core—despite the best efforts of Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda—and we’d all be left glowing in the aftermath.
Now, the great green campaign against global warming may need nuclear power in its arsenal. Atoms for peace could become atoms for Mother Earth. With the push for "clean" energy to reduce greenhouse gases, nuclear energy is undergoing a renaissance both on Wall Street (and in utility executive offices) and public opinion.
About 70 percent of U.S. energy sources—oil, natural gas and coal plants—burn carbon. Citing that, even the environmental movement, which used opposition to nuclear power as a rallying cry in the 1970s and 1980s, seems open to splitting atoms—or, at least, more open to splitting atoms than burning coal.
"Even the founder of Greenpeace came out in support of nuclear energy as a way going forward towards solving our energy demands," said Don Jernigan, who runs the Surry station and is the site vice president.
Jernigan, a 30-year veteran of the industry, sits in his corner office and ticks off what he sees as nuclear power’s selling points: it is clean, without emissions, and, relatively speaking, cheaper than other sources of energy (though he’s quick to say that’s adding in the cost of pollution control technologies for coal plants).
It’s that clean, available power that has environmentalists suddenly open to the possibility of building nuclear power stations. Gaia theorist James Lovelock of Great Britain was the first to endorse them in 2003. He was soon followed by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace who split from that organization a decade ago.
Stewart Brand, the Merry Prankster, former editor of The Whole Earth Catalogue and founder of the Long Now Foundation, says global warming poses such a threat that nuclear power has to be an option. ‘’There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,’’ he told The New York Times. ‘’Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.’’
Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Clinton Administration, told me that nuclear will be in the mix to combat global warming.
"It has to be part of the solution," she said. "You cannot make up for 20 percent now provided by nuclear because there is not anything else. Not that nuclear doesn’t have problems. It does. But you know everything does. There is no perfect solution. We’re going to increase the amount of electricity supplied by nuclear. I don’t know how much, how fast, but I think it will increase."
Other environmentalists, however, remain steadfastly against new plants. They point to the storage problem, the proliferation problem and the cost of building enough plants to make a dent in the coal burned for electricity—one study estimated that 1,000 new reactors would have to be built by mid-century to have an effect. Imagine, they say, if the billions to build a single nuclear plant were applied to insulating buildings, promoting electric cars or other energy efficiencies.
The Sierra Club’s policy statement on nuclear power labels it "neither safe nor affordable." It cites toxic remains, "risky" plant technology, vulnerability to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the unsolved storage problems as reasons for its continuing opposition.
Dominion officials disagree. "The nuclear industry has a safety record second to none," said Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher. "I think that safe, reliable operation of the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors has gone a long way in causing a new public dialogue on the future of electricity generation."
Public distrust, regulatory minders and an industry bent on improving its image over the years have prodded nuclear operators to become safer and more efficient.
Adams is effusive about his participation in the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), an industry group that conducts on-site visits and shares lessons to better operate nuclear power plants. Surry got raves in its latest evaluation. "The successful operation of the current fleet is vitally important in making sure the next generation is going to happen," Adams says. "Pristine, excellent operation is paramount for us going forward and starting the next wave of construction."
Indeed, Surry is an example of how far the industry has come. The two units there averaged about 93 percent capacity from 2004-2006, compared with 72 percent capacity over their more than three-decades of operation, according to the Department of Energy.
That next wave may be just over the horizon. There are 104 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States, but a new one hasn’t been licensed in three decades, a legacy of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and a Wall Street that viewed nukes as too expensive and too controversial.
That’s changing, nationally and regionally. Dominion plans to apply in November for a license to operate a new reactor it may build at its North Anna site, 100 miles from Washington, D.C. and 150 miles from Norfolk. "The whole process for licensing units has changed to make it simpler for companies and more attractive for investors while maintaining openness with the public," Zuercher said. "We are optimistic about the economics of nuclear. That’s why we’re going through the process to have an option to build a new station at North Anna."
Still, Zuercher said Dominion hasn’t made a final decision on whether to spend several billion dollars to construct the unit. "We are still looking at the economics," he added. "There have to be a number of factors in place for us to go forward including getting public acceptance."
Virginia gets about 35 percent of its energy from the Surry and North Anna plants, 45 percent (and rising) from coal and only 3.7 percent from renewable and "other" sources. According to a 2003 Department of Energy report, Virginia nuclear capacity ranked 14th among states. Seven of the 31 states with reactors, including Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, New Hampshire and South Carolina, get the largest percentage of their energy from nuclear. (Across its network, Dominion generates 34 percent of its capacity through coal, 24 percent with gas, 22 percent with nuclear, 12 percent with oil and eight percent with hydro and other sources).
Some of the cost of the new North Anna reactor, located next to ones that began operating in 1978 and 1980, would be covered by tax breaks and other incentives (the nuclear industry has been heavily subsidized by tax dollars from its inception). It would produce 1,500 megawatts of power, almost twice what each of the units at Surry produces. Zuercher says plans are for the reactor to go online in 2015, though in the past such projects have not met their scheduled completion dates.
In response to complaints and concerns about discharge water from the reactor raising the temperature of Lake Anna, which Dominion created and is used for recreation, the company will build a $200 million wet-dry cooling tower, a technology new to the United States, but used in Europe and Japan. "It’s the right thing to do," Zuercher said.
Dominion is representative of a U.S. nuclear industry that is poised to move into a major building phase. The North Anna application is one of 24 proposed U.S. reactors in the works according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Globally, nuclear power is proliferating. Finland has ordered a big reactor specifically to meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. China’s new nuclear plants—26 by 2025—are part of a desperate effort at smog control. France gets 78 percent of its energy from nuclear power and stateside proponents point to the clean operating record of those plants as evidence the industry has turned the corner on safety and efficiency. More than 400 nuclear power plants provide about 17 percent of the world’s current energy needs, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The new push has been aided by federal money. The Bush Administration’s 2006 budget increased nuclear power funding by 5 percent, even as it cut overall energy funding. In the 2005 Energy Bill, Public Citizen charged there were $12 billion in nuclear subsidies, more than for either the coal or oil industries. In the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act of 2007, Public Citizen and the National Resources Defense Counsel claim there were billions in subsides for the nuclear power industry (Public Citizen put the number at an additional $3.7 billion).
In 1989, the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island closed without producing a killowatt of power at a cost of $6 billion (the plant was fully decommissioned in 1994). In the wake of that and other nuclear plant problems, utilities and their Wall Street financiers stayed away from investing in new plants for two decades. Ratepayers ultimately were made responsible for the debacle. More than a decade later, Long Island electric rates remain among the nation’s highest. And Shoreham was just the poster reactor for construction mismanagement. In 1968, Pacific Gas & Electric projected the total cost of building Unit 1 of its Diablo Canyon plant at $445 million. By 1984, the final bill was $3.75 billion, an 843 percent increase.
Shoreham did give rise to the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which allowed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pre-certify reactor models and utilities to work with pre-approved sites. It would be a decade before any would use the new legislation. But the message is enduring: nuclear plants, even with the Bush Administration clearing some of the regulatory paperwork, are time-consuming and expensive to build.
Calculating the true cost of a kilowatt from a nuclear power plant is complex and controversial, not only because of the construction costs, but the storage costs and the risk assessments (a nuclear accident, for instance, would cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars). But with the cost of coal and other energy sources rising due to pollution controls and some sort of cap and trade program aimed at greenhouse gases in the near future, proponents say even with construction costs nuclear is an option. A Department of Energy paper in 2006 forecast the following prices for energy in 2015, without considering the environmental impact:
• Coal: $0.0531 per kwh
• Wind: $0.0558 per kwh
• Natural Gas: $0.0525 per kwh
• Nuclear: $0.0593 per kwh
• Solar: $0.30 per kwh
• Biomass: $0.075 per kwh
A report issued last month called The Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding put the cost slightly higher, at between 8 and 11 cents per killowatt hour. The task force was a group of 27 individuals from a broad spectrum including the nuclear industry (GE Energy, Duke Energy, the Nuclear Energy Institute), environmental groups (The Natural Resources Defense Counsel, The National Wildlife Federation), and others (The Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate, the Kansas Corporation Commission, the Union of Concerned Scientists).
Dominion’s Zuecher and others in the industry say the Bush Administration’s new policy streamlining the plant approval process through pre-certified designs and public hearings loaded on the front end will decrease construction times and lower costs.
The fact-finding report noted that "factors other than cost can have an acute impact on the outlook of investors, CEOs, and regulators about the potential risks and benefits of a nuclear investment, including the market structure, certainty of regulatory oversight, public perception, and the disposition of nuclear waste."
One cheaper possibility lies in technology developed outside the United States. Fourth generation pebble-bed reactors being developed in China and South Africa are championed for being meltdown-proof, but they are also cheap and fast to build, perhaps as cheap as $300 million a reactor. Instead of water, a pebble bed reactor uses an inert or semi-inert gas like helium as the coolant. However, even proponents concede the technology will not be market competitive until 2020, well after China and other countries are on their way to building large numbers of new reactors.
Unit 2 at the North Anna Nuclear Plant automatically shut down June 29 about 5 p.m. after a safety system started to inject water into the reactor vessel. The NRC described the event as of "low safety significance." There were no injuries and no release of radioactivity. The reactor was back on line in a week. A report should be issued by the NRC later this month.
When environmentalists and nuclear opponents campaign against nuclear power, it’s usually on safety and security issues. Proponents say they’re ignoring history. In more than 10,000 cumulative reactor years of operations worldwide, according to the Joint Fact-Finding report, there have been two major accidents involving nuclear power reactors—at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl.
Both sides concede plants are much safer since the Three Mile Island incident, though the security concerns have grown dramatically since Sept. 11, 2001. At Surry during my visit, there was always an armed guard, sometimes one with an automatic weapon, within a few feet of me.
There have been incidents to cause concern. In March 2002, boric acid had nearly eaten completely through a six-inch reactor pressure vessel before being discovered at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie. The NRC labeled the incident as dangerous and eventually fined the reactor’s owners $5.4 million. Corrective maintenance took two years and cost $600 million. In 2006, the reactors owners entered into an agreement with federal prosecutors to defer prosecution and agreed to pay fines of $23.7 million. Two former employees and one former contractor were indicted for making false statements to inspectors attempting to hide evidence of the corrosion.
The Joint Fact-Finding report notes that safety concerns should focus on existing reactors, which are likely to receive license extensions, as both Surry and North Anna have. But the fact-finding participants could not agree that there was a "strong enough" safety culture at all U.S. power nuclear plants. The task force also expressed concerns about nuclear plant expansion in other countries, especially those with weaknesses in the rule of law, construction practices, regulatory oversight and security.
Germany, which decided in 2000 to phase out all its nuclear plants by 2021 but recently appeared to back away from that plan, has seen a storm of controversy about its 19 aging plants in the wake of a fire at a plant near Hamburg last month and an incident last year at another reactor that required operators to manually shut it down.
Zuercher said the industry knows that to be able to build a new generation of more efficient nuclear plants, it must safely and effectively operate the existing fleet. And the industry through INPO and the World Association of Nuclear Operators needs to instill the highest standards worldwide. "Let me tell you that an event anywhere in the world has repercussions through the industry," he added. "Someone once said we are hostages of each other."
What about nuclear proliferation if the commercial nuclear industry grows? Proponents say the bad guys like Iran and North Korea already have the capacity to enrich uranium for bombs. The NJFF says the challenges will increase as the industry grows. "There are critical shortcomings in the current IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards," the report concludes, adding that "the international community has demonstrated that the enforcement mechanisms are effective."
The problem of waste storage is something the nuclear industry has been promising to solve for 40 years.
In his office at the Surry plant, Don Jernigan says it has. He’s been to Yucca Mountain and he says the technology works. But he concedes the political reality is different. "The issue is whether or not the state of Nevada wants to become the repository for the country’s spent fuel," he adds. And, so far, Nevada has said no thanks.
Until and unless the political winds shift, Yucca Mountain may remain one big, deep hole in the ground. The most optimistic timetable for opening the facility is 2017—if ever —at a projected cost of $58 billion. In addition, the mountain has a statutory capacity of 70,000 metric tons, well below the amount of waste that will be created by current reactors. Jernigan and others say if the other hurdles are surpassed, Congress may up that capacity.
Claussen and the members of the Joint Fact-Finding group see Yucca as a dead issue. "What the nuclear industry has to do is figure out the waste problem," Claussen said. "We’ve spent years and years arguing about Yucca Mountain and that is not the solution because we’re still arguing. I don’t see the politics changing there."
The Joint Fact-Finding group concludes that a deep underground geologic repository is the best long-term disposal for spent fuel, but in the interim, on-site fuel pools and dry cask systems can store spent fuel safely and securely.
At Surry, spent fuel is cooled in a pool, then moved to dry, concrete casks sitting forlornly on pads in the near distance.
Jernigan and Zuercher both mention reprocessing as a means to reduce waste. Reprocessing of spent fuel is done in other countries, but was outlawed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 because it is one way to make the key ingredient of a nuclear bomb. The Bush Administration has been pushing its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which includes reprocessing, as a means to expand nuclear power abroad and in the United States by reducing the waste. However, reprocessing is expensive and creates low and intermediate-level nuclear wastes itself, wastes that need long-term management.
Zuercher thinks reprocessing may become more economical and may offer a short-term solution to the storage problem. "There’s a lot of energy in that used fuel and it can be reprocessed so that you can use that energy and reduce the amount in the waste stream," he said.
But he says Dominion does believe a repository like Yucca Mountain is necessary. "Fuel should not reside at the site forever," he added. "That’s not acceptable in our view. It’s not responsible."
There is no doubt that nuclear power will proliferate worldwide. But can it mitigate global warming? The United States is currently responsible for about 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and the generation of electricity is responsible for about one third of that. In short, generating electricity is the single largest source of greenhouse gases. So targeting electricity makes sense. And proponents like Brand and others say the move to nuclear power is the obvious answer.
Most of the nuclear growth is expected to take place in Asia and India. In the U.S., the Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding report concluded the rate of new plants being built would not replace the capacity of old plants being retired.
But the report raises doubt whether enough reactors could be built fast enough to make a difference. One or two plants at North Anna won’t dent the need. According to the report, 435 nuclear plants around the world are likely to be retired in the next 50 years. Indeed, there are doubters who think even replacing their capacity is unlikely.
Two decades ago, the United States had about 400 suppliers and 900 nuclear certificate holders licensed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Today, the report said, those numbers are 80 and 200. The report also noted a limited forging supply for key components. Only two qualified companies in the world can supply the heavy forgings needed by the nuclear industry, and their prices have increased by double figures in just the last six months.
To replace aging nuclear plants and add enough capacity to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions would require constructing, on average, 14 1,000-megawatt-plants annually for the next 50 years. That’s trillions of dollars of investment. The report also concluded a ramp-up in nuclear capacity of that size would require:
• 10 nuclear waste repositories the capacity of Yucca Mountain.
• 11-22 large enrichment plants, compared to 17 existing plants.
• 18 fuel fabrication plants, each producing 1,000 tons of fuel year, compared to 24 existing plants.
"The NJFF participants agree that to build enough nuclear capacity to achieve carbon reductions of a carbon reduction wedge would require the industry to return immediately to the most rapid period of growth experienced in the past (1981-90) and sustain this rate of growth for 50 years," the report concluded.
In the U.S., the task force concluded the rate of new plants being built would not replace the capacity of old plants being retired. Some participants in the task force thought with higher capacity new generation nuclear plants, that goal could be reached. Others did not.
Zuercher said the need for that growth may be mitigated by relicensing of existing facilities. "We anticipate that most of the existing nuclear power stations will have their licenses renewed for another 20 years," he said. Theoretically, those plants could then be relicensed a second time for another 20 years. "It is possible to renew again and again, depending upon the condition of your station and whether it makes economic sense," he said.
"We personally believe nuclear needs to be part of the future," he added. "The decision point it all boils down to is will it be economical to build and operate?"
That’s a trillion-dollar question given the energy needs of the next century. And, when you ask it, the next question is inescapable: what if we spent those trillions innovating and building renewable sources of clean energy without nuclear power’s waste problem? •
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 30, 2007
Waste site work continues
Federal agency ignores state ban on water use
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Is it science?
Or is it defiance?
It's both, say federal and state officials embroiled in a court battle over using Nevada's water for drilling operations at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
On Thursday, an 8,000-gallon tanker truck churned through Midway Valley delivering water to several drill rigs, six days after the state engineer ordered the Department of Energy to stop using the water for the drilling project.
The use of the water for collecting rock samples deep in the Earth's crust defies a court-approved agreement.
Federal scientists are ignoring the order because Justice Department attorneys say it is essential to continue drilling until November to show the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the valley at the foot of Yucca Mountain is safe from floods and earthquakes.
That's where thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be stored temporarily, in football-field-sized buildings, before the highly radioactive waste is disposed of a short distance away in a maze of tunnels that, with the NRC's approval, will be dug inside the mountain.
In some cases, the rigs are taking core samples to confirm previous work on the site's geology, federal attorneys said in court papers last week.
State officials say all the scientific work should have ended years ago and it's not in Nevada's interest to let DOE complete the drilling project by November as federal attorneys want.
"I think it's clearly defiance and goes to show the uncleaned hands that DOE intends to take to the court," Nevada Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said Friday. "These people have a lot of nerve. They're under guise, defying the state's order and demonstrating to the court their lack of good faith."
Keith Saxe, the Justice Department's assistant natural resources chief, wouldn't comment on DOE's continued use of the water after State Engineer Tracy Taylor reinstated his cease-and-desist order on July 20.
"We speak in the courtroom with our papers," Saxe said, referring to the Justice Department's emergency motion Wednesday that asked U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt to block the state's order.
The state intends to answer the motion today or Tuesday, setting the stage for a hearing as early as this week.
Meanwhile, geologists at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, continue to collect, measure and log hundreds of soil-and-rock core samples that are being extracted from a patchwork of drill sites that mark where surface facilities are planned.
At the same time, the state engineer has been trying to get inspectors on the site to ensure compliance with Taylor's order.
The Justice Department's trial attorney, Stephen Bartell, stated in a letter Wednesday that DOE won't let them on site unless the state engineer agrees not to use the inspection for bolstering the cease-and-desist order "or related enforcement actions and threats."
Bob Conrad, a spokesman for the state engineer, said the conditions are "unacceptable to us."
"As far as we're concerned, DOE is stonewalling," he said.
After the Justice Department postponed a previously scheduled visit to the drilling project, Yucca Mountain Project officials allowed the Review-Journal to observe it in progress Thursday.
Within a couple of hours, at least two of a half dozen rock-core drills twirled from platforms on flatbed trucks. One burrowed 580 feet into the floor of Midway Valley.
The other, operated by a different subcontractor for Bechtel SAIC Co., bored a small-diameter hole to nearly 260 feet, where drillers had worked through the night to reach a bedded tuff, an ancient volcanic-rock formation.
Water used for lubricating and cooling the drill bit splashed into a metal cylinder, where it was funneled into a mud pit. A hose then recycled the brown water from the pit back to the rig.
The water is drawn from two wells near the mountain.
"He's tripping in right now and doing a core run," explained field geologist Johnny Liles as the driller punched a lever that spun the bit deeper into the hole, dubbed RF-94.
"This is what they got last night," he said showing a box holding plastic bags of sandy, alluvium samples.
A few minutes later, the bit hit solid rock and the drill crew pulled a six-foot-long sleeve from the hole. Inside was a 3-inch-diameter cylinder of bedded tuff.
A geologist and a technician washed the tube-shaped rock sample, then measured it and drew parallel red and blue lines. Stacked end-to-end, the samples provide a cross-section of soil and rock layers.
Without the data, DOE officials wouldn't be able to complete a license application for regulators to review.
Delays in collecting the data would push DOE off its self-imposed schedule for submitting the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008.
Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency and a critic of the Yucca Mountain Project, said DOE's defiance of the order to stop drilling shows how critical the data is to the federal effort to saddle Nevada with the nation's deadliest nuclear waste.
"It's a degree of arrogance by the federal government that they don't have to abide by anybody's rules or regulations," Loux said. "They're doing whatever they want, whenever they want.
"They have set up an artificial date for the license application, and there's no direction for it. They could easily skip the date. They are basically putting the state in a dilemma by stealing the water."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 30, 2007
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Stalemate takes spotlight
Clinton forces Democratic foes to take stand on dump
By Molly Ball
Review-Journal
Hillary Clinton came out strong on the issue of Yucca Mountain recently. And in doing so, she one-upped the rest of the Democratic field in Nevada.
With the candidates paying more attention to Nevada than in elections past, the New York senator and Democratic presidential front-runner announced she will call for congressional hearings on the proposed nuclear waste repository.
Clinton said she felt she should do more than merely pledge to stop the project if elected, as all the Democratic candidates have done.
"I'm not going to be president for 18 months," she said in the conference call announcing the move. "If we don't slow it down now, it could become a fait accompli."
The hearings may well take place. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee on which Clinton sits, reportedly agreed to schedule them soon after the Senate reconvenes in September.
Politically, analysts say, Clinton moved adroitly to put herself out front on Nevada's pet issue. More important than her opposition to the nuclear dump was the gesture she made.
"It's smart politics," said University of Nevada, Las Vegas political scientist Kenneth Fernandez. "She's the strong front-runner, but she's not resting on her laurels. The Nevada caucus is quickly approaching, so she's sending a message."
Clinton's message to Nevada Democrats: She knows and cares about their concerns, and backs that up with action.
Clinton also positioned herself well in Nevada for the general election, should she become the nominee, Fernandez noted. The major Republican candidates either favor Yucca Mountain or have not taken a firm position on the project.
And Clinton put her competitors in a tough position. Her fellow Democrats now must find a way to make their own moves on Yucca without seeming to "me too" Clinton's.
If they agree with the idea of holding hearings, "they will look like they're just following along," Fernandez said, but if they disagree, they risk looking insufficiently tough on Yucca.
The response of one of Clinton's fellow senators and her top opponent for the Democratic nomination illustrated the difficulty.
"Senator Obama doesn't need new hearings to know that he does not support using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste site," said Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "To the extent that hearings would help raise public awareness about the issue, he supports them."
At the same time, by positioning herself as vocal on Yucca, Clinton left herself open to attacks on the issue. One of those came last week, when a Republican senator pointed out that Clinton skipped two hearings on Yucca last year.
Clinton's campaign responded that she was busy with important business on the days in question. And in a local radio interview last week, Clinton said it would have been "a waste of time to ask questions" in the Republican-controlled Congress.
"There was a feeling that, no matter what questions were raised, there was a very strong momentum that the administration and their Republican allies in Congress were attempting to generate to move forward on Yucca," Clinton said on KNPR-FM, 88.9's "State of Nevada."
Things are different now that Democrats are in charge, Clinton said.
Then there is the question of whether Clinton's anti-Yucca position is strong enough for the dump's most ardent opponents. The anti-Yucca purists say that if you really oppose the project, you must also oppose any increase in nuclear energy, which would only produce more waste.
"We shouldn't go down the path (to expanding nuclear power) when we already know it's a failure," said Michele Boyd, legislative director for the energy program at Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit opposed to Yucca Mountain.
"We oppose nuclear power because of the cost, the waste, safety, security and proliferation," Boyd said. "We can deal with climate change faster, cheaper and cleaner with renewables and efficiency."
The issue was raised in last week's Democratic debate sponsored by YouTube and CNN, when a questioner opined that nuclear power was a good option for alternative energy and asked the candidates what they thought.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards seemed to take the firmest anti-nuke stand, saying, "I do not favor nuclear power," and explaining his reasons.
Obama took the question next and said, "I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix."
Clinton's response was, "I'm agnostic about nuclear power. John is right, that until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost, it's very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that's where American technology comes in. Let's figure out what we're going to do about the waste and the cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution."
In the KNPR interview, Clinton said she was "not against" a future for nuclear power.
Boyd wouldn't comment directly on the candidates, but she said there should be no talk about any future for nuclear power. The issue ought to be closed.
"We've been exploring it for 50 years," she said. "We know it's not a solution."
The debate question and its response represent a recent fissure in the environmental movement. In the past, most environmental activists opposed nuclear power, but some now see it as a cleaner alternative to pollution-generating coal-fired power plants.
The state of Nevada's official position is opposed to the Yucca Mountain project but not to nuclear energy.
One of the anti-nuclear purists in Nevada has always been Peggy Maze Johnson. Long Nevada's most vocal anti- Yucca voice as executive director of Citizen Alert, Maze Johnson has always said nuclear power must also be opposed because of the problem its byproducts pose.
Maze Johnson now is on leave from Citizen Alert in order to serve as a paid staffer for the Clinton campaign in Nevada.
In an interview last week, Maze Johnson said she helped advise Clinton on her Yucca announcement. And she defended Clinton's stance on nuclear power.
"She's always been perfect on Yucca Mountain," Maze Johnson said of Clinton.
Asked about Clinton's "agnostic" stance, Maze Johnson said she saw it as amounting to opposition to nuclear power. "That's what she said -- until they deal with the waste, you can't expand it."
Clinton's announcement was exquisitely timed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last year proclaimed the project "dead," and it had lain dormant as an issue for a while; but it recently flared up in the headlines due to a controversy over the use of state water to drill bore holes for research at the site.
In a prepared statement, Reid backed Clinton's call for hearings, saying, "I am convinced Senator Clinton's proposal will help Nevada win the fight to kill the dump once and for all."
Asked what was the point of holding hearings on a dead proposal, a Reid spokesman said vigilance is needed to keep Yucca from coming back to life.
"We all know that the dump will never be built ... but there are a lot of questions about Yucca Mountain that still need to be answered to make sure we continue to go through t