Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 9, 2007
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Newswise
August 09, 2007
Cognitive Science and Technology Program becomes Sandia initiative
Newswise — Imagine a world where a machine creates a “virtual you” by modeling how you think and your expertise on a subject. Or one where your car’s computer appreciates your driving skills and compensates for your limitations.
That’s the world Sandia National Laboratories has entered full throttle through its Cognitive Science and Technology Program (CS&T).
A revolution is at hand, says Chris Forsythe, member of the Labs’ cognition research team. It’s not one of just better guns and weapons for national security. Instead, “it’s a revolution of the mind — of how people think and how machines can help people work better.”
Focus on individual
A large portion of Sandia’s program today focuses on the uniqueness of the individual interacting with others and with machines. It involves using machines to help humans perform more efficiently and embedding cognitive models in machines so they interact with users more like people interact with one another. The result is the ability for researchers to take advantage of the basic strengths of humans and machines while mitigating the weaknesses of each.
Cognitive projects and research at Sandia span a whole gamut of areas, ranging from student training to assisting with Yucca Mountain licensing, from designing “smart” cars to using video-like games to train military personnel, and from determining how neurons give rise to memory to global terrorist threat detection.
Funding for the research has come from the Office of Naval Research, Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, Department of Energy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other government agencies. The CS&T program also benefits from collaborations with the University of New Mexico, the MIND Imaging Center in Albuquerque, and most recently the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.
The initial decision for Sandia to develop cognitive technologies is based on the belief that “there are numerous positive impacts cognitive systems technologies can have on our national security,” says Russ Skocypec, senior manager of Sandia’s Human, Systems, and Simulation Technologies Department.
Today’s conflicts, he says, are unlike others over the past century. Although all wars are driven by humans, major influences on the outcomes have differed. World War I was a chemists’ war, World War II a physicists’ war, and the Cold War an economic war. Today, he believes, “we are engaged in a human war that is influenced primarily by individual human beings rather than technology or bureaucracy.”
That is why he considers it appropriate for Sandia, a laboratory with national security as its mission, to use its resources to better understand the minds of this country’s adversaries, as well as to use machines to enhance the Labs’ abilities to recognize patterns, deal with massive amounts of data, solve perplexing problems, and perform complex activities.
While Sandia dipped its toes in cognitive research in the late 1990s, the Labs’ real effort in the area started in 2002 when the program won an internally funded LDRD grand challenge. Based in part on the success and path set by the grand challenge in 2005, the former Mission Council — a group that consisted of senior Sandia vice presidents — selected cognitive science and technology (CS&T) as a research focus area for the Labs.
Strategic planning for cognitive science and technology
During the spring and summer of 2006, the cognition team conducted two investigations. The first looked at what cognitive capabilities exist at Sandia.
The second examined opportunities involving the convergence of Sandia’s initiatives in the areas of cognition, biotechnologies, and nanotechnologies. This led to a Cognitive Science and Technology Plan with three technical objectives — a basic science understanding of the human brain, mind, and behavior; improved human performance; and advanced human-machine systems at all scales.
“The plan is at the level of ‘send a man to the moon’ — beyond the scope of what any one institution can possibly do,” Forsythe says. “It’s a synthesis of ideas. Now, our intent is to home in on a few areas in which the labs can make a unique and profound contribution.”
Forsythe says there are two elements to Sandia’s strategic planning for cognition.
“What makes most sense is for Sandia to select areas where we have unique, collective technical strengths, areas that few others in the world can do as well,” Forsythe says. “These include such capabilities as high performance computing, nanotech, physics-based modeling and simulation, and surety.” That is the first element. (Surety is an engineering discipline that emphasizes methods and technologies enabling assessment and technical solutions for the combined safety, security, and reliability of systems.)
The second involves a focus on opportunities where specific national security problems have a human factor.
John Wagner, manager of Sandia’s Cognitive and Exploratory Systems and Simulations Department, says the new area of research means “profound opportunities exist for the Labs.”
“CS&T’s ambitious direction may not be realized for many decades, but the information required for progress is emerging today,” he says. “It is reasonable to expect future discoveries will become the Nobel-class achievements for the cognitive and neuroscience communities at large in the years to come.”
What is a cognitive system?
The term “cognitive systems” has been used worldwide to identify a variety of programs, initiatives, and technologies. However, so many varied uses have led to ambiguity of meaning. Sandia has established its own definition of cognitive systems: “Cognitive systems consist of technologies that utilize as an essential component one or more computational models of human cognitive processes or the knowledge of specific experts, users, or other individuals.”
Wagner says that cognitive research at Sandia — like most worldwide — is in its infancy. He anticipates that within the next decade research that seems like science fiction today will be a daily part of everyone’s lives. The cognitive revolution will be in full bloom.
“Once that happens, the best of both worlds can happen,” Wagner says. “If we understand human cognition better, we can work together as a nation to reduce tension, find problems before they turn into armed conflict, and to work toward actions that establish and maintain peace worldwide.”
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.
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Columbus Free Press
August 09, 2007
Radioactive "bailout-in-advance" opens fierce new war over nuke reactors
Harvey Wasserman
After fifty years of what Forbes Magazine long ago called "the largest managerial disaster in business history," the nuke power industry is demanding untold billions in a federal "Bailout-in-Advance." Congress will decide on these proposed loan guarantees for new nukes in its September conferences over the new Energy Bill.
Both sides are gearing up for the new war over the irradiation of our energy future.
As usual, it's vital to "follow the money."
The industry once promised that atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter." But after a half-century of proven failure, Wall Street won't invest in new nukes without federal support. So buried in the Senate version of the new Energy Bill is a single sentence authorizing the Department of Energy to underwrite virtually unlimited loans for still more nukes. The sentence was slipped into the bill by industry backers without open debate.
Overall this staggeringly complex bill contains a hodge-podge of benefits for renewable energy and efficiency, along with a pile of contradictions and steps backward. The House version, for example, lacks strict fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. It also drew a veto threat from George W. Bush, who wants the restoration of huge tax breaks for his friends in the fossil fuel business.
But the single sentence that could ultimately have the biggest impact on human survival is the one that offers the prospect of an essentially unlimited amount of taxpayer money to guarantee investments in new atomic reactors.
The funding would come through the Department of Energy, which Congress has authorized to guarantee "new" technological advances that are considered "green." Congress says that includes new reactors.
The Senate version of the bill would allow the DOE to sign off on loan guarantees for up to 80% of the cost of each new nuke it wants, with no yearly review from Congress. The industry has targeted $25 billion for next year alone, followed by another $25 billion in 2009, and admits to wanting at least 28 new reactors as soon as possible. The industry says the plants will cost $4-6 billion each, but history indicates the ultimate price tags will be far higher.
This does not include the federal insurance, under the Price-Anderson Act, that since 1957 has shielded nuke owners from liability in case of a major catastrophe.
Though it says they are "inherently safe," the industry demands the same insurance for its new reactors. The policy would leave countless citizens uncompensated for the destruction of their health and property after a radioactive disaster.
Atomic power is also a major source of global warming. Reactors pump huge quantities of waste heat directly into the air and water. The mining, milling and enrichment of nuclear fuel also result in substantial CO2 emissions, as do the construction and decommissioning of the plants.
As for the long-term management of radioactive waste, the solution promised fifty years ago is nowhere in sight. Regulatory officials say the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository, under construction at a cost so far of some $10 billion, cannot open until 2020, if ever. The projected cost if Yucca does open is now about $60 billion, but it's likely to climb even higher.
In 2000-2001, as much as $100 billion in bad "stranded cost" nuke investments were foisted on the public by a technology that can no longer compete with wind, solar, increased efficiency or a wide array of truly green energy sources that offer real answers to the global warming crisis.
None of this bothers the reactor pushers and their well-funded supporters on Capitol Hill. Citizen groups such as Greenpeace, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Public Citizen, Beyond Nuclear, PIRG, Musicians United for Safe Energy, Nukewatch, Nuclear Energy Information Service, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, and green industry supporters have banded together to wage an uphill battle aimed at striking that critical sentence from the Senate bill.
Come September, much of the public attention may be on the pro-green features of the bill, which requires more energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and the power grid, along with a demand that 15% of the nation's electricity come from solar, wind and other renewables by 2020. The House passed its version---which also calls for a carbon neutral federal government---by a vote of 241 to 172 (the fossil fuel tax breaks demanded by Bush were rejected, 221 to 189).
But the real long-term impact on our energy future will turn on the tens of billions in taxpayer guarantees that may or may not pour into reactor construction that no private investors would otherwise fund.
As Forbes put it in 1985, atomic energy has been "a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible."
The losses, said Forbes, exceeded the cost of the space program and the Vietnam War combined and left the US with "a power source that is not only high in cost and unreliable, but perhaps not even safe."
To stop this tragedy from being repeated, the safe energy movement will desperately try to stop yet another "bail-out in advance" for the world's most dangerous and expensive failed technology.
They need your help---in the short term for the Congressional conference on the Energy Bill, in the long term for turning back this latest nuclear assault on our energy future.
Our survival depends on their green-powered success.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 08, 2007
Poll: Nuke waste still worrisome
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Attitudes about nuclear power and the perceived risks of disposing highly radioactive waste haven't changed much in five years with only 28 percent of respondents in an MIT survey agreeing that nuclear waste could be stored safely into the distant future.
"Waste storage is a show-stopper for nuclear power," concludes the recent survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems.
The survey found that slightly less than two-thirds of the respondents, sampled from across the country, believe reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is a popular idea worth pursuing.
The survey explained that reprocessing is used in France, Japan and elsewhere and reduces the life span of most toxic wastes from 100,000 years to 1,000 years.
"Sixty percent of the sample said that they supported the expansion of the Department of Energy's reprocessing program, and half of the sample said they would support a significant expansion of nuclear energy in the United States if the country reprocessed its fuel," reads the 31-page report published in June.
Likewise, two-thirds of the respondents said they would support a significant expansion of nuclear power for generating electricity "if there were effective waste storage."
Only 19 percent thought that Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should be used without further delays. "Another 25 percent would agree to its use 'only if the state of Nevada assents,' " states the report, titled "Public Attitudes Toward America's Energy Options."
"Waste storage poses a particularly thorny problem for nuclear power, as some of the most toxic products remain a threat to health for hundreds of thousands of years," wrote the report's author, Stephen Ansolabehere.
Conducted for the center by Knowledge Networks in February, the survey this year like in 2002 polled about 1,200 people across the United States.
As was the case five years ago, nuclear power drew the strongest opposition for construction of local energy facilities with 54 percent this year strongly opposing a nuclear power plant within 25 miles of their homes.
When asked to rate how harmful energy sources are to the environment, 54 percent of the respondents this year said the perceived harm from nuclear power was very harmful or moderately harmful.
In 2002, more of the respondents, 68 percent, felt that way about perceived harm from nuclear power.
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 08, 2007
Roberts chosen for nuke agency
Eastley Removed Herself
By Mark Waite
PVT
When Gov. Jim Gibbons appointed Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, then rescinded that appointment, he still expressed a desire to appoint a Nye County resident to the agency.
Eastley was rejected because of her pro-Yucca Mountain stance, but Gibbons has found a supporter of the state's ardent anti-Yucca position to replace her: Nye County Superintendent Rob Roberts.
The commission advises the state on nuclear matters, and an appointment was needed to fill the vacancy of Vice-Chairman Michon Mackedon, a longtime opponent of the project.
Gibbons, in rescinding Eastley's appointment, said, "This position on the Nuclear Project Commission requires a representative who shares the primary sentiment of Nevada's residents and my administration's views on the Yucca Mountain Project."
Roberts already was appointed to a state methamphetamine task force this year and is on the newly-elected governor's transition team on education. The superintendent was concerned over the amount of time his new position might require but was told it only meets quarterly, for about two hours per meeting.
"My number one concern is the education of the children of Nye County," he said.
Roberts, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, said transporting highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain would be risky because of the potential for terrorist strikes or an accident triggered by a bridge collapse or railroad failure.
"I have a real concern that hazardous materials coming through our state could be targeted. Once a canister is open, there could be serious degradation of life," Roberts told the Associated Press.
While the Nye County superintendent was critical of the project, Nye County commissioners have pursued a policy of either neutrality or constructive engagement in bargaining with the U.S. Department of Energy to mediate the effects of the project.
Former Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal after Eastley's dismissal, "Nye County has been a problem for the delegation almost from the beginning."
Kirstin Searer, deputy executive director of the state Democratic Party, used the snafu to accuse Gibbons of not being honest with Nevadans on his intentions to stop the nuclear dump project.
Roberts said he doesn't know what material is classified regarding the project and doesn't know some details, like the half-life of the nuclear waste in the mountain. He did, however, relate his experience as an armor officer in the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.
"When I was assigned to the 1st Armored Division in Germany for three years, I transported numerous convoys of fuel and conventional ammunitions. I know the hazards and risks of transporting that across thousands of miles in all types of weather," Roberts said.
When it comes to the politics of his position, however, Roberts said, "I'm not representing anybody. I'm a private citizen in this matter."
Bryan said at first glance he's pleased Roberts is joining his committee. Bryan told the Associated Press he shares Roberts' view that nuclear waste transportation is "one of the major considerations."
Roberts was an instructor and chief of the military science instruction branch at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1986 to 1989. He is a Vietnam War combat veteran, serving in 1969-70 as a helicopter pilot with the 101st Airborne Division.
Nye County Commissioner Roberta "Midge" Carver, asked for comment, questioned the fairness of screening candidates by their ideological stance.
"If you wanted to be advised how people in the neighborhood felt, you would want people from both sides of the coin instead of one side. But it's his commission and it's his choice," Carver said.
Regarding another matter, Carver originally had planned to go on a fact-finding trip of nuclear waste facilities in Scandinavia, sponsored by the United States Transport Council, Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 but said she may have to cancel because of personal commitments.
She didn't make a trip last year to Japan due to knee surgery but traveled to France to view their nuclear waste processing facilities in 2005.
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South Bend Tribune
August 08, 2007
Michigan officials tout nuclear power
Upton, secretary of energy support more plants.
Lou Mumford
Tribune Staff Writer
ST. JOSEPH -- A new wave of nuclear power plants may be coming to address the country's growing energy needs, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday.
During a visit to southwestern Michigan, Bodman, a guest of U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, pointed out energy demands in the United States are expected to increase by 50 percent over the next 25 years.
To meet those demands in the face of global warming, nuclear power, which produces no emissions, is one of the few viable alternatives, he said.
"Even environmentalists seem to be signing onto that," he said.
After a news conference at the Whirlpool Corp.'s Technology Center, Bodman and Upton
departed for a tour of the Cook Nuclear Power Plant in Bridgman. Another nuclear power plant, Palisades, is in nearby Covert.
Currently, spent fuel rods from the plants are stored at the plants on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Upton, however, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been a strong supporter of legislation to have the radioactive waste stored at a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Preliminary construction of the repository is under way but progress has been slow, largely because of opposition from Nevada lawmakers.
On Tuesday, Upton unveiled bipartisan legislation that he said would streamline the licensing process and thus expedite construction of the facility at Yucca Mountain. The current timetable for the storage facility's completion is 2017, and that's without delays anticipated from lawsuits, Bodman and Upton said.
Bodman said his department expects to receive approval of the design for the Yucca Mountain facility by next summer.
"Then it takes on a life of its own. There are political issues that will still be obstacles ... (but) if we get the application on file, that will be a big step forward," he said.
Bodman said a company in Baltimore recently submitted the first application to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States in more than 30 years. Also, he said preliminary "siting" (location) for two other plants, one in Illinois and one in Mississippi, has been approved by the Federal Energy Commission.
"There are 25 to 30 (nuclear power plants) in various stages of development," he said.
In a prepared statement released after the news conference, Upton said streamlining the licensing process for storing nuclear waste will help "expedite the construction of new nuclear plants as well as the expansion of existing ones."
"We have not built a new nuclear plant in over three decades, but nuclear power is a common-sense solution to the demand for clean energy, and I am confident that this legislation is a responsible solution to meeting the nation's energy demands of the 21st century," he said.
Also on the energy front, Upton said Congress approved the last in a series of funding allocation bills last week and each one included his bipartisan amendment requiring federal agencies to buy only energy-efficient light bulbs.
The plan, he said, is to replace all 100-watt incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents by 2012. Although the compact fluorescents, or CFLs, are considerably more expensive, they use 75 percent less energy, last up to 10 times longer and save about $30 in electricity costs over each bulb's lifetime, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program.
"This will save about 65 billion kilowatts of energy (a year)," Upton said.
Staff writer Lou Mumford:
lmumford@sbtinfo.com
(269) 687-7002
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Platts
August 06, 2007
GAO says DOE quality assurance improved at Yucca Mountain
Washington (Platts)--6Aug2007
DOE has improved the quality assurance program at its Yucca Mountain repository site in Nevada, but it's too early to tell whether the department will produce a high-quality repository license application, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released August 6. The finding is more positive than reports GAO issued last year and in 2004. GAO said in its 2004 report that the program still had "lingering problems" and "continuing management weaknesses." However, in the latest report, the federal auditors said that DOE has made progress in implementing recommendations and resolving some problems identified in GAO's March 2006 report. A high-quality license application is crucial to NRC's ability to reach a licensing decision on DOE's license application within the three- to four-year period required by law, GAO said. If licensed by NRC, Yucca Mountain would be used to dispose of utility spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste and would be required to meet federal regulations for one million years.
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Platts
August 06, 2007
US GAO unsure Yucca Mountain improvements enough for application
Washington (Platts)--6Aug2007
The US Department of Energy has improved the quality assurance program at its Yucca Mountain repository site in Nevada, but it's too early to tell whether the turnaround is robust enough to produce a high-quality repository license application, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.
The finding is more positive than one GAO issued three years ago, when it said the program still has "lingering problems with data, models and software, and continuing management weaknesses." Federal auditors expressed similar concerns in a 2006 report.
In the report released Monday, however, federal auditors said DOE has made progress in implementing recommendations in GAO's March 2006 report and in resolving some problems that GAO had identified.
A high-quality license application is crucial to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's ability to reach a decision on a DOE licensing application within the three- to four-year period that the law requires, GAO said.
"Specifically, NRC has stated that a high-quality license application would be complete, technically adequate, transparent--clearly justifying and explaining any underlying assumptions and conclusions--and traceable to original source materials," the report said.
If NRC grants the license, Yucca Mountain--roughly 100 miles outside Las Vegas--would be used to dispose of utility spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste and would be required to meet federal regulations for 1 million years.
--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com
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Grist Magazine
August 06, 2007
Richardson on the Record
An interview with Bill Richardson about his presidential platform on energy and the environment
By Amanda Griscom Little
Bill Richardson likes to play up his image as a horse-ridin', gun-totin' man of the Wild West, but don't be distracted by the cowboy swagger -- the Democratic governor of New Mexico also has a serious policy wonk side. That was on full display in May when he unveiled a broad and ambitious climate and energy plan. Billing himself as the "energy president," he's now calling for a 90 percent cut to greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, a renewable-energy target of 50 percent by 2040, and a 50-mile-per-gallon fuel-economy standard by 2020.
Richardson is no newcomer to energy issues, of course -- he served as secretary of energy at the end of the Clinton administration, and has aggressively pushed clean energy as governor of New Mexico. But some greens might not care for his "clean coal" boosterism or his embrace of "all kinds of biofuel."
I rang up the governor at his office in Santa Fe, N.M., to size up his energy and environmental vision.
Q: You've dubbed yourself the "energy president." Why did you choose that moniker?
A: Right now, the most important domestic and national-security issues involve America becoming energy independent and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. I believe it's going to take an "energy president" who will lead this country toward these goals by asking all Americans to sacrifice for the common good and be more energy-efficient and promote a green style of living.
Q: Many of the candidates are trying to paint themselves as the green candidate. What makes your platform stronger than the others'?
A: On energy, both the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters have stated that my plan is the most aggressive, with the strongest timetables.
But what differentiates myself from other candidates is I've actually done it. I've done it as energy secretary in the Clinton administration by tightening air-conditioning energy-use standards by 30 percent, building a strong portfolio of renewable energy, and promoting 100-mile-per-gallon vehicles through a fuel-efficiency initiative with the auto companies.
Then, as governor of New Mexico, I believe we have the most clean-energy initiatives of any state. We have a renewable portfolio standard going to 20 percent by 2020. Our state is on track to observe the Kyoto treaty. We have no taxes on hybrid vehicles. We're the first in the country to export wind energy. We also have a number of incentives for solar, wind, biomass, biodiesel, and distributed-generation fuel cells.
I was also probably one of the most active pro-environment congressmen. I pursued and made law a number of national parks, wilderness areas, river protections, and air-quality standards. When I was on the committee [overseeing the] Interior [Department], I worked on bills including the Jemez National Recreation Area and the South San Juan Wilderness.
Q: You've vowed as president to mandate a 90 percent greenhouse-gas emission reduction by 2050 --
A: I've also proposed a strong standard in the short term: 20 percent reductions by 2020.
Q: These goals are even stronger than some environmental groups are calling for. Why such dramatic targets?
Because we can't wait. It's a matter of necessity. It's important because it involves our national security. Our energy dependence on foreign oil is so unhealthy -- we could be vulnerable to an oil price shock, to $5-per-gallon gasoline prices, to long lines at the pumps. What I'm also advocating is a dramatic shift in mass transit, like I've done here in New Mexico with the Rail Runner. But we'd have, nationally, transportation policies that promote sensible land use -- not just proposing highway funding bills, but bills to establish light rail and bullet trains and more energy-efficient transportation. Also, land-use policies that advocate open space. This is for a better quality of life for all our people.
Q: Are your climate goals as much informed by your concern about energy independence as they are about climate change?
A: Yes.
Q: As president, would you subsidize the development of technologies, such as liquefied coal, that could worsen global warming, even if they would boost energy independence?
A: I'm for clean coal, but I'm not a big fan of liquefied. I do not believe that coal-to-liquids technologies represent a viable solution for the future because of the associated carbon dioxide emissions. I will push for a well-to-wheels low-carbon fuel requirement that reduces the carbon impact of our liquid fuels by 30 percent by 2020, including alternative fuels that will substitute for about 10 percent of our gasoline demand.
Q: But coal does belong in a clean-energy future?
A: I believe that carbon-clean coal will play a role in our energy future. There have gotta be some very strict clean-coal standards. I'm not an advocate for continuing to use old oil, coal, and nuclear. They all have to be part of a mix, but in the past, those three have received an inordinate amount of subsidies and tax incentives at the expense of renewable energy. It's important to emphasize that the future is in renewable energy, renewable fuel, conservation measures. It's in buildings that are 50 percent more energy-efficient, solar roofs in schools, 50-mile-per-gallon vehicles by 2030.
Q: What about nuclear -- can you expand on that? It sounds like you think coal and nuclear need to be part of the energy mix, but they shouldn't be subsidized?
A: Yes. My dramatic preference would be for clean coal. I oppose the construction of those coal plants in Texas -- too many subsidies for the coal industry. And I opposed giving a tax incentive in New Mexico to just a regular coal plant that's proposed here, Desert Rock. I can't be the champion of global climate change and have a new coal plant that isn't clean.
Q: Do you think we'll have to expand nuclear capacity?
A: Nuclear has to be part of the mix, but I would eliminate the subsidies that nuclear and coal and oil got from the last energy bill and shift those to renewable energy, to a more equal playing field.
Nuclear will not be able to move forward unless we resolve the waste issue. The [Yucca Mountain] site in Nevada has significant water, environmental, and transportation problems with it. The other alternative of putting nuclear waste at existing regional sites around the country is not going to work. I favor a technological solution -- let's get our best scientists at the national labs to find a way to dispose of this nuclear waste safely. Until that is resolved, nuclear should not get any advantages.
Q: What role do you think ethanol and biofuels should play in a 21st-century energy system?
A: A very important role, both of them -- all kinds of biofuel, biodiesel. We need to have more fuel-efficient fuels.
We should provide incentives for distribution by, for example, helping gas stations convert at least one pump to handle E85 or other biofuels. The federal government also should use its purchasing power -- as we have done in New Mexico -- to transform the energy marketplace by, for example, purchasing more hybrid and flex-fuel cars for its own use.
And I believe in cooperative ventures with other countries. I would expand our ties to Latin America with more collaboration in renewable energy and technology. That's the future for that region, what Brazil has done with ethanol, for instance -- they're totally energy self-sufficient.
Q: You are a strong supporter of both corn and cellulosic ethanol. How, specifically, will you structure policies that transition the U.S. away from corn ethanol and toward cellulosic?
A: Our goal should be bold -- to replace 20 percent of liquid transportation fuels with biofuels by 2020. We should significantly ramp up federal investments in the research and development of biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol.
Q: You have a strong incentive for electric cars in your auto proposal. Do you think electric cars will win out over biofuel cars?
A: They will all be part of the mix. We in New Mexico were very proud to get Tesla Motors to move here from California. It's the perfect combination for us: it's high-tech jobs plus clean energy.
Q: Do you think climate and energy will be front-burner concerns in the 2008 election?
A: Absolutely. They are among the most important issues in the presidential campaign. The first is Iraq, the second is a close tie between universal health care and energy independence.
Q: You've said on the one hand that voters need to be willing to sacrifice some of their creature comforts for a new energy landscape, but also that Americans should be able to keep SUVs. Can you explain this contradiction?
A: What I'm asking for is not sacrifice, like Americans wearing sweaters and turning the heat down. What I'm asking for is being more energy-efficient with appliances, with vehicles, with mass transit. Maybe, instead of driving to work, once a month go mass transit.
I believe very strongly in what John F. Kennedy asked all Americans to do and that's sacrifice a little bit for the collective good. We need, as a moral imperative, to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel because it's in our national interest that we do so as a nation. It's going to take a president to lead this dramatic shift and not just little energy bills. We need to energize every American to become green.
Q: But Americans will be able to keep their SUVs because the technology is improving?
A: Yes. You can have an SUV with a fuel-efficient engine. We do have the technology to achieve this.
Q: You say your energy programs are going to produce 10 times more value than they cost, right? How does this math add up?
A: Our energy programs are going to be great for the economy mainly because they are going to create two sets of new jobs in this country -- one in renewable technology, which are high-wage, high-skill jobs, and the second in retrofitting homes for the construction industry, also higher-wage jobs. It will be not just a job boom, but a technological boom.
Q: So that boom in jobs will add up to 10 times more than the cost of jumpstarting that trend?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Can Detroit achieve the sharp fuel-economy standards you're proposing -- an increase to 50 mpg by 2020?
A: Detroit will benefit from this. We've got the technology. They need a little gentle prodding and they need incentives, but Detroit has always stepped up with ingenuity. They must realize that to keep jobs in America, to be part of this globalized world, they gotta compete. I'm not at all averse to giving Detroit tax incentives for these vehicles or having the government jointly invest in R&D with them, rather than clubbing them over the head.
Q: In 2005, you signed an environmental justice order [PDF] in New Mexico. How would you address environmental justice as president?
A: I would issue an executive order that would respect neighborhoods, especially in minority areas; I would make it part of a "Quality of Life Initiative." It would have several components: promoting environmental justice, as well as a new open-space policy, a smart land-use policy, and a new transportation policy that would emphasize light rail and more energy-efficient transportation.
Q: After climate and energy, what do you think is the most important environmental issue facing the nation?
A: Protecting our parks, not drilling in ecosystems and offshore areas, the need to create more open space and wilderness areas, and finding ways to conserve water more effectively are critically important.
Q: Who is your environmental hero?
A: Mo Udall, because he gave me, when I first came into Congress, a very good environmental ethic. I remember him taking me to Alaska where we worked on the Alaska wilderness initiatives. He was a Western environmentalist -- I patterned myself after him.
And Al Gore deserves enormous credit for pushing global climate change.
Q: You often talk about your love of the wilds of New Mexico and the outdoors in general. Can you describe your inner cowboy?
A: I own a horse -- that's my main recreational activity. His name is Sundance. I love to go out into the mountains of Santa Fe and spend time with him. That's my main recreation. Unfortunately, I don't have much time for it.
Q: If you could spend a week in one park or natural area, where would it be?
A: Yellowstone.
Q: What have you done personally to lighten your environmental footprint?
A: We got a Ford Escape hybrid for the governor's fleet and an ethanol vehicle, a Chevy Tahoe FlexFuel that can run on E85. The governor's mansion has energy-efficient windows, and we've installed compact fluorescent bulbs wherever possible. We also are involved in a renewable-purchasing program that supplies 90 percent of the electricity from solar and wind. We've also made water-conservation improvements to the residence, like low-flush toilets, low-flow showerheads, xeriscaping, and a water-efficient irrigation system.
Q: If George Bush were a plant or animal, what kind of plant or animal would he be?
A: Stubborn like an ox, immovable like an oak.
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Jackson Clarion Ledger
August 06, 2007
Full funding for Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility vital
By C.T. Carley
Special to The Clarion-Ledger
The myth persists among some politicians and media pundits that the nuclear waste problem is unsolvable and growing and pushing the cost of electricity through the roof - all of which is served up as fodder for those in Congress who are dedicated to stopping the growth of nuclear power.
In fact, the reality is that the overwhelming consensus among engineers and scientists is that nuclear waste can be stored indefinitely in an underground repository. As for safety, all of the nation's nuclear power plants together produce about 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel annually. This spent fuel is not waste; it contains valuable uranium and plutonium that one day will be recycled to provide new reactor fuel for electricity production.
Those materials that cannot be recycled, including high-level waste from the military defense program, will need to be disposed of at the Yucca Mountain facility.
Cumulatively, nuclear power plants - in more than 40 years of operation - have produced about 57,000 metric tons of spent fuel, which would cover a football field to a depth of six yards. This spent fuel is being stored safely at Grand Gulf and about 100 other nuclear plants around the country.
Nuclear electricity is currently being produced in the United States at an average of about 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour, which is less than the cost for power plants that burn natural gas or coal. And nuclear plants don't pollute the air or emit global warming gases.
Although it is hardly a new problem, government funding for licensing and construction of the Yucca Mountain repository remains an issue. Since passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, users of nuclear-generated electricity have committed more than $29 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund. Mississippi alone has contributed over $180 million, and Tennessee, $400 million. But less than $10 billion has been spent on the Yucca Mountain project. The rest of the money has gone into the U.S. Treasury to pay for other federal programs, and a 1998 deadline for the government to take possession of the spent fuel has passed without the shipment of a single rod.
Now that nuclear power has strong support from President Bush, the budget request for fiscal 2008 includes $494.5 million for the Yucca Mountain project. But the Senate Appropriations Committee has sliced nearly $50 million from the request, even though it is considered the bare minimum needed. The full Senate and House ought to insist on keeping funds for Yucca Mountain at the requested level and direct the Department of Energy to establish an interim facility for spent fuel storage in the Nevada desert until the underground repository opens.
Experience shows that spent fuel can be shipped safely. Since the early 1960s, the nuclear industry has transported more than 10,000 spent fuel assemblies without incident to temporary storage sites.
The notion that Yucca Mountain will be a "dump" for spent or nuclear waste is absurd. You don't throw away thousands of tons of spent fuel that will be recycled once non-proliferating technology for reprocessing is perfected. Nor do you simply seal the repository and walk away. Rather the repository will remain open for at least 300 years, so that experts can continuously monitor the facility to ensure it is working as designed. And at some point the spent fuel will be removed for reprocessing.
In the meantime, interim spent fuel storage at a central location would show that progress is under way toward resolving the nuclear waste issue, which would help facilitate construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. Ultimately, this will enable nuclear power to play a central roll in reducing America's reliance on foreign oil and combating global warming.
Some politicians and others in media circles might not be happy to hear this, but there it is !
--C.T. Carley, Ph.D., P.E., of Starkville is professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University. E-mail: ctcarley@bellsouth.net
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Sarasota Herald-Tribune
August 06, 2007
Letter: Warning signs of a nuclear future
In the scramble to do something about fossil fuels, global warming and accelerated sea level rise, some leaders are recommending a resurgence of nuclear power.
So what are the early warning signs of people mistakenly switching to embrace a nuclear future?
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, here are a few:
If you remember "The China Syndrome" and Three Mile Island as two great science fiction movies from 1979, you may favor a nuclear future.
If you think Chernobyl was the drug that was replaced by Lipitor, you may favor a nuclear future.
If you think 9/11 is what happens when there are cutbacks at a 7-11, you may favor a nuclear future.
If you think the Price Anderson Act is that boring skit acknowledging envelope security at the Academy Awards, you may favor a nuclear future.
If you can snicker at the dark humor that would be involved in having Homer Simpson working in a solar panel plant, you may favor a nuclear future.
If you think Yucca Mountain is the anticipated sequel to "Brokeback Mountain," you may favor a nuclear future.
If you think it is pretty plausible that someone could make a dirty bomb or weapon of mass destruction from the persistent noxious byproducts of a wind turbine, you may favor a nuclear future.
If the words "radioactive Florida" only make you think of more community and low-power FM stations such as WMNF and WSLR, you may favor a nuclear future.
Finally, if you think a wind turbine actually has persistent noxious byproducts, you may favor a nuclear future.
Florida can reduce greenhouse gases without resorting to more nuclear power. Design, innovation, conservation and appropriate small-scale power are better long- and short-term investments -- financially, environmentally and ethically.
Jono Miller
Sarasota
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 05, 2007
Porter receives Yucca report
DOE has made progress, but some questions remain, GAO says
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is repairing chronic management and quality assurance problems at Yucca Mountain, but given the project's troubled history, it is unclear whether the fixes will stick, according to a report to Congress released Friday.
Since new project director Ward Sproat was named last year, the department has reorganized the Nevada nuclear waste program and is "invigorating" segments that had failing grades, the General Accounting Office said in the report.
But, auditors said, "it has yet to be seen" whether the changes will work fully or will prevent backsliding.
The 29-page review appeared relatively favorable to the Energy Department following a series of critical GAO assessments over the years that detailed how Yucca managers were falling short in identifying numerous problems and taking corrective actions.
Auditors also have criticized Yucca Mountain "quality assurance," a key process of scientific record keeping that is supposed to enable reviewers to retrace highly technical research.
GAO officials in the new assessment said the Energy Department "has made progress" in fixing quality assurance problems, "but it is unclear whether its actions will prevent similar problems from recurring."
For one, the report said, the Yucca project turned over nine of 17 high-level management jobs since 2001 and continues to lose key personnel such as Deputy Director Paul Golan who departed last month.
Also Sproat, who is a political appointee, is expected to leave in January 2009, when a new president takes office, it said.
Additionally, some of DOE's efforts are still in the planning stages, while some will require changes in deep-rooted organization cultures at DOE and its contractors.
"DOE has a long history of quality assurance problems and has experienced repeated difficulties in resolving these problems," auditors said.
The project missed a January 1998 deadline to have a repository open and accepting nuclear waste, and did not meet licensing deadlines in 2002 and 2004. In 2005, DOE assembled a draft license application that it determined "was not ready," the report said.
The Energy Department says it plans to complete a license application by June that is expected to lay out a case that an underground repository at the Yucca Mountain site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas can safely store highly radioactive nuclear waste.
State officials from Nevada contend the Yucca project has been fatally flawed by bad management and questionable science, and are trying to stop it.
The GAO report was requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. He said in a statement that the Energy Department has a ways to go before Nevadans could ever be convinced the project is safe.
"It is difficult for Nevadans to feel confident about DOE's push to move forward when the GAO has reported continued concerns about this fatally flawed project," he said.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Energy Department "has tried to patch up its quality assurance failures, but the changes have not been significant enough to really be considered effective."
"If the Department of Energy does submit an application to build the dump by the agency's arbitrary deadline of June 2008, the application will probably be poor quality and insufficient," Reid said.
Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said the GAO study "underscores DOE's mismanagement of the Yucca Mountain Project from the beginning. Billions of dollars have been devoted to this project, and DOE still cannot ensure Nevadans' or the general public's safety."
And Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., noted, "While a few changes have been made, this report clearly states that there is no guarantee that any short-term improvements will last or that new policies will actually remain in place. Experience has shown us that the likely outcome will be more of the same. Like a broken record."
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Las Vegas SUN
August 05, 2007
Growing partisanship frays key relationship
By J. Patrick Coolican
<patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
Nevada politics has long been known for bipartisan chumminess among its governors and congressional delegation, and a shoulder-to-shoulder togetherness on the idiosyncratic issues facing the state: gaming, Yucca Mountain, water and land use.
But in the past few months Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, and Harry Reid, the Democratic U.S. Senate majority leader, have exchanged verbal sallies over issues, people and even family.
A Reid spokesman downplayed the conflict as healthy differences of opinion. Gibbons' spokeswoman didn't return repeated phone calls, but Jim Denton, a longtime Gibbons political consultant, said, "Over the years Sen. Reid and Gov. Gibbons have always had a good relationship, and I don't see that changing."
Although the signs of division are still in their infancy, a wider rift is possible, if not certain. The tension indicates an important trend in Nevada politics, more than any personal animus between Gibbons and Reid. Nevada is becoming more partisan by the day.
Gibbons served in Congress 10 years before becoming governor this year, and he and Reid had a friendly working relationship and coordinated closely on Nevada issues, according to the staffs of both.
Reid refrained from attacking Gibbons with any real vigor in the latter's race against state Sen. Dina Titus.
Since Gibbons' election, though, it's feeling chilly.
To review:
• In the spring Gibbons wanted a homeland security "fusion hub" in Carson City to coordinate anit-terrorist efforts. Larry Martines, the governor's then-homeland security director, went to Washington to ask Reid and Sen. John Ensign to find federal money for the hub. Martines told Reid and Ensign the idea had the backing of law enforcement. It didn't.
Reid said he'd been misled by Martines, who was presumably speaking on the governor's behalf.
Martines resigned shortly thereafter.
• Last month Gibbons allowed the Energy Department to use state water for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. Reid condemned the move with a strongly worded statement. (Reid wasn't alone, as the rest of the delegation also opposed Gibbons' move.)
• More recently, Reid proposed a renewable energy plan that would allow Nevada to forego three polluting, coal-fired power plants.
Gibbons said he supports building the plants and told the Sun, "I'm anxious to see the alternatives proposed by Sen. Reid for the coal plants. I've been proposing all along that we look at developing geothermal, solar and wind energy."
The comment puzzled Reid's office, because Gibbons had been copied on Reid's letter laying out just such a proposal.
• Finally, in the spring, Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, faced scrutiny over a public relations consulting contract awarded to Dawn Gibbons by a defense contractor while Jim Gibbons was in Congress and helping the company win Pentagon contracts.
The governor compared his wife to Key Reid, the senator's son, who'd been a Washington lobbyist. (Key Reid is general counsel of The Greenspun Corporation , which is owned by the same family that owns the Las Vegas Sun.)
The analogy seemed inappropriate to Reid associates: Key Reid is an attorney; Dawn Gibbons had no public relations experience.
Sen. Reid is mindful of the great lengths to which his children must go to escape his long shadow, and he resents people who question the legitimacy of their successes, according to Billy Vassiliadis, a Nevada lobbyist and political confidant of Reid's.
"You just don't mess with Harry Reid's family," he said.
There's not much precedence for this kind of conflict between governors and the congressional delegation in Nevada history, according to Michael Green, a historian at the College of Southern Nevada. Sen. Pat McCarran and Gov. Charles Russell feuded, as did the staffs and backers of Sen. Howard Cannon and Gov. Grant Sawyer. In the 1980s Gov. Richard Bryan and Sen. Chick Hecht battled once it was clear Bryan would run for Senate against Hecht.
But for the most part, especially on key issues such as Yucca Mountain, the state's governors have remained tight with the congressional delegation, no matter the party.
A Republican lobbyist and Gibbons ally, who didn't want to be named because he hadn't been authorized to speak about the matter, expressed concern: "There's definitely a problem, and it needs to be fixed. They need to sit down one on one and talk about the direction of the state."
Although it might be tempting to think of the flare-ups in personal and prurient terms, it might actually be more fundamental and institutional: Nevada is becoming more partisan, which means the confrontations are inevitable and will become more intense.
The evidence of growing partisanship has been everywhere recently:
• Not long after Gibbons took office, and shortly after a grand jury investigation into his relationship with a defense contractor was revealed, Democrats began talking recall.
• Gibbons dumped Rosemary Vassiliadis, the only representative of the airport, from the state's Homeland Security Commission. To some, it looked like political payback to her husband, the aforementioned Billy Vassiliadis, a prominent Democrat who supported Gibbons' opponent in the governor's race.
• Rather than act as ambassador to the Democratic presidential candidates so frequently in the state these days, Gibbons recently scoffed at the presidential caucus and said he'd prefer they stay away, even as most Democrats and Republicans agree having them here is good for the state in the long run.
• Sue Lowden, the new chairwoman of the Republican Party, has attacked Reid in regular news releases. The two were once close.
• Rep. Dean Heller, who was known as a moderate Republican and sometime maverick secretary of state, has moved to the right noticeably since his election to Congress last year.
• Conservative activist Chuck Muth attacked Republican Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey of Las Vegas almost daily during the legislative session for not being partisan enough.
Why is this happening?
One reason is the presidential caucus, which by definition is a partisan affair. Nevada is an early battleground to determine the next president, especially on the Democratic side. This new status as a presidential decider has brought money, seasoned political operatives and big-name presidential candidates who's first hurdle is winning the approval of their party: Every visit, they preach the party message, and attack the opposition.
Then there's Reid's status as titular head of the Democratic Party. Party faithful have no interest in him mollifying his Republican friends in Nevada. He's called President Bush a loser and a liar and has attacked the White House and Republicans in Congress at every turn.
Ensign, meanwhile, is chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, which means he's responsible for getting more Republicans elected to the Senate. It's a partisan job, by definition.
As the state has grown, it faces more issues, and more complex issues, than just gaming, Yucca Mountain and water and land use, which are the terrain of bipartisan agreement. With those issues off the table, and out-of-staters less likely to take their cues from in-state power brokers, the new voters are probably looking to parties for guidance.
So what can we take from this scuffle between Reid and Gibbons ? Nevada is growing up.
--J. Patrick Coolican can be reached at 259-8814 or at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com.
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Albany Times Union
August 05, 2007
Make nuclear plants public
Harry Rosenfeld
Although construction of nuclear plants has been in the doldrums since the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island facility in 1979 scared the nation out of its wits, electricity- generating corporations are proposing to build up to 20 additional plants to augment the existing 104.
That effort acquires plausibility as the public puts Three Mile Island behind it by coming to appreciate that alternatives to conventional fossil fuels are essential to contain the powerful destructive effects on climate of global warming. Unlike oil, natural gas and coal, nuclear power does not produce damaging carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
The evolving public support undergirds the effort of nuclear power advocates in industry and government, who had been thwarted by public opposition these past three decades. Now emboldened, the power industry is raring to go, seeing Oz just over the horizon.
But the remaining span of the yellow brick road that still needs to be traversed is paved with onerous expenses. So otherwise staunch free marketers want that awful, meddling government residing in Washington, D.C., to take over the risks of the venture.
Fine reporting last week in The New York Times by reporters Edmund L. Andrews and Matthew L. Wald, revealed that a one-sentence provision "inserted without debate in the Senate's energy bill, at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees." The industry wants $50 billion over two years. There is no indication that government support would end there. Indeed, the provision is structured to "remove appropriate control," according to a cited official Office of Management and Budget Assessment.
Why would intrepid entrepreneurs, who supposedly abhor governmental intervention, not build a good investment with their own resources? The answer is that the undertaking is extremely risky, and historically subject to mind-bending cost overruns, that no bank would lend them the huge sums required without government guarantees.
These ventures are being pressed even though the basic objections to nuclear power have not been addressed.
Hazardous nuclear waste disposal remains an unsolved problem. The waste's toxicity will last for something like 10,000 years, which is about as far off in the future as the Ice Age is in the past. The Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada is still not in operation.
Another abiding impediment is the safety record of nuclear plants and the government secrecy that has screened their operations from the public. Only recently, the world's largest capacity nuclear power plant, located in Japan, sustained leakage problems during a heavy earthquake. Instructive was that both the Tokyo government and the operators initially minimized the damage done.
While there have been no more Three Mile Islands, there have been many reactor shutdowns, indicating the potential for safety problems that likely would be exacerbated by the pressures of business competition to keep cost down, including skimping on staff.
To operational dilemmas we can add the present-day vulnerability of nuclear plants to terrorist attack, for they surely provide tempting targets. In addition, there is the matter of protecting nuclear waste against acquisition by terrorists seeking the makings of a dirty bomb.
It is no secret what would happen if there were a meltdown or similar event. The damage would likely be so enormous the owners of the plant would declare bankruptcy and the government would inevitably be forced to shoulder the consequences. That means, of course, the taxpayer.
There are superior alternatives to nuclear power. Foremost, comes conservation. There are a host of other power sources that would benefit from heavier government support, such as solar and wind. For the longer term, the government should intensify exploration of nuclear fusion power, which would be the least dangerous and expensive.
If as a partial and interim remedy, some nuclear fission plants need to be built, they should be few. And as government would bear the final financial and clean up responsibilities it ought to set up an agency, as it once did the TVA authority, to own and run them.
Harry Rosenfeld is editor-at-large of the Times Union. He can be reached at 454-5450 or by e-mail at hrosenfeld@timesunion.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 04, 2007
Roberts joins state nuclear panel
Nye County superintendent of schools: Transporting waste to Yucca too risky
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
For the second time this week, Gov. Jim Gibbons appointed a new member to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, choosing Nye County schools Superintendent William "Rob" Roberts to fill Michon Mackedon's seat.
His earlier appointment to replace Mackedon, whose term expired this year, was Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley.
However, Eastley resigned before attending one meeting after an uproar among some of Nevada's delegation over her stance in favor of the planned nuclear waste repository, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
That's unlikely to happen with Roberts, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, who says that transporting highly radioactive waste across the United States to Yucca Mountain would be too risky because of the potential for a terrorist strike or an accident triggered by a bridge collapse or railroad failure.
"I have a real concern that hazardous materials coming through our state could be targeted. Once a canister is open there could be serious degradation of life," Roberts said late Thursday.
Roberts said the governor's staff discussed the appointment with him Monday, and Gibbons' spokeswoman, Melissa Subbotin, confirmed Thursday that he had accepted the position.
Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, who chairs the state nuclear panel, said that at first glance, he's pleased with Roberts joining the Nuclear Projects Commission.
"It sounds like he's given this some thought," Bryan said Friday in a telephone call from Canada, where he is joining others on an annual fishing trip.
Bryan said he shares Roberts' view that the nuclear waste transportation issue "is one of the major considerations," especially in light of terrorism.
Roberts referred to his military experience for insights on the transportation issue.
From 1986 to 1989 he was an instructor and chief of the military science instruction branch at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He is a Vietnam War combat veteran, having served in 1969 and 1970 as a helicopter pilot with the 101st Airborne Division.
"I know transporting hazardous materials is risky and would be underestimated," he said.
"If there are any safe ways of storing it in the mountain, I don't have an edge in science, so I can't argue that science."
Earlier this week, Gibbons had appointed Susan Brager, a Democrat who is also a Clark County commissioner, to replace former Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams.
Williams' term on the state panel expired June 30, as did Steve Molasky's term.
Molasky hasn't been formally reappointed but continues "to serve at the pleasure of the governor," Gibbons' communications director Brent Boynton has said.
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Casper Star Tribune
August 04, 2007
GAO: Prospects 'unclear' for quality of Yucca Mountain license
By Erica Werner
Associated Press writer
WASHINGTON -- It's unclear whether the Energy Department will be able to submit a sufficiently high-quality Yucca Mountain license application by its self-imposed mid-2008 deadline, congressional investigators reported Friday.
By law, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must render a decision on whether to authorize construction of the nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas within four years of receiving the Energy Department's application for an operating license.
But in order to act within that time frame, NRC depends on receiving a "high quality" application containing all the necessary technical and scientific backup.
In a report issued Friday, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, cast doubt on whether that would be possible.
"Given the waste repository's history since its inception in 1983, including two prior failed attempts to file a license application, it is unclear whether DOE's license application will be of sufficient quality to enable NRC to conduct a timely review," GAO said in a report to Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
The report did praise the Energy Department for taking steps to strengthen management and improve quality control at Yucca Mountain, which is meant to be the first national repository for nuclear waste but has been repeatedly delayed by scientific and political controversies.
But the report called it too early to determine the effectiveness of those efforts and said some problems, such as staff turnover, persist.
In a statement, Energy Department spokeswoman Megan Barnett said administrators had strengthened review procedures on issues of science and hiring and were on track to submit the license application no later than June 30.
"While the GAO cannot be expected to assess our license application until it is complete, we are pleased that the GAO recognizes the department's high-quality approach to developing a credible and defensible license application," Barnett said.
Porter noted that GAO reported earlier in the year that the Energy Department had to spend $25 million to recover from a 2005 controversy involving the failure of government hydrologists to follow quality assurance procedures.
"It is difficult for Nevadans to feel confident about DOE's push to move forward toward the June 2008 filing deadline when the GAO has reported continued concerns about this fatally flawed project," Porter said.
Yucca Mountain is being planned to hold 77,000 tons or more of highly radioactive nuclear waste for 10,000 years and beyond. More than 50,000 tons of waste has already piled up at nuclear reactor sites around the country while waiting for the repository to open.
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Newsweek
August 04, 2007
Radioactive Debate
Nuclear energy, once the scourge of environmentalists, is gaining popularity as a carbon-free alternative.
By Karen Breslau
Newsweek
Climate change hardly qualifies as good news for anyone. But for advocates of nuclear energy, these are practically glory days. As the urgency of combating global warming has risen, even environmentalists and politicians who may have once chained themselves to the reactor gates are taking another look at the industry that has languished in regulatory and PR hell since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. The reason? Nuclear energy, which now generates 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, does not produce greenhouse gases. “If you believe that climate change is the issue of our generation, then it’s disingenuous to say that nuclear energy is off the table,” says Bill Chameides, chief scientist for Environmental Defense, who admits his own position on the issue has evolved from “skeptical” to “agnostic.”
He’s not alone. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, includes generous subsidies and tax credits for nuclear and other non-fossil fuels. President George W. Bush has consistently called for a revival of nuclear plant construction as a way of boosting domestic energy production-and curbing greenhouse gases. Even Al Gore recently told a House committee, “I am not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear.”
Approval—or at least acceptance—also runs through the presidential field. Republican presidential hopefuls John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are both strong proponents of nuclear power. Democratic contender John Edwards said at a recent CNN/YouTube debate that he is opposed to nuclear energy because of concerns over cost and waste disposal, but his competitors have been noticeably less critical. At the same debate, Hillary Clinton also described herself as a nuclear energy “agnostic,” while Barack Obama went further, with a call to “explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix.” Obama and Clinton have joined McCain as co-sponsors of the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007, which includes an additional $3 billion in funding and loan guarantees for the construction of nuclear plants using next-generation designs that improve efficiency. A2006poll sponsored by the nuclear industry (and conducted by the same firm that works for Clinton) found that public approval for nuclear energy rose significantly when those surveyed were told that the plants emit zero greenhouse gases.
For the nuclear industry, all this means that the political climate has not been more favorable in years.To bolster its powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, the industry recently launched a new public relations offensive, hiring former Bush EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman and former Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore as spokespeople. Moore, who quit Greenpeace years ago after a dispute, has since rebuked his former allies in the green movement for spreading “misinformation and hysteria” about nuclear energy during the 1970s and 80s. “I was caught up in the anti-nuclear fervor of the time in which we failed to distinguish between peaceful and military uses of nuclear technology,” Moore told Newsweek. “I’m sorry I did that.” Moore , an ecologist, says all other non-fossil energy sources “pale in comparison” to nuclear, which he expects will eventually provide half of the nation’s electricity. (Solar generated less than 0.01 percent last year.)
But for all the talk of a nuclear “renaissance”, the United States lags far behind other countries, generating only 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, a proportion that has been stagnant for years. (Coal, the single largest source of U.S. electricity, provides about50 per cent.) In France, by contrast, nearly 80 percent of the country’s electricity is nuclear-generated; in China that figure is 50 per cent. Japan and South Korea also generate significantly more nuclear power proportionately than the United States. In each of those countries, governments assume a huge role in financing nuclear plants, which are far more expensive than coal-based facilities.
There are still significant concerns about the cost and safety of nuclear power remain. In a recent sting operation by the Government Accountability Office, investigators easily obtained and altered a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowing a bogus company to acquire radioactive materials, underlining concerns that terrorists could assemble a “dirty bomb” by a similar ruse. The planned nuclear-waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is decades behind schedule and billions over budget, due to regulatory and legal battles that have stalled construction.. And in Japan public support for nuclear energy plunged last month when a reactor leaked low-level radioactive waste after a powerful earthquake. A report in The Wall Street Journal last week found that safety-related incidents at commercial nuclear plants around the world are insufficiently documented, or in some cases not reported at all to the International Atomic Energy Agency , because regulators are wary of making it appear as though their countries have poor safety records.But the cost of nuclear energy remains perhaps its biggest hurdle. Many environmentalists question the ability of the nuclear industry to compete against other carbon-free technologies such as hydro-, wind and solar without subsidies or loan guarantees by the federal government. Prohibitive costs, says Sierra Club president Carl Pope, make the revived nuclear energy debate “nothing but a distraction.” It now costs $4 billion to $5 billion to build a nuclear plant; the last new U.S. plant, which went online in the Tennessee in 1996, cost $7 billion and took 22 years to build. “You don’t want to rule out nuclear,” says Thomas Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But you don’t want to subsidize it at the expense of more attractive options.”
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Lahontan Valley News
August 03, 2007
Governor talks wildfires, energy in local visit
By Viktoria Pearson
vpearson@lahontanvalleynews.com
Gov. Jim Gibbons said it is imperative the state of Nevada stop the cycle of catastrophic fires across the state in a visit to Fallon Thursday.
With the number of fires increasing daily in Nevada as well as elsewhere in the country, having sufficient resources to handle more blazes is important. Gibbons said although wildfire funds are being stretched, there is still plenty of funding and resources available to continue fighting the blazes. However, he said it was imperative to find a way to reduce the number of fires.
When asked why he felt it was important for the state of Nevada to become involved with the Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe in California, Gibbons replied, “Fires don’t recognize political boundaries.”
Gibbons said he will meet with the governors of Idaho and Utah Monday morning to discuss development of a shared resource plan regarding wildfires. Gibbons said it is a meeting similar to one he had with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.
“We share the same habitat,” he said. “We need to develop a viable rehabilitation plan.”
Another topic that has been in the news recently is Gibbons’ appointment of Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley to the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission. Eastley resigned from the position shortly after her appointment following discovery she had made statements supporting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in the past.
Gibbons said he has offered the appointment to Dr. Rob Roberts, superintendent of the Nye County School District. Gibbons said Roberts is anti-Yucca Mountain and believes he will do a great job on the commission.
Regarding his accomplishments in office so far, he said the legislation establishing “empowerment” schools is something he is extremely proud of.
He said an additional $1 billion in funding allocated for state transportation projects was a great accomplishment as well. Gibbons said he is proud of a state that can expand services without raising taxes.
“It is a true sign of a government that is creative,” he said. “I’m very proud of the people who work for the state.”
When asked if he had any regrets since coming into office, Gibbons replied, “I have no regrets.”
He said the one thing he wants to accomplish before he leaves office, whenever that happens, is to change the dynamics of Nevada from an importer of energy to an exporter of energy through the state’s natural resources.
“This could bring in $30 billion a year for the state,” he said.
Gibbons said his visits to rural Nevada are critically important for those who serve the state to know what the needs are. He was accompanied by some members of his cabinet during his visit.
“Unless you put you feet on the ground and stand in their (residents’) shoes, you don’t know their issues,” he said. “It makes me a better governor. I love rural Nevada.”
Gibbons also visited the Churchill County Senior Center and gave interviews to local radio stations before departing for Fernley.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 03, 2007
Jon Ralston on campaign money, Yucca Mountain
If I told you that a company boasting it will provide "a total transportation solution to Yucca Mountain" is a significant donor to a prominent Nevada politician who regularly rails against the dump, you might think I was joking.
If I told you that this same elected official, only a few weeks after accepting the money from this outfit, was pummeling another Nevada pol for his lack of purity on the repository, you might think I was taking the joke too far.
And if I told you this same nuclear-friendly conglomerate had been donating to Nevada politicians for years as they railed against one of its raisons d'etre, you might assume I have a twisted sense of humor.
But it's no laughing matter and, as usual with Yucca Mountain, the joke is on voters who simply lap up the anti-dump rhetoric and pay no attention to the hypocrisy of taking one position in news releases while taking money from those opposed to that position. Hypocrisy, of course, is endemic to a debate that has been characterized by the irreconcilable juxtaposition of "blowing up bombs at the Test Site: good; putting waste near the Test Site: bad."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the latest to show how difficult it is to keep your equilibrium as he bestrides the dump high horse, most recently to assail Gov. Jim Gibbons. Just a few weeks before Reid was pounding the governor for his position on dump water rights and the Democrats were bludgeoning the governor for his obtuse pick for the Commission on Nuclear Projects, the Senate boss was happily accepting $4,000 to his leadership PAC from General Atomics, according to Political MoneyLine, a campaign donation-tracking Web site.
What is General Atomics? The company, a huge defense contractor and nuclear power advocate, essentially brags in a brochure that it can do what Reid and others have argued for years is impossible and is a fundamental underpinning of the argument against Yucca Mountain: General Atomics says it produces casks so high-level nuclear waste can be transported safely.
From the company Web site: "General Atomics (GA) provides advanced design truck and rail casks to meet the needs of the Yucca Mountain transportation program. GA's truck casks can safely carry higher payloads within the legal weight truck limits, and have been designed with versatility allowing them to carry commercial spent nuclear fuel as well as high level radioactive waste forms."
Reid's response? Part of it was expected and as hyperbolic as most of the dump rhetoric.
"You and I both know that it is Sen. Reid who has prevented the dump at Yucca Mountain from being built," a senatorial spokesman said. "Sen. Reid is Nevada's strongest advocate in killing the Yucca Mountain project."
It is inarguable that Reid's leadership position all but ensures the dump will not be built while he occupies that spot. And he has consistently used his leadership post to slash funding for Yucca Mountain.
But Reid, ever the inside player operating in the amoral Beltway confines, has managed to separate his public actions from his campaign fundraising, willing to take money from the likes of General Atomics and once actually hiring a dump lobbyist to raise campaign cash for him.
That moral ambiguity is de rigueur in the political world. And to be fair to Reid, he is not the only Nevada delegation member to accept General Atomics money - he is only the most recent.
Rep. Jon Porter has taken the lucre the last three cycles. And Sen. John Ensign has taken money from General Atomics since 2004 and the company even financed a couple of trips abroad for staffers, including the senator's top aide.
Reid - and surely the others - would point out that General Atomics also builds the Predator drones, which fly out of Creech Air Force Base at Indian Springs. But where do you draw the line? Why not just say no to money from a contractor whose charge - making nuclear waste casks safe - you say cannot be done?
No one would suggest Reid can be bought for four grand or that he will change his public Yucca position because of the donation. That's inane. On the other hand, Reid, as a fundraising behemoth, hardly needs to take checks from General Atomics. That's obvious.
The simplest way to look at it is this: If an opponent of Harry Reid's had taken money from General Atomics and Reid had not, do you think the senator might clamber up on his dump high horse and raise the issue?
Enough said.
--Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com
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American Chronicle
August 03, 2007
GAO RELEASES FINAL REPORT ON QUALITY ASSURANCE PORCEDURES AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN
Congressional Desk
Washington, DC- The General Accountability Office (GAO) today released its final report on the quality assurance program managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The program was reviewed by the GAO at the request of Congressman Jon Porter who was then Chairman of the Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization.
According to the report, the GAO assured Congressman Porter that the Department of Energy has made progress in restructuring their quality assurance program but several concerns remain:
• Given the project's long history of recurring problems since its inception in 1983, including two prior failed efforts to file a license application, it is unclear whether DOE's license application will be adequate
• Management continuity challenges are ongoing as DOE continues to lose key project managers highlighted most recently with the departure of the OCRWM Deputy Director Paul Golan
• The organizational culture and behaviors of project staff and contractors remains a challenge, acknowledged by the OCRWM Director who advised that these types of cultural changes can be particularly difficult and take a long time to implement
• GAO is concerned that OCRWM will be unable to meet the repository license application deadline of June 30, 2008
In an interim report, released in late January 2007, the GAO cited DOE for spending a supplemental $25 million of taxpayer funds after project scientists failed to follow quality assurance procedures and reported faulty data on critical water infiltration studies in March 2005. The conclusion of the report states, "DOE has a long history of quality assurance problems and has repeated difficulties in resolving these problems."
"It is difficult for Nevadans to feel confident about DOE's push to move forward toward the June 2008 filing deadline when the GAO has reported continued concerns about this fatally flawed project," Porter said today. "DOE has played fast and loose with quality control procedures leaving Nevadans uncertain and the American taxpayers with an egregious bill."
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Contra Costa Times
August 03, 2007
U.S. government, Nevada officials in Yucca battle
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS -- A courtroom showdown is brewing over the federal government's use of state groundwater for drilling near the planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear waste dump.
State officials say federal scientists are ignoring a court-approved order by Nevada's state water engineer to stop using the groundwater.
Justice Department attorneys call the drilling essential for the Energy Department to show the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a valley near the site picked for a radioactive waste repository is safe from floods and earthquakes.
State officials complain the federal government is demonstrating bad faith and ignoring the rights of the state and argue that it's not in Nevada's interests to let the Energy Department complete the drilling project by November.
"They're doing whatever they want, whenever they want," Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"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, accusing the federal government of "stealing" the water.
Marta Adams, a senior deputy state attorney general, said she'll tell a federal judge that the Energy Department was demonstrating a "lack of good faith."
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 an emergency request last Wednesday. It asks U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas to block the state's order.
The state intends to answer the motion Tuesday, setting the stage for an Aug. 15 hearing, Loux said.
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.
In some cases, drillers are taking core samples to confirm previous work on site geology, federal attorneys said in court papers last week.
The state has been trying to get inspectors to the area to ensure compliance with Taylor's order.
Justice Department trial lawyer Stephen Bartell said in a letter Wednesday that inspectors won't be allowed to the site -- which is within the secure federal Nevada Test Site -- unless the state engineer agrees not to use the inspection for bolstering the cease-and-desist order "or related enforcement actions and threats."
A spokesman for Taylor called those conditions unacceptable.
The Energy Department plans to include data about subsurface features with a license application Yucca Mountain planners expect to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 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.
Officials say more than 50,000 tons of material is waiting at more than 100 commercial reactors and military sites around the country for storage in Nevada.
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 02, 2007
Letters to the Editor
Nuclear fact- finding trip
I think that the upcoming fact-finding trip that our "Illustrious County Commissioners" are about to undertake will go down in history just like the $40,000 educational (how we should think) seminar.
We already have a propaganda mill in town, known as the Yucca Mountain Information center, that can supply all the drivel that the Department of Energy wants us to know about nuclear garbage storage. Why then do we need to spend more of our tax dollars to educate the county commissioners about nuclear waste?
It's bad enough that they can't find the time to discover how long it will be before the influx of new developers use up our water and turn Pahrump into another ghost town.
I really feel that instead of touring sites that store nuclear garbage, they should stay home and take care of the business that they were elected for.
There are all kinds of projects in our county that need attention and they won't be here to help solve the on-going problems like streets, traffic, health department, etc. It won't be too much longer that our area will need more schools.
While Senator Reid is taking the administration to task for not pursuing wind and solar sources of energy, our elite commissioners are wasting money for a project that should never happen.
Richard A. Brown
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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