Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, August 24, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, August 24, 2007
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 24, 2007

Nevada remains opposed to conceding Yucca water

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

A short-lived discussion between state and federal attorneys over using Nevada's water at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site probably will end today with the parties at loggerheads unless the Department of Energy adheres to the state's ultimatum to stop using its water for bore hole work.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said Thursday that DOE has continued to use Nevada's water to cool and lubricate drill bits for collecting rock core samples since discussions began Tuesday at the urging of U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt.

"It's bad faith on their part, and that's why we do not believe that we will come to any sort of an agreement," Cortez Masto said Thursday. Her comments came after a closed-door, roundtable discussion on Yucca Mountain issues with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and a host of state and local officials and anti-Yucca groups.

Hunt urged the parties to try to work things out while he weighs arguments from last week's hearing on an emergency motion by Department of Justice attorneys representing DOE. The motion seeks to block the state engineer's cease-and-desist order that says Nevada's water is being used for a purpose that's not in the state's interest.

At the court hearing, Hunt suggested that DOE stop the bore hole work while talks were underway but he didn't issue an order to that effect.

Marta Adams, Nevada's senior deputy attorney general, said from Carson City that federal attorneys were supposed to let her know today "whether they're willing to show good faith and stop using the water. We're saying we can't talk unless they stop using the water."

Cortez Masto said she is concerned that if Hunt doesn't make a decision soon and DOE doesn't stop using Nevada's water for collecting geotechnical samples at Yucca Mountain, then DOE might be able to finish gathering the data it needs for a license application. DOE officials have set a June 2008 deadline for applying for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a repository at the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The roundtable discussion at the Clark County Government Center between some of Nevada's leaders and Dorgan was behind closed doors. Reid said he didn't want the state's strategy on Yucca Mountain presented in a public forum because that could put Nevada at a disadvantage in future legal battles and federal actions on the planned nuclear waste site, he said.

Reid noted that the Yucca Mountain funding bill has not been completed but the appropriations subcommittee in June voted for a $50 million cut down to $444.5 million from what the Bush administration had sought for 2008.

"We'll see what happens," Reid said. "I have great confidence in Senator Dorgan, especially after becoming more versed on the subject that he won't be clamoring to give them a lot more money."

Dorgan, who chairs the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which controls the Yucca Mountain purse strings, said he is concerned that a repository won't be safe for human health and the risks posed by terrorists intercepting nuclear waste shipments will be amplified.

Dorgan said he is not a stranger to the Yucca Mountain issue and his votes in the past 10 years on it have sided with Nevada's senators.

"It's because I have expressed over a long period of time some reservations about these issues," he said.

Reid said he wanted Dorgan to know firsthand from concerned Nevadans how unfair the Yucca Mountain process has been during the past two decades.

"The Department of Energy, for lack of a better description, has cheated us for years now. And we want the world to know about this, and the first person we want to know about it is Senator Dorgan," Reid said.

Reid's office last week used similar language when addressing a potential compromise over the water issue. A Reid spokesman said the DOE was "stealing" the state's water and that there was no logic in Nevada wanting to compromise.

Later Thursday, Reid indicated Nevada's strategy for defeating the Yucca Mountain Project will become more clear as President Bush's term expires.

"Quite frankly, we're waiting until Bush is out of office. Once he's gone, we're in really good shape," Reid said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had been invited to participate in the closed-door meeting but was unavailable, Reid's spokesman Jon Summers said.

Gov. Jim Gibbons spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin, said to her knowledge the governor wasn't invited although Reid said Gibbons was represented on the panel by Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux and the attorney general.

A statement from Subbotin says Gibbons "commends any and all efforts to stop the Yucca Mountain project." She said the governor, when he was a congressman, and Reid have always agreed to work together "to put a halt to this project."

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The Oregonian
August 24, 2007

Hanford put on dump site list

Contamination - The U.S. Department of Energy is looking for someplace to store radioactive waste

Scott Learn
The Oregonian

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is on the federal government's short list of sites for storing radioactive waste that could include contaminated metal from more than 100 U.S. nuclear plants.

The waste, classified as low level, also includes radioactive detritus from medical procedures and research projects. But by far the most radioactive components would be waste from decommissioned nuclear plants and from the West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo, N.Y., where the government is cleaning up a former nuclear fuel reprocessing center.

The amount of radiation in the inventory of current and projected waste is 140 million curies, equal to the contamination estimated from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown, or about three-quarters of the radiation contained in 177 leak-prone underground tanks at Hanford.

Oregon regulators and environmental groups are sounding alarms in advance of a public meeting on the proposal Monday in Troutdale.

Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy, calls Hanford's inclusion "ludicrous" given widespread contamination at Hanford, its proximity to the Columbia River and a cleanup at the former plutonium production site that is expected to cost $50 billion or more.

Under orders from Congress, the U.S. Department of Energy is trying to find a place for a projected 200,000 cubic feet of waste to fill a hole in the nation's controversy-ridden disposal system.

The waste is the most radioactive in the low-level category. Federal officials concede that some of it is as radioactive as high-level waste, which includes spent nuclear fuel. The inventory also contains "transuranic waste," often contaminated with plutonium and likely to remain radioactive for thousands of years.

Seven other sites are in the running, including the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada, not yet open, and the Idaho National Lab, a research site undergoing its own cleanup.

Christine Gelles, the DOE's leader on the project, said the waste could be split among several sites. The department is gathering information for an environmental impact statement and is not leaning toward one site or another, she said. Public comments are due by Sept. 21. Congress will have to approve a final plan.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. The reservation ultimately housed nine reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Along the way, radioactive iodine was released to drift with the wind. Contamination remains in the soil and ground water.

Hanford and five other sites are candidates for burying the waste in trenches, vaults or boreholes, according to the DOE proposal. Two sites, including Yucca Mountain, are candidates for deep burial.

Oregon Energy Department officials say shipping to Hanford would be a big mistake. In 2005, the agency urged the feds not to consider near-surface burial or disposing waste at sites undergoing cleanup.

"Both of those recommendations were ignored," Niles said. The federal government isn't safely managing the waste already on the site, Niles said in an e-mail alert this week.

New waste coming into Hanford, including reactor compartments from nuclear submarines, is a relative trickle now, he said. "Adding more waste -- especially waste that is highly radioactive and long-lived -- is contradictory to the cleanup effort that we all support."

Washington's Department of Ecology, which successfully fought to prevent the import of another category of low-level waste three years ago, is studying the latest proposal, spokeswoman Sharon Braswell said. But the state is "concerned about any activity that would distract from or delay the cleanup at Hanford."

Watchdog groups, including Heart of America Northwest and Columbia Riverkeeper, issued warnings about the plan.

Greg deBruler, Riverkeeper's Hanford technical consultant, called the proposal "the most ill-conceived I have seen in 20 years working on Hanford cleanup issues."

Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, said it appears the government is targeting Hanford or the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas for the disposal, given obstacles at other sites on DOE's list. "It's like you've got a huge target on your back when you're living in the Northwest."

--Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com

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Oak Ridger
August 24, 2007

Wamp touts TVA role in nuclear waste project

SPRING CITY (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority is vying to host a national demonstration project for recycling spent nuclear fuel, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said Thursday.

“I believe TVA is going to ... prove to our country that you can deal with the No. 1 liability associated with the nuclear industry and that is the waste,” the Chattanooga Republican said after touring an unfinished Watts Bar Nuclear Plant reactor that TVA intends to complete in five years.

America needs nuclear power to meet growing demand for energy and power sources that don’t foul the air like coal-fired plants, he said.

But the country will never be able to find enough places to bury the radioactive waste already piling up at nuclear plants, including TVA’s, he said.

“You can’t build Yucca Mountain after Yucca Mountain after Yucca Mountain,” Wamp said of the long-stalled Nevada site for nuclear waste. “As a matter of fact, we are proving it is kind of hard to build the first one.”

But if an anticipated nuclear revival develops as predicted, the United States will need six more Yucca Mountains over the next 50 years, said Wamp, a member of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

“So let’s look at what the British and French do and prove to our country that you can close the fuel cycle. Reprocess the waste back into energy — safely and efficiently,” he said.

Wamp is confident that reprocessing works. He said he’s seen it work on a small scale at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Reprocessing the waste to extract still-usable uranium could help recycle about 80 percent into new fuel. Officials estimate the remainder would still have to be buried at a facility like Yucca Mountain.

Toward that end, the Department of Energy is reviewing proposals from four industry groups for a nuclear fuel reprocessing pilot project under the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative.

Cooperative agreements with the groups are expected to be announced next month. They will then have until 2008 to come up with more detailed business plans.

TVA, the nation’s largest public utility, has incorporated its processes into proposals from three of the four groups — AREVA Federal Services LLC, EnergySolutions LLC and General Electric-Hitachi Nuclear Americas LLC. The fourth group is General Atomics.

Ashok Bhatnager, TVA’s senior vice president for nuclear power, said TVA is proposing a “Tennessee-only” demonstration involving potentially all nuclear waste at Watts Bar and TVA’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Chattanooga.

“This is a very phased approach,” he said. It would start with “taking it from a laboratory demonstration at a microgram kind of scale to something that’s the size that you could process the waste from Watts Bar and Sequoyah combined — more of an industrial-size demonstration facility.”

Wamp said the French have half as many reactors (53) as the United States (105), but can reprocess all of their spent fuel at one facility. That could mean two such facilities would be adequate for the United States, but Wamp said the better goal would be developing reprocessing systems that can work at the reactor sites.

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KLAS-TV
August 23, 2007

Nevada's Powerful Leaders Strategize to Stop Yucca Mountain Project

Edward Lawrence
Reporter

Some of Nevada's most powerful leaders gathered in Las Vegas Thursday for a closed door strategy session. Their goal -- stopping the Yucca Mountain Project.

The Department of Energy is building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The state is vehemently against it. If the project is completed, high level nuclear waste from across the country will be shipped to Nevada.

Senator Harry Reid kept us out of the strategy session for the first hour. The door was even locked. "First of all, I do not think it is appropriate that we disclose publicly what our strategy is to kill this project," said the senator.

What we do know is the state is working on many fronts to keep high level nuclear waste from being shipped to Nevada. First, the governor is using the courts to delay the project. The latest federal lawsuit claims the Department of Energy is breaking the law by using water to drill and test at the site. The state engineer ordered water could only be used for everyday use.

"Do I think that we will come to some sort of agreement? No. I think that is because the DOE has come in bad faith. They continue to use the water illegally in our perspective," said Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada's Attorney General.

A federal judge is expected to rule on the case next week. Joining the state's fight is Senator Harry Reid, who is also working to cut funding. Reid invited North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan to the meeting. He is chairman of the committee which controls Yucca Mountain funding.

Sen. Dorgan, (D) North Dakota: This is a big decision on a very important issue. I think that the most important questions deal with human health and what are the consequences?

Dorgan recommended a 50 million dollar cut for the project this year. The full senate has yet to vote on it. Still, he would not come out and call it a bad project.

"I think there is a lot that needs to be resolved here before final judgements are made about licensing," said Sen. Dorgan. Which could explain why Reid stacked the room with Yucca Mountain heavy hitters.

The Department of Energy says the operating license will be submitted in June of next year. But the state agency fighting the project says it won't be complete and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should throw it out.

The state says their timing is crucial, because the Department of Energy wants to submit the license while George Bush is still president.

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Investor's Business Daily
August 23, 2007

Is Global Warming Serious Enough To Lift Calif. Ban On Nuke Plants?

By Chuck Devore

Global warming has become a lot like the weather: Everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

In environmentally conscious California, a poll found that 54% of residents believe "global warming poses a very serious threat to the state's future economy and quality of life." But only 13% claim to carpool and 7% use mass transit.

In other words: Do as I want you to do, not as I do.

Meanwhile the California legislature, reflecting the conventional wisdom, has passed a sweeping new greenhouse gas law that calls for a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 — while the state's population is projected to grow 20% to 44 million people.

Passing the law was the easy part. Now we implement. Perhaps this is where the majority of Californians were right — but not for the right reason — when they agreed that "global warming poses a very serious threat to the state's future economy."

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in 13 years while growing the economy to support 7 million more people will, to put it mildly, be a challenge. Thirteen years is not a long time to dramatically change the way California uses energy.

Electrical generation accounts for 20% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. More than half of these emissions come from burning natural gas that powers 42% of the grid. Coal contributes 16% of California's power, yet accounts for about 36% of its greenhouse gas emissions. A separate California law passed last year will phase out the use of conventional coal power over 20 years. Most of this power will be replaced by far more expensive natural gas, assuming adequate supplies can be secured.

Wind and solar power are being increased, but grid reliability is a problem. The wind in California has this unfortunate habit of peaking when its power is not needed and vanishing when it is. The sun in sunny California has its off days too. This requires both technologies to be backed up by additional natural gas plants that have to remain on costly standby. Solar power also continues to be very expensive.

California is already the most electrically efficient state in the U.S., so large additional conservation savings will be hard to achieve.

A little over half the state's man-made greenhouse gases come from the tailpipe. But there aren't a lot of ways to significantly reduce these emissions while the state is growing so rapidly, though small cars could be mandated or favored through the tax code.

Burning corn as ethanol instead of eating it may be an attractive solution for a politician angling to win the Iowa presidential caucuses. But in the real world, the balance sheet of carbon combustion is unmoved by massive federal subsidies. Further, switching to corn-based fuel is already causing unintended inflationary pressures, as corn shortages have increased feedstock prices that in turn have driven up the price of milk, poultry, beef and pork.

A fleet of hydrogen-electric cars could make a major impact on the problem — but only if we doubled our electricity production using low greenhouse gas technology such as solar, wind or nuclear. Of these, nuclear is the only reliable way to make electricity that could be affordable for anyone other than a San Francisco hedge fund manager.

That leaves four possible outcomes with California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006:

1. The regulations to reduce greenhouse emissions pose such a serious threat to the state's economy that politicians decide to delay the reduction mandate or simply rescind it, letting greenhouse gas emissions grow.

2. A carbon cap-and-trade scheme is implemented, enriching a few traders on the floor of the Chicago Climate Exchange and serving as a massive fossil-fuel tax, leading to economic harm and reversal of the law.

3. Politicians and regulators ignore the economic consequences and wring a 25% carbon emissions reduction out of the California economy that causes havoc and misery. Then they get thrown out of office by mobs of angry unemployed people, whereupon their successors reverse the law.

4. California gets serious about greenhouse gases, lifts its ban on new nuclear power plants, constructs four new reactors and, as a result, enjoys a large reduction in carbon emissions from the electrical sector and a small reduction overall. Additional reactors would yield further greenhouse gas reductions.

Construction of nuclear plants, however, has been banned in California since 1976. But the four reactors under construction then were allowed to be finished. Today, those reactors furnish about 13% of state's electricity.

The four reactors save $2.6 billion a year in natural gas (a nuclear reactor can run on about $30 million of fuel for almost two years) while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 22 million metric tons. Adding four modern reactors would let the electrical sector reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40%, returning the sector to 1990 levels.

Nuclear power has the lowest total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of any energy source, including solar and wind. In spite of this, the California legislature shows no interest in nuclear power.

Due to fears about global warming, public opinion about nuclear power has improved nationwide. California polls show likely voters closely divided on the question. Bypassing the legislature with a ballot initiative to overturn the state's obsolete 31-year ban on nuclear power might succeed following a serious public education campaign.

Unfortunately, California's risk-averse investor-owned utilities fear provoking the anger of environmentally liberal lawmakers by supporting such a ballot initiative. Instead, the utilities may try to build reliable and safe nuclear power plants out of state. But this means spending billions to build long-distance power transmission lines as well as billions more in fees to buy approval from the states over which the lines traverse.

California ratepayers will pay for this in higher electrical bills. In addition, 15% of the power would be lost through long-distance line resistance. These added expenses mean that two reactors could be built in California for the cost of a single reactor built in New Mexico or Utah.

A total of 104 reactors now produce about 19% of America's electricity. By comparison, France's 59 reactors produce 78% of its electricity while environmentally conscious Sweden has 10 reactors that provide 48% of its power. Still, environmentalists fiercely oppose any new plants.

Their opposition is deeply rooted in our Cold War past and focuses on a single isotope created during the nuclear fission process: plutonium-239. With a half-life of 24,110 years, plutonium-239 would have to be stored for almost 200,000 years for its radioactivity to be rendered safe.

Each commercial nuclear power reactor makes about 500 pounds of plutonium a year. This plutonium is embedded in the fuel rods that in the U.S. are simply set aside and stored, with the plan being to store about a football field's volume of spent fuel rods at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Environmentalists oppose this, arguing that Yucca Mountain cannot keep nuclear material safe for 2,000 centuries.

The issue of storing plutonium-239 for 200,000 years can be solved by extracting the plutonium and using it to produce electricity. The French do this, reducing the volume of used nuclear material by about 96% by recycling usable fuel, including plutonium, back into their reactors. This slightly increases the cost of electricity, but it eliminates the need to safely store plutonium-239, saving money on the back end.

Unfortunately, many environmentalists oppose reprocessing spent nuclear fuel because reprocessing extracts plutonium that could be diverted for nuclear-bomb making. It was this rationale that caused President Jimmy Carter to ban U.S. reprocessing in 1977 in the hopes of inspiring other nations to do the same. (It didn't work.)

Environmental opponents speak darkly of "plutonium-in-commerce," as if a U.S. utility would sell 100 pounds of extracted plutonium to al-Qaida to boost its profits. The net result is that it gives the American environmental left a perfect and unassailable circular argument: Reprocessing is bad because plutonium can be made into bombs, but storing unreprocessed spent fuel rods with plutonium in them for 200,000 years is problematic.

Ironically, nuclear power plants can be operated with plutonium recovered from nuclear bombs, turning nuclear swords into electrical ploughshares and using up the plutonium in the process.

For better or for worse, California often leads the way in American trends. What if Californians considered the relative risks and rewards of nuclear power vs. global warming, increased use of imported fossil fuels and massive electricity rate hikes, and decided in favor of nuclear power?

The California Energy Independence and Zero Carbon Dioxide Emission Electrical Generation Act slated for the June 2008 ballot will give Californians that choice. The proposed initiative overturns California's nuclear ban, enacts seismic and environmental restrictions that place about 40% of the state off limits to nuclear power, and approves on-site dry-cask storage of spent fuel as an acceptable storage method for 100 years.

California can get serious about meeting its ambitious global warming goals while providing economic opportunity, or it can try to power its economy on good intentions.

DeVore, a Republican from Irvine, is a California state assemblyman representing 450,000 people in coastal Orange County. Further information on the initiative may be seen at powerforcalifornia.com.

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The Columbian
August 23, 2007

New nuclear shipments to Hanford considered

By Erik Robinson
Columbian staff writer

The Hanford nuclear reservation, already the most polluted site in the Northwest, may be in for new shipments of radioactive waste under a proposal by the U.S. Department of Energy.

A public hearing on the matter has been scheduled for 6 to 9 p.m. Monday at the Comfort Inn & Suites, 477 N.W. Phoenix Drive, in Troutdale, Ore.

Hanford is among eight federal sites being considered as a depository for waste from around the country; some is generated at commercial nuclear power plants, some is radioactive waste from government installations.

This particular type of waste, known in the agency's parlance as Greater Than Class C low-level radioactive waste, is considered to be dangerous to an inadvertent human intruder beyond 500 years - the most hazardous category of "low-level" waste.

Over the next 55 years, the agency expects 5,600 cubic meters of this material - a little more than 800 dump truck loads - will need to be stored somewhere.

The environmental study now under way will evaluate disposal at the proposed national waste depository in Yucca Mountain, Nev.; near-surface disposal at Hanford or other DOE sites; and deeper borehole disposal at those same locations.

"It's important to evaluate and analyze all the options," said Jonathan Shrader, a DOE spokesman in Washington, D.C. "We want to be thorough and make sure we make the right decision."

Representatives of a Hanford watchdog group expressed outrage.

"In all my years of working on Hanford cleanup issues, I always assumed that no one would ever go back to dumping radioactive waste into the dirt at Hanford," wrote Greg deBruler, a technical consultant working for the environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper.

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WKRN
August 23, 2007

Wamp touts TVA role in nuclear waste project

Duncan Mansfield
Associated Press Writer

SPRING CITY, Tenn.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is vying to host a national demonstration project for recycling spent nuclear fuel, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said Thursday.

"I believe TVA is going to ... prove to our country that you can deal with the No. 1 liability associated with the nuclear industry and that is the waste," the Chattanooga Republican said after touring an unfinished Watts Bar Nuclear Plant reactor that TVA intends to complete in five years.

America needs nuclear power to meet growing demand for energy and power sources that don't foul the air like coal-fired plants, he said.

But the country will never be able to find enough places to bury the radioactive waste already piling up at nuclear plants, including TVA's, he said.

"You can't build Yucca Mountain after Yucca Mountain after Yucca Mountain," Wamp said of the long-stalled Nevada site for nuclear waste. "As a matter of fact, we are proving it is kind of hard to build the first one."

"So let's look at what the British andFrench do and prove to our country that you can close the fuel cycle. Reprocess the waste back into energy _ safely and efficiently," he said.

Wamp is confident that reprocessing works. He said he's seen it work on a small scale at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the country's top energy laboratory.

Toward that end, the Department of Energy is reviewing proposals from four industry groups for a nuclear fuel reprocessing pilot project underthe Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative.

Cooperative agreements with the groups are expected to be announced next month. They will then have until 2008 to come up with more detailed business plans.

TVA, the nation's largest public utility, has incorporated its processes into proposals from three of the four groups _ AREVA Federal Services LLC, EnergySolutions LLC and General Electric-Hitachi Nuclear Americas LLC. The fourth group is General Atomics.

Ashok Bhatnager, TVA's senior vice president for nuclear power, said TVA is proposing a "Tennessee-only" demonstration involving potentially all nuclear waste at WattsBar and TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Chattanooga.

"This is a very phased approach," he said. It would start with "taking it from a laboratory demonstration at a microgram kind of scale to something that's the size that you could process the waste from Watts Bar and Sequoyah combined _ more of an industrial-size demonstration facility."

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Berkshire Eagle
August 23, 2007

Editorial: Wasting away in Rowe

Yankee Rowe, one of the nation's first nuclear power plants and one of the first to expose the problems that became endemic to the industry, has been officially decommissioned, 15 years after its reactor was shut down for good. Still there, however, entombed in concrete, is the plant's nuclear waste, a silent reminder of the issue that prevents nuclear power from achieving its full potential.

When it went online in 1960, the third nuclear power plant to do so in the nation, Yankee Rowe was at the forefront of the optimistic era when nuclear plants would provide power that was "too cheap to meter." Cracks and corrosion caused its closure, and the assumption 32 years earlier that a nuclear waste depository site would be designated to collect the nation's nuclear waste proved unfounded. Fifteen years later it remains so, and the waste at Yankee Rowe that was to have been removed in 1998 remains.

Nevada's Yucca Mountain has long been thought to be the best site for storage of nuclear waste, but the toxic combination of politics and lawsuits has prevented that from happening. While Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have given nuclear power a bad name, it is actually less environmentally destructive than coal or oil and should have a greater role in the nation's energy mix. That can't happen, however, until a federal waste site is designated and opened for business.

With so much of the state's land lost to development, the 2,000 acres owned by Yankee now pronounced clean and safe will ideally be turned over to recreational use and land conservation. Also, ideally, Congress and the Department of Energy will take the nuclear waste issue head-on, so states can remove waste they were never expected to store, and the nuclear power industry can be removed from its state of suspended animation.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2007

Editorial: Sleeping with the enemy

Las Vegas and North Las Vegas join group pushing for Yucca Mountain dump

I n a purported effort to bring business to Nevada, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas have joined with supporters of the planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

And, stunningly, city officials seem to have no problem with that.

As reported Tuesday by Jeff German and Steve Kanigher in the Las Vegas Sun, the cities are members of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Industry and Business, a group with a stated purpose of bringing scientific, high-tech and defense contractors to Southern Nevada.

The group's membership, however, wants to do more than that. Group leaders have long supported plans to dump highly radioactive waste into Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The group is supported by the Energy Department and has a list of members that form a "Who's Who" of repository supporters, including Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC Co. and former Gov. and nuclear industry lapdog Bob List.

Clark County didn't join the group because it "promotes Yucca Mountain as an economic opportunity," said Irene Navis, who leads the county government's opposition. "We would not want to be part of a group that sends out that message."

Even though the cities oppose Yucca Mountain, they apparently see the Nevada Alliance as a business development group. Chris Knight, Las Vegas' director of administrative services, said the city and the alliance "have a common ground, and we don't see a mixed message on the Yucca Mountain issue."

The alliance certainly is clear about its message, echoing the standard - and asinine - pro-dump claim that bringing deadly waste to Nevada is good for the economy. The alliance even offers 10 "fact" sheets on its Web site, including one that describes the "financial benefits" of the proposal.

The cities' belief that they can be with this group and still be against Yucca Mountain is ludicrous. This is an issue of principle. They should drop their memberships immediately.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2007

Flashpoint for Aug 22, 2007

By Jon Ralston
<ralston@vegas.com>
Las Vegas Sun

Rudy Giuliani and John McCain haven't been to Nevada in a while. But the man they are seeking to replace has found our little state. President Bush is coming to Reno on Tuesday to speak to the annual American Legion Conference. That ought to be an interesting speech, coming as it is a couple of weeks before Gen. David Petraeus gives his report to Congress. After the speech, I am sure , the president will sit down with members of the media here for a meaningful discussion of issues ranging from children's health care to Yucca Mountain. Yes, I am absolutely sure that is going to happen, because Bush has never as president allowed we lowly Fourth Estaters to ask him questions. What are the chances he will break that perfect record next week?

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Las Vegas SUN
August 21, 2007

Romney dodges questions on Nevada nuclear waste dump
By Kathleen Hennessey

Associated Press Writer

LAS VEGAS (AP) - In his first public campaign stop in southern Nevada, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney dodged questions about his stance on the construction of a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Asked his position on Yucca Mountain, a project adamantly opposed by Nevada and most voters in the state, the former Massachusetts governor suggested that he might be sympathetic to Nevada's fight, but fell short of taking a firm stance.

"I'm a federalist, I believe in the authority of states and clearly Nevadans have a lot to say about this and other policies," Romney told reporters after meeting with campaign volunteers in Las Vegas.

"My position is I'm not going to do anything that puts the health or well-being of Nevadans at risk," he said, adding, "It's something I'm going to look at further as the results of the study that's ongoing are provided."

Yucca Mountain is a politically tricky issue for presidential candidates trying to woo Nevada voters, who have newfound clout thanks to an early caucus on Jan. 19. Some, including Romney's opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, have supported the dump. Others come from states with large number of nuclear power plants and face pressure to find a place to store waste from those plants.

Romney's top rival, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, has said he's concerned about safety at Yucca Mountain, but will not rule out continuing its development. McCain says he sticks by his votes in the Senate, calling it an issue of national security.

Romney made his comments while standing next to former Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Romney backer and longtime opponent of the dump. Guinn said he believes his candidate would come around on the issue.

"I know the data he's going to be looking at will give him the basis on which he can make a decision that he'll be very proud of as he spends more time with Nevadans and hears what they have to say about it," Guinn said.

The dump was originally scheduled to open in 1998, but has been set back repeatedly by lawsuits, money shortfalls and scientific controversies. The DOE's current best-case opening date for the dump, which would hold 77,000 tons of waste, is 2017, though the Energy Department has said 2021 is more likely.

Despite Nevada's key spot on the nomination calendar, Republican candidates have spent little time campaigning in the state. This was Romney first public event in southern Nevada, the state's population center. He held his first public event in the state in rural northeastern Nevada last week. From Las Vegas, he was scheduled to go to Reno to meet with members of an Olympic bid committee and raise money.

Despite the sparse campaigning, Romney is leading the GOP field in Nevada, according to the most recent public polling. The governor, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, noted Tuesday that his identification with state's large and politically active LDS community might be a factor.

"Well, you know, it's probably not been considered a plus for my campaign to be a member of my church, but I certainly hope it's going to be plus in Nevada," he said. "I don't know, I think most people vote based upon their political perspective of the issues of the day."

In comments to campaign volunteers, Romney portrayed himself a candidate running to change Washington and said his aim was to strengthen America's military forces, economy and families.

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KXMB Bismarck
August 22, 2007

Romney In A Day: Dodge, Avoid, Flip, Flop, Flip-Flop Again

Yesterday Mitt Romney made his first trip to Nevada, where residents got their first taste of his flip-flopping ways.

On Yucca Mountain, which the Bush Administration has designated as a place to store spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, Romney attempted to dodge the issue:

Jon Ralston, columnist for Las Vegas Sun Politics, called his article "The silky smooth, almost human Mitt Romney."

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Creative Loafing Atlanta
August 22, 2007

Georgia Power takes a fresh look at nuclear power

Nearly two decades after its last reactor went online, the electric utility warily eyes a return to technology that once drove it to the brink of bankruptcy

By Scott Henry

Longtime environmental lobbyist Neill Herring remembers cutting his teeth in the early '70s as a volunteer activist in Atlanta, opposing the licensing of a new nuclear power plant on the banks of the Savannah River.

Even in that era of sit-ins and "Ecology now" posters, Herring didn't fall back on the emotional arguments favored by what he termed the "radiation fear crowd." Instead, he attacked the bottom line.

[image-1]Georgia Power hadn't justified its proposed Plant Vogtle nuclear facility, he explained in testimony to state utility regulators, because the company hadn't sufficiently studied safer, less expensive options, such as energy conservation and other renewable resources. In fact, he argued, if the state would only force its namesake power producer to find ways to curb growth in energy demand, the plant wouldn't be needed at all.

Too costly. Unnecessary. And there were less risky alternatives. The message couldn't compete with utility lobbying clout. Plant Vogtle – about half an hour south of Augusta – was approved but, because of calamitous cost overruns, only two of the planned four reactors were built.

Now, three decades later, the state is adding new population at a furious pace, and nuclear energy is being widely touted as an antidote to global warming. Again, Georgia Power is looking to the atom. Again, the site is Vogtle. And, again, the company has momentum on its side.

Yet, Herring says, the arguments against a Vogtle expansion remain essentially the same. Georgia Power still has done little to explore renewable energy resources or, even more obviously, to take advantage of what he calls the "low-hanging fruit" of energy efficiency. At the same time, the company sells power to Florida that could be used to serve Peach State residents. And the threat of environmental damage to the Savannah River is even more serious today than it was in the '70s.

But, again, the question of Georgia's nuclear future comes down to a big unknown: cost.

While Georgia Power officials claim advances in nuclear-plant design have made construction relatively quick and inexpensive, the company has yet to give state regulators a firm estimate of the eventual price tag for Vogtle. Since no new nuclear plants have been built in the United States in the last 30 years, many scientists and industry watchers aren't convinced meaningful estimates are even possible.

Says Sam Shelton, director of research for Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute: "The bugaboo with nuclear energy is that nobody knows how much it's going to cost because no contractor will build on a fixed-price contract."

Thus, the decision on how to meet Georgia's future energy needs carries an unknown element of risk – and the stakes could hardly be higher. If Georgia Power takes a gamble on nuclear and finds itself in another money pit at Vogtle, it's conceivable that utility rates could soar and the economic development of the entire state could suffer.

Despite the proposed Vogtle expansion, the admittedly jaded Herring theorizes that the company is simply keeping its options open.

"There is reason to believe that Georgia Power doesn't really want to build Vogtle 3 and 4, but they're trying to keep their shareholders happy," he says. "They'd much rather build coal plants because nuclear is a crapshoot – they have no idea what these plants will cost."

These are heady days for nuke boosters.

Ronald Reagan was still in his first term when the last new U.S. plant was green-lighted, but the current atmosphere in Washington suggests all systems are go for a full-scale revival of nuclear energy. Call it the Al Gore Effect: Political pressure to reduce greenhouse gases is getting stronger at the same time that population growth, bigger houses and more gadgets are pushing up demand. As a result, the nation's energy producers are looking for new sources of power that won't expose them to future taxes or penalties for spewing carbon, which is believed to be the main contributor to global warming.

Until recently, that role was largely filled by natural gas, a comparatively clean fuel that doesn't require building the kind of large, expensive plants needed for coal or nuclear. But since 2000, the price of natural gas has shot through the roof, making it by far the least cost-effective fuel to burn. Many gas-fired plants in Georgia are switched on for only a few hours each summer to help the state's utilities meet spikes in peak electricity demand.

Although the state is home to more than 30 gas-fired power plants, Georgia Power's corporate parent, the Southern Co., has never been much for clean energy. The Atlanta-based company is the country's second-largest utility operator, with 71 power plants and subsidiaries in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. It's also one of the nation's most visible opponents of pollution controls, carbon regulations and even the notion of human-induced climate change.

"The Southern Co. has long been the poster child for denying global warming," says Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "Among utilities, it's known for being the most regressive."

And among the most influential. The company is the largest utility lobbyist in Washington, where it led the charge to repeal federal laws requiring clean-air upgrades on older coal plants. Its executives and political action committees rank among the richest sources of campaign contributions.

In Georgia, its influence is even more pronounced. Last year, Ed Holcombe, a longtime Georgia Power lobbyist, was named chief of staff to Gov. Sonny Perdue – adding to the widely held belief that Southern Co. is the most powerful corporation in the state. And the utility has long had an iron grip on the Public Service Commission, the five-member elected board responsible for regulating utilities. In the Legislature, Georgia Power has successfully used its influence to fight environmental regulations; in the PSC, it's brushed aside calls to increase energy efficiency. Says Smith: "The PSC is so far up the butt of the utilities that it won't do anything to rock the boat."

[image-2]But the long years of polluting with impunity may be coming to a close. The prospect of steep new federal carbon penalties is pushing many utilities, including the Southern Co., to reconsider their reliance on coal.

With gas plants on the decline and global warming looming as a crisis of potentially epic proportions, it's not hard to also find scientists, politicians and editorial writers scrambling onto the nuclear bandwagon. Even many environmentalists, most prominently Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, support nukes as an alternative to greenhouse-gas-producing coal plants.

"Because of global warming, a lot of people who once opposed nuclear have crossed over," says Nolan Hertel, a Georgia Tech nuclear engineering professor who advocates fission as a safe energy source. "And utilities like their nuclear plants because they're much cheaper to operate than fossil-fuel plants."

Nuclear energy also has gotten strong support from Congress and the White House. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended a '50s-era law limiting corporate liability for nuclear mishaps, streamlined the plant-licensing process and, most notably, earmarked billions of dollars in federal subsidies for the first six new nuclear plants.

The effect on the energy industry has been roughly equivalent to firing a starter pistol at the beginning of a marathon. At last count, 32 new reactors are being proposed from Maryland to Idaho. And just last month, the U.S. Senate approved a new energy bill containing a hidden provision for tens of billions in additional loan guarantees to nuke builders.

Georgia Power first floated the nuclear option two years ago. Last month, the company received unanimous PSC approval for a long-range plan that calls for meeting increased statewide energy demand with a Plant Vogtle expansion. The commission decision allows the utility to charge back to ratepayers an estimated $51 million in licensing and preconstruction expenses – money it can keep even if the new reactors are never built.

On the surface, Vogtle looks to be on the fast track. But the world of energy production and regulation moves with excruciating deliberateness. The PSC's July vote is only a first step. Even if Vogtle wins final approval, the first new reactor wouldn't be up and running until 2015, at the earliest.

Complicating matters, the PSC has mandated that Georgia Power can't proceed until it provides persuasive evidence that nuclear is the most cost-effective option for future power production. If the utility can't prove its case – or if another company shows it can meet Georgia's energy needs at a lower price – then the Vogtle expansion may not happen, says PSC Chairman Bobby Baker.

"It's not a done deal that the next plant built in Georgia will be nuclear," Baker says.

March 16, 1979, saw the opening of The China Syndrome, a thriller about an unscrupulous, corner-cutting power company bent on covering up design flaws at its nuclear plant. Just 12 days later, a partial core meltdown at Three-Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pa., spelled the end of the first era of nuclear-plant construction in the United States.

The demise of plant building wasn't due simply to heightened fear of radioactive fallout; the larger factor was runaway costs associated with meeting constantly shifting regulations imposed by government officials whose single-minded goal was that another Three-Mile Island not happen on their watch.

One of the biggest victims of that nuclear winter was Georgia Power. When construction began on Vogtle in 1974, the company's rose-colored estimate was that four powerful reactors could be built for $680 million – a considerable savings over the $934 million spent to construct half as many nuke units at South Georgia's Plant Hatch.

By early 1979, Southern Co., like many utilities, was reeling from the national energy crisis. In the flurry of new regs that followed Three-Mile Island, Vogtle became a financial disaster zone. Design specs were redrafted, scrapped and redrafted again. Construction was halted as costs soared into the billions, but the company had no means of recouping its investment unless the plant went operational, so the plan was scaled back to two reactors and building resumed.

By the time Vogtle was completed in 1989, Georgia Power had spent 15 years and $8.4 billion – more than 20 times the original per-unit cost – and narrowly avoided bankruptcy. In those days, when the utility finished a construction project, it presented the final tab to the PSC for approval to pass the cost on to energy customers. But, in face of such an outrageous sum, the PSC ruled that the company had to eat $1 billion of the cost overruns.

Georgia Power has since gotten state law changed to ensure that, so long as the company is deemed "prudent" in its cost projections, it will be able to recover its capital investments – along with a healthy 12 percent profit margin – by raising rates.

Vogtle was the last major power plant built by Georgia Power, but it enabled the company to produce more than enough energy to satisfy customer needs. So, with the PSC's assent, the utility has sold sizable amounts of excess electrical capacity across state lines over the years. One unit at Macon's huge coal-fired Plant Scherer, the fifth-largest power generator in the United States, was sold outright to Florida Power & Light. And last fall, without asking the PSC's permission, Georgia Power renewed a long-term contract to provide the Florida utility with 1,000 megawatts of capacity, nearly equal to the energy produced by one of the existing reactors at Vogtle.

As Herring puts it: "Other utilities, whose states wouldn't allow them to build over-capacity plants, came shopping for power in Georgia. We pay higher rates so Florida can have air-conditioned beach homes."

Georgia Power now has taken the position that the state's sharply rising population growth calls for a major new plant by 2016.

"If we don't get an additional 500 megawatts a year in base-load capacity, we can't guarantee that we can meet the energy needs of Georgia," says utility spokeswoman Carol Boatright.

In the next few months, she says, the company expects to file a formal bid for a Vogtle expansion, complete with the planned energy capacity, the construction time line and the estimated construction cost. After that, it will be up to the PSC to decide whether new nukes are a cheaper option than a different kind of plant.

Some environmentalists argue that the utility hasn't made a compelling case for any kind of new plant – at least, not until it looks at putting a lid on energy consumption. On average, Georgia residents use 25 percent more electricity per capita than the rest of the country.

One reason for that is cheap power.

"In Georgia," Baker explains, "the principle driving regulation of the energy industry has always been on keeping rates low, but keeping the price low is not going to encourage folks to use less of something."

[image-3]Smith explains that another reason for the state's profligate power consumption is that, for Georgia Power, waste is good business.

"If everyone runs their air conditioner with the windows open, the company makes more money," he says. "The Southern Company has been so hostile in fighting energy efficiency because it views it as lost revenue, which is a perverse disincentive."

If energy efficiency sounds like crunchy, feel-good lifestyle choices, like carpooling and remembering to turn off the light when you leave a room, you're still stuck in the '70s. Nowadays, efficiency involves investments in updated technology – better insulation, A/C regulator switches, compact fluorescent light bulbs, Energy Star appliances, etc. – that result in a direct, calculable reduction in energy consumption.

"The good news is that Georgia wastes so much energy now that efficiency is a cheaper solution than building a new plant," says Dennis Creech, executive director of the Southface Energy Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes energy efficiency.

"We're not telling people they have to sit in the dark," he adds. "What we're saying is that they should install energy-efficient lighting and appliances."

More to the point, the state could direct utilities to offer financial incentives to customers who make energy-saving investments. It's called "demand-side management": Instead of spending money building power plants to continually expand the supply of electricity, a utility can control demand by spending money to retrofit customers' homes with better duct work and up-to-date insulation.

Years ago, California stopped permitting new power plants in favor of reducing demand on existing plants through efficiency programs. The result is that electricity rates are about twice as high as in Georgia, but per capita consumption is less than half.

"I don't pay a utility rate; I pay a bill," Creech says. "Georgia Power says we have some of the lowest rates in the country, but we have high bills because of inefficiency."

So how big a difference could efficiency make in Georgia? A recent, state-commissioned study estimated that as much as 24 percent of future demand could be avoided through energy-efficiency programs. The study concluded: "Georgia has not invested in energy efficiency as vigorously as most states. In fact, Georgia is one of a small number of states in which energy efficiency programs are barely in evidence."

In the subsequent State Energy Strategy, the Governor's Energy Policy Council – a group of 22 mostly business-friendly Perdue appointees – recommended that Georgia, "as its highest priority, should aggressively pursue all cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities."

Georgia Power recently launched a $43 million efficiency plan involving commercial tax incentives and consumer thermostat upgrades that it estimates will reduce about 5 percent of the current energy demand. By contrast, California utilities have earmarked $2 billion for efficiency programs.

Creech calls the Georgia initiative a "modest first step" and notes that there has never been much political will for the PSC or state lawmakers to push the company to do more.

"We're one of the worst states in the country in terms of public policy to promote energy efficiency," he says. "And this is not a liberal vs. conservative issue. Texas has some very aggressive policies to promote efficiency."

But most Georgia politicians have generally turned up their noses at the idea of an aggressive push to reduce demand. Even Baker, a Republican who's considered a pro-consumer commissioner, isn't ready to use the power of the government to push Georgia residents into making sometimes costly appliance upgrades.

"Why should someone have to subsidize me so I can go out and buy a programmable thermostat?" he says. "I have a problem with the philosophy that Big Brother needs to help people make these choices."

Still, Baker says he will watch how similar programs fare in other states.

"Sometimes it's best not to be out front leading the charge," he says. "Sometimes the most prudent thing is to monitor what's being done around the country so we can implement tested programs that are known to work."

Even if Georgia Power caught the efficiency bug, the company would likely explore the Vogtle expansion. After all, efficiency is likely only to slow the rising demand for energy. And the utility's heavy dependence on coal means it still needs to prepare for what is likely to be a less carbon-friendly future.

Currently, about 70 percent of Georgia's electricity comes from burning coal in huge, old plants, such as Scherer, which has been ranked the nation's dirtiest in terms of carbon emissions. And Southern Co. regularly finds itself among the nation's top two or three companies in greenhouse-gas emissions.

But the company may soon be forced to start cleaning up its act. Ask any industry watcher who's been paying attention in the past few years and he'll tell you carbon restrictions are on the way. Even if the Democrats don't take the White House next year, many energy experts say the political support is overwhelming for a federal limit on commercial CO2 emissions.

"The tipping point has passed on carbon caps," agrees Tech's Shelton. "It'll happen in the next three years, max."

And when it does, it could take one of two basic forms, explains Derik Broekhoff, a senior energy expert with the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank. One scenario has the nation's utilities effectively starting from the status quo, with the mandate that they cut emissions by a certain percentage each year or trade carbon "allowances" with companies able to meet their goal. It's a scheme that does little to reward companies that have already invested in cleaner technologies.

In the other scenario, the feds would set stricter clean-air standards and auction off a finite number of carbon allowances. Heavy polluters that couldn't meet the new standards would need to buy more allowances, sharply driving up operating costs.

"A utility with a lot of old-fashioned coal plants, like the Southern Co., could find it more expensive to limit emissions under a cap-and-trade system," Broekhoff says.

The resulting rate hikes could hurt the state's ability to attract employers, stunting job growth. Theoretically, two new Vogtle reactors could allow Georgia Power to shift some production away from coal, thus insulating itself from future penalties that may come down the pike.

[image-4]Not so fast, says Sara Barczak, safe energy director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Barczak says the utility is again ignoring some preferable alternatives.

"In the long run, there will be a need for new power generation in Georgia, but we feel nuclear is the worst option because of the unknown costs and the radioactive waste," she says.

Not that Georgia has a superabundance of options. Contributing scarcely 2 percent of the state's electricity, hydroelectric power is already maxed out. Natural gas is too pricey and, while cleaner than coal, produces carbon of its own. The prospect of solar energy is dubious, wood-derived ethanol is just beginning to be explored and off-shore wind power is still regarded as a question mark.

For large-scale power production in the Peach State, the choices seem limited to nuclear and coal. But Barczak says the PSC should insist Georgia Power consider not simply the cheapest options, but cleaner ones as well. New "clean-coal" technology – a process known as IGCC, in which coal is transformed into a gas before it's burned – screens out many common pollutants and makes it easier to capture the CO2 before it goes up the smokestack, she says.

"When you're talking about building a new power plant," Barczak says, "the lesser of all the evils is an IGCC coal plant."

The most familiar knock against nuclear energy is that there's never been a permanent solution for dealing with radioactive waste. It's an argument that's as valid today as it was 30 years ago. Spent fuel rods are still stored in on-site containment vessels at Vogtle and Hatch, just as they are at the nation's 102 other nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, the Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada is little closer to opening than when it was first proposed 20 years ago.

The heightened threat of terrorism is also cited as a reason to back off nuke building, but by most accounts, new plant designs are much less vulnerable than existing facilities. And innovations in safety features have largely muted concerns over an accidental core meltdown at a new plant.

Instead, the most immediate environmental impact of doubling the size of Vogtle would be added strain on the Savannah River.

All power plants that generate energy from heat – which is to say, nearly all power plants – need lots of water: Coal plants use it to turn giant steam turbines, and nuclear plants to cool their reactors. Plant Branch, a spectacularly thirsty, 1960s-era coal-fired plant an hour southeast of Atlanta, sucks an average of more than a billion gallons a day out of Lake Sinclair, but it pours back all but 4 million of those gallons. Vogtle draws a comparatively small 85 million gallons a day from the Savannah River, but about half of that water – 43 million gallons – is lost to evaporation in the thick cloud of superheated steam rising out of the plant's iconic cooling towers.

"If Vogtle were to operate four reactors, the plant would use more water than all the residents of Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah combined," Barczak says. "We'd be pursuing the most water-intensive energy option there is."

Vogtle already has a negative impact on the river ecosystem, Barczak notes, because the water it returns to the river is warmer and contains less oxygen than it did when it was withdrawn. And the loss of river volume – intensified by the ongoing statewide drought – allows brackish sea water to wash farther inland where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, raising saline levels in the sensitive Savannah Wildlife Refuge.

"When you're talking about increasing the capacity for one of the biggest water consumers on an already impacted river, that's a red flag," Barczak says.

In March, the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board determined that the potential threat to the Savannah River was great enough to warrant further study by Southern Co. The mandate may end up doing little to halt the Vogtle expansion, but for now, Barczak will take that small victory.

Even nuclear proponents such as Tech's Hertel concede that one giant hurdle is the absence of a domestic nuke-building industry. The United States has a shortage of nuclear engineers and few companies with the experience of making the highly technical equipment that goes into building a plant, he says. When an existing plant needs a replacement part these days, it typically orders it from France or Japan.

Those two countries have also shown, he says, that nuclear-plant construction can be streamlined, delivered on time and on budget. France's success at building plants allows it to sell energy to other countries.

"In the U.S., every plant was custom-built, but now they have standardized designs so parts are interchangeable," Hertel says.

But Herring says any lessons learned from France – where nearly 80 percent of the electricity is generated by 56 identical nuke plants – don't translate so well to our country. The French power grid is a nationalized, nonprofit, single-operator system with the government assuming all risk.

"Comparing us to France isn't apples and oranges," he says. "It's apples and coal."

Even if the billions of dollars in federal subsidies and loan guarantees now on the table help make America's transition back into nuke building possible, that money is only available to the first half-dozen plants out of the gate, notes David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Meaning, he says, many of the proposed plants will probably not get past the blueprint stage.

"There are a lot of companies competing for the subsidies in the energy bill," he says. "I wouldn't want to be the president of the company that's seventh in line."

Although standardization of plant design is essential to the revival of the industry, Lochbaum says, the energy bill actually discourages that by stipulating each proposed plant use different technology. Georgia Power plans to use a Westinghouse-designed reactor at Vogtle, while other companies have selected models from GE and Mitsubishi, as well as a new, terrorist-proof design from a French firm, Areva.

As for the question of what a new nuke costs, Lochbaum points to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Last year, the public utility restarted a unit at its Browns Ferry, Ala., plant that had been mothballed for 22 years – at a cost of nearly $2 billion.

"That suggests to us that the TVA board decided it couldn't build a brand-new reactor for close to $2 billion," he says.

"If you're in the ballpark of $2 billion for a 1,000-megawatt reactor, then you can stay competitive with some non-nuclear options," Lochbaum explains. If not, then building nuclear plants will continue to require generous government subsidies to be financially viable.

It's anybody's guess whether Vogtle will be among the first six plants to make it across the finish line. Even as he awaits Georgia Power's formal permit application, the PSC's Baker says the company would be smart to hedge its bets.

"They realize there's a mad rush to build nuclear plants, and they're proposing using a design that's never been built before, so it may make sense for them to sit back and see how the technology shakes out," Baker says.

Georgia Power spokeswoman Boatright confirms that the company does, indeed, intend to file a backup plan this fall in case Vogtle doesn't work out – a plan that doesn't involve energy efficiency.

So what's the company's fall-back option?

Naturally, it's another coal plant.

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FirstEnergy Corp
August 22, 2007

Perry Nuclear Power Plant to Expand Fuel Storage Capacity

North Perry, OH – FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) subsidiary FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) announced today plans to expand used nuclear fuel storage capacity at its Perry Nuclear Power Plant.

The plans call for installing above-ground, airtight steel and concrete cylindrical canisters, cooled by natural air circulation, to store used fuel assemblies. The canisters will sit on a thick concrete pad located within a highly secured area of the plant, providing additional safety assurance. Once the canisters are in place, they will be monitored closely by trained plant personnel and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to assure their integrity. Initially, six canisters will be installed; up to 74 additional canisters will be added as needed.

Construction of the new fuel storage system is scheduled to begin in spring 2008, and completion is planned for 2010.

“This project is vital to the future operation of the Perry Plant,” said Perry Vice President Barry Allen. “With the safety and health of the public and environment the top priorities, much effort went into the planning and selection of this canister system. Expanding our used fuel storage capacity will help ensure Perry remains a safe and reliable source of energy in Northeast Ohio for years to come.”

The NRC-approved canister system has been proven safe and effective for the storage of used nuclear fuel. Similar systems are in place at more than 40 other nuclear sites in the United States, including FENOC’s Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio.

Since Perry began operation in 1987, its used fuel assemblies have been stored in an indoor, steel-lined pool of water on the Perry site. Approximately 280 fuel assemblies are replaced and then stored in the pool following each 24-month operating cycle. Because the national repository for used nuclear fuel will not be ready until at least 2017, the plant must plan for additional storage space.

Perry is owned by Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., and is operated by FENOC.

FirstEnergy is a diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio. Its subsidiaries and affiliates are involved in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, as well as energy management and other energy-related services. Its seven electric utility operating companies comprise the nation’s fifth largest investor-owned electric system based on serving 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and its generation subsidiaries control more than 14,000 megawatts of capacity.

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Law.com
August 22, 2007

Duane Morris Partner Rides Second Wave of Nuclear Power

Chuck Whitney says nuclear power is the new green as plant costs go down, consumption goes up and global warming looms

Meredith Hobbs

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Fulton County Daily Report
August 22, 2007

Nuclear power is making a comeback, and Charles W. "Chuck" Whitney is a believer.

Six months ago, Whitney, the Atlanta managing partner of Duane Morris, started a nuclear power practice for the Philadelphia-based firm.

There has not been a contract signed for a new nuclear power plant in the United States in 30 years, but now the time is right, said Whitney, 61, who is a veteran of the Georgia Power team that finally got the Plant Vogtle reactors built in the late 1980s. Costs are down, and concern over global warming means people are looking for alternatives to fossil fuels as power consumption continues to increase, he said.

He said several power plant suppliers and contractors interested in building nuclear power reactors have become clients, but declined to name them.

In the United States, the nuclear power industry was written off as dead around 1987, following the Chernobyl disaster the year before, Whitney said. Chernobyl confirmed many people's fears about the safety of nuclear power in the wake of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, where a reactor had a partial core meltdown.

But Whitney said the enormous cost overruns for the last wave of nuclear power plants, not safety fears or anti-nuclear protesters, were what killed off the U.S. nuclear power industry. He spent the latter half of the 1980s getting the Plant Vogtle reactors built amidst massive construction delays and skyrocketing costs, first as a lawyer for Troutman Sanders, then in-house at Georgia Power, which he followed with a decade as an executive for the utility and its parent, the Southern Co.

Times have changed. Last month, Georgia Power received permission from the state Public Service Commission to build two additional nuclear reactors at Vogtle, near Augusta, and is expected to apply for the necessary license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

This year and next, the NRC expects to receive 27 license applications for new nuclear plants.

The last U.S. nuclear power reactor to go online was Watts Bar Unit 1, near Spring City, Tenn., which finally began operation in 1996, almost 23 years after construction started. Security concerns caused delays, and design changes midway ratcheted the cost up to $6.2 billion, making it the most expensive nuclear reactor ever built.

In a sign of the times, the Tennessee Valley Authority decided Aug. 1 to complete Watts Bar Unit 2, which it had abandoned half-built in 1985. The TVA shut down its entire nuclear power program that year amidst runaway costs, safety concerns, whistleblower actions and anti-nuclear protests.

Still, the United States has more nuclear power plants operating -- 104 -- than any other country. Nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of our electricity, a distant second to coal, which supplies about 70 percent. Locally, Georgia Power's energy mix is about the same.

Many other countries have continued investing heavily in nuclear power. China, India, Japan and Finland have been building plants and developing reactor technology, to name a few. The European Union gets 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. France, which has very little fossil fuel, relies on the highest proportion, with a whopping 80 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear.

The newer generation of plants is far cheaper to build and safer to operate because of improvements in their technology and manufacturing, Whitney said.

GLOBAL WARMING

Growing worries about global warming have intensified interest in alternatives to fossil fuels, including nuclear. Nuclear power is clean, emitting heat as a byproduct of power generation instead of carbon dioxide the way coal and gas plants do. In addition to greenhouse gases, coal-fired plants produce smog-making nitrogen oxides and particulate matter as well as mercury and sulfur dioxide, which creates acid rain.

"People are concerned. A lot of former nuclear opponents have come out in favor of nuclear power -- not because of the economics but because it makes better environmental sense," Whitney said.

But cost is the trump card for nuclear power, he added.

Time is very big money in building reactors, he said. Since the capital costs are very high, any delays can quickly escalate financing costs, as happened in the 1980s. These days, a reactor can typically be built in a mere four-and-a-half years, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency.

A 1,000-megawatt unit, about the size of the ones at Vogtle, costs $1.5 to $2 billion, compared with about $1.2 billion for the same-size coal-fired plant with scrubbers, Whitney said.

Nuclear plants still cost more to build, but the fuel cost is a lot cheaper. As capital costs continue to decrease, the price per kilowatt hour is approaching that of coal, he said.

In the United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the environmental and health costs of burning carbon are not factored into the price of coal and gas, he added. If the country institutes a carbon tax, it would add a significant cost penalty to burning fossil fuels.

"With feasible design and construction -- and a carbon tax -- it's a no-brainer," he concluded.

Whitney acknowledges the obvious problem with nuclear power -- namely, what to do with the spent fuel. At present, spent fuel rods, which are 18 feet long and two inches across, are stored in underground pools or above-ground casks on reactor sites.

WASTE REPOSITORY NEEDED

"The idea was to keep them there a couple of years until the Feds built the central spent fuel repository that they promised back in 1971," said Whitney. "Can you spell Yucca?"

Yucca Mountain, Nev., the proposed site of the repository, is at least a decade from being operational -- if ever. Whitney noted that anti-nuclear activists strongly oppose a central radioactive waste facility, because they think it's an accident waiting to happen as well as a prime target for terrorists.

To meet the demand for more electricity, nuclear power opponents advocate investing in energy conservation and renewable fuels. To get its proposal for two more nuclear reactors approved by the PSC last month, Georgia Power also included modest plans to increase energy conservation (by encouraging consumers to use low-wattage lightbulbs, insulate water heaters and the like) and produce more power from renewable sources such as solar, wind and biomass.

But the small scale of renewable power plants and their intermittent operation, which depends on the wind blowing or the sun shining, comes nowhere close to meeting the increasing demand for electricity. They can add spot electricity to the power grid, but can't make up the core power supply, Whitney said.

Georgia Power produces 18,000 megawatts of electricity. The Vogtle reactors generate 1,200 megawatts apiece, compared with only perhaps 30 megawatts for a typical renewable plant.

"We need power, and we need big baseload power plants. Nuclear is the best way. It's not perfect, but it's the best of the imperfect choices," Whitney said. "The technology is good. We can think our way into an energy-secure and environmentally sane future -- and it won't be with windmills or dams."

Whitney said he got into nuclear power through "an accident of time and place."

In 1980, he was a third-year associate at Troutman Sanders when he was asked to handle whistleblower complaints for Georgia Power on the Vogtle reactors then under construction. The utility asked him to work exclusively on the problem-plagued Vogtle project in 1984, handling construction issues, just before he became a partner at the firm. Construction had been shut down for design modifications, such as redoing all the wiring, to address safety concerns after Three Mile Island, he said. A couple of years later, he left Troutman Sanders to work directly for Georgia Power on-site at Vogtle. Unit 1 started operating the next year, in 1987, followed by Unit 2 in 1989.

After getting Unit 2 going, Georgia Power stopped building nuclear power plants. Whitney spent another 10 years in senior management for the Southern Co. "I got to refinance all the debt we took on with Vogtle," he said.

In 1998 he returned to lawyering, this time at Jones Day, and a year later he opened the Atlanta office of Duane Morris.

When one of his clients asked if he would be around in 2016 when its planned nuclear plant would be licensed and ready to build, Whitney said no, but it got him thinking.

"If you'd checked in with me in 1989 and asked when the next wave of nuclear plants would start, I would have said, 'When hell freezes over,'" he said. "We never thought we'd do another one of these. All the guys who did them are gone -- retired."

The same is true of the nuclear plant engineers and builders. "Those guys are all in Florida, getting the early-bird special in Naples," he said with a laugh.

By 2016, Whitney also plans to be retired, possibly in Florida, so he started thinking about putting a nuclear group together to handle the coming wave. He's kept his hand in over the years, he said, by working on operating and regulatory enforcement issues for existing plants.

He e-mailed Duane Morris' roughly 650 lawyers to find out if anyone had worked on nuclear plants. "I got 30 or 40 responses. Of those, 10 or 15 guys had driven by a nuclear plant on their way to the courthouse to try another case," he said.

From the rest, he's put a 27-lawyer group together. A lot are in San Francisco, where they litigated construction matters for Bechtel in the last wave of nuclear power. Four are nuclear engineers who do intellectual property work. Almost all of them are in their late 50s to mid-60s.

Whitney is targeting nuclear plant engineers, contractors and equipment providers as clients, explaining that owners like Southern Co. or TVA already have longstanding relationships with law firms.

He said that the only reason he's still around for the second wave of nuclear power is because he rode the first wave when he "was young and in over [his] head." Now he's hoping the same will happen for his firm's younger lawyers.

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Albany Times Union
August 22, 2007

Letter: Forget a nuclear waste solution in election year

An Aug. 14 letter to the editor wanted 100 percent assurance of the safety of nuclear power plans and an answer to the question on disposal of nuclear waste? There is no 100 percent assurance of anything -- safety in coal mines or buying uncontaminated toys for our children. Can we be 100 percent sure that the media is not misleading the public on nuclear safety issues?

On the question of disposal of nuclear waste, I suggest that the media get Congress and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to conclude the safety studies on the proposed storage of wastes at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. There is a solution to the waste problem, but it won't be addressed during an election campaign.

The public as usual will be left holding the bag in the resolution of our serious energy crisis.

Sherwood Davies
Troy

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Las Vegas SUN
August 21, 2007

Money vs. message on Yucca

LV, NLV keep company with those who want nuclear dump

By Jeff German and Steve Kanigher
Las Vegas Sun

Las Vegas has been one of the fiercest forces in Nevada's longtime fight against the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Mayor Oscar Goodman once threatened to personally arrest any trucker hauling dangerous high-level nuclear waste through the city.

And like Las Vegas, the North Las Vegas City Council passed a resolution strongly condemning the Energy Department's multibillion-dollar push to build the Yucca Mountain dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Curiously, however, the two cities also belong to a little-known group of influential defense and high-tech contractors intent on seeing Yucca Mountain developed. The state's top Yucca Mountain watchdog calls the group, known as the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, a "rogues gallery" of pro-dump supporters.

"There's a legitimate concern about the participation of the two cities in this group," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "It sends a mixed message."

That is why Clark County has refused to join the Nevada Alliance, a nonprofit organization funded by dues-paying members and a $100,000-a-year grant from the Energy Department.

"The Nevada Alliance promotes Yucca Mountain as an economic opportunity," said Irene Navis, a planning manager who leads the county's opposition to the dump. "We would not want to be part of a group that sends out that message."

Although Nevada Alliance officials insist the group is not pro-Yucca, it posts 10 "fact sheets" on its Web site advocating Yucca Mountain as a way to bring economic benefits to the state and arguing that transporting the radioactive waste is not dangerous.

Troy Wade, the organization's chairman, is regarded by opponents as a Yucca Mountain supporter, and Ted Feigenbaum, president of Bechtel SAIC Co., the contractor building the dump in Nye County, is listed with Wade on the Nevada Alliance nine-member board.

Also listed as members of the group are the consulting company run by former Gov. Bob List, who is paid by the high-powered nuclear industry to promote Yucca Mountain, and the public relations firm run by longtime Nevadan Ace Robison, an industry operative hired to undermine the state's opposition to the dump. The Nye County Commission, which supports the government's efforts to build the dump, also is a member.

Other defense-related members include giant government contractor Science Applications International Corp. ; National Security Technologies, the company that manages the Nevada Test Site ; and Wackenhut Services, which handles security for the Test Site.

Wade, a former assistant energy secretary in the Reagan administration, said the Nevada Alliance's main goal is to help develop business opportunities in the Las Vegas Valley, many related to work being done at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Wade acknowledged that his organization shares office space with Robison, the Yucca Mountain hired gun, at what once was known as the Alexander Dawson Building on East Flamingo Road.

Wade said the group moved six months ago as a "cost-conserving measure" from its old office at the nonprofit Desert Research Institute on at UNLV.

The independent research institute, along with two UNLV organizations, the UNLV Research Foundation and the Institute for Security Studies, are listed with Las Vegas and North Las Vegas as associate members of the Nevada Alliance. Annual dues for associate members are $330. The university organizations have not taken a public position on Yucca Mountain.

Chris Knight, director of administrative services for Las Vegas, said the city sees the organization as a means to network with top defense companies to attract economic development to Las Vegas.

"We don't pick and choose who we do business with because there's a single issue in which we have a disagreement on," he said. "We have a common ground, and we don't see a mixed message on the Yucca Mountain issue."

North Las Vegas City Manager Gregory Rose agreed.

"The city council had been clear on what its position is regarding Yucca Mountain," Rose said. "In this instance, we belong to an organization that disagrees with our position."

North Las Vegas Economic Development Director Mike Majewski said the Nevada Alliance, which he described as the leading group of scientific companies in the state, has helped the city expand its economic opportunities.

"We're trying to attract scientific-based companies to this city," he said. "Just because some of their members are pro-Yucca Mountain, you can't say that we're pro-Yucca Mountain."

The participation of both cities, however, troubles former Sen. Richard Bryan, a leading Yucca Mountain opponent who now heads the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission.

"Both cities have been very supportive of the state's opposition to Yucca Mountain, he said. "But their memberships are inconsistent with their position."

Bryan said Las Vegas and North Las Vegas should make it clear that their memberships are not an expression of support for Yucca Mountain and that they don't want any of their dues to be used to promote the dump.

Anne Wellborn, co-chair of Citizen Alert, a Nevada environmental group that has been battling Yucca Mountain for years, shares that view.

"You can't say you're against Yucca Mountain and then give money to an organization that is promoting Yucca Mountain," Wellborn said. "There are other economic development corridors that can be explored without getting in bed with these guys."

--Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. He can be reached at 259-4067 or at german@lasvegassun.com. Steve Kanigher can be reached at 259-4075 or at steve@lasveggasun.com.

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Columbus Free Press
August 21, 2007

Nuclear power: follow the money
by Bob Sheak

The Bush administration’s energy policies from 2001 to the present have supported fossil fuels above all other energy sources, emphasizing the need to find new sources of petroleum, support new technologies for liquefied natural gas, and move forward with “clean” coal technologies. Over the course of Bush’s presidency, there is some mixed, but clearly secondary, support for renewable forms of energy and conservation/efficiency.

In a speech on his energy proposals in January, 2007, President Bush seemed to break new ground. But his calls for reduced U.S. gasoline usage and raising fuel-economy standards are far less than is needed to reduce our growing dependence on oil or stem the rise in greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. One of his featured proposals calls for an increase in the production of corn-based ethanol, but his estimates of the impact seem unrealistic. Steven Mufson, Washington Post correspondent, notes that industry experts say that it would take more than all of last year’s U.S. corn harvest to make enough ethanol to meet Bush’s target of replacing 15 percent of the projected annual gasoline consumption in 2017 (1-24-07).

Amidst it all, the administration sees a significant role for the long stagnant nuclear power industry, and wants to see a doubling of the number of nuclear power plants over the next couple of decades. There are currently 103 nuclear plants across the country. Nuclear power is now responsible for 20% of electricity generation and 7% of the total energy produced in the U.S. If there is going to be a renaissance of nuclear power, it will require massive government subsidies and guarantees. Russell D. Hoffman puts it this way: “government contracts, government subsidies, government insurance, and tax breaks (Russell D. Hoffman, “16 Dirty Secrets About Nuclear Power,” Counter Punch, June 27, 2007).

The documentation for Hoffman’s statements are readily available. According to Public Citizen’s website (2-5-07), the Bush administration 2008 budget proposes: $4 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear and coal plants, $802 million for nuclear power research and development, $114 million for the Nuclear Power 2010 program, which pays the nuclear industry for half the cost of applying for new reactors and licensing designs (more than $251 million has been appropriated for this program since FY 2001), $36.1 million for developing designs for the “next generation” of nuclear reactors (more than $200 million has been spent on this program since FY 2001), $405 million for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to promote reprocessing of spent fuel rods, and $494.5 million for the proposed high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Helen Caldicott, physician and perhaps the world’s leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement, identifies the problems of the government’s attempts to resurrect the nuclear industry in her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (publ. 2006). She documents her contention that nuclear power is not “clean and green.” She writes: “large amounts of traditional fossil fuels [and the carbon they emit] are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process” (viii). During the enrichment of uranium – the principal fuel for generating electricity from nuclear plants – “the now banned chlorofloro-carbon gas” emits both a greenhouse gas and “a potent destroyer of the ozone layer” (viii). Further, as the availability of uranium ore declines, “more fossil fuels will be required to extract the ore from less-concentrated veins.” Reprocessing spent radioactive fuel rods releases large amounts of radioactive material in the air and water. Government regulations allow nuclear plants to “routinely…emit hundreds of thousands of curies of radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year.”

Caldicott also draws our attention to other problematic aspects of nuclear power. It produces an enormous amount of nuclear waste. There are already thousands of tons of “solid radioactive waste” accumulating in the cooling pools beside the 103 operating nuclear plants in the U.S. (ix). Nuclear power, she notes, is “exorbitantly expensive and notoriously unreliable. Nuclear plants, with minimal security arrangements, are “obvious targets for terrorists, inviting assault by plane, truck bombs, armed attack, or covert intrusion into the reactor’s control room.” These plants are “essentially atomic bomb factors,” in that, for example, just one “1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 500 pounds of plutonium a year; normally ten pounds of plutonium is fuel for an atomic bomb” that could devastate a city. And, as more tax dollars are channeled to nuclear power, renewable energy is short changed (x).

Despite the major problems associated with nuclear power, the Bush administration – and the Congress – has decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer money on the expansion of nuclear power and to ignore the many problems associated with it. It is this fact that brings us to Piketon, Ohio, where since 1953 there are nuclear facilities that in the past produced components for nuclear bombs and more recently commercial power. The facilities located on 3,174 acres are extensively contaminated, contain an enormous quantity of nuclear waste, have polluted the surrounding environment and residents, and have shortened the lives of many workers while making additional thousands very sick. The Piketon nuclear facilities in Portsmouth, Ohio, are, by the way, only about 60 miles to the west – and up wind - of Athens.

As the Bush administration tries to rejuvenate the nuclear power industry, economic and political interests in Portsmouth Ohio, the governor, and the majority of elected officials from the area around Piketon are trying to take advantage of the anticipated profitable opportunities and “economic development” that may flow from federal government-funded nuclear power projects. The problematic aspects of nuclear power are ignored or dismissed.

You get a sense of what is in store for Piketon and surrounding communities from the projects that are already underway or well into a planning phase. Much of the following information comes from an outstanding series of articles that appeared in the Dayton Daily New.”(Lynn Hulsey and Tob Beyerlein, “Ohio’s Nuclear Legacy: Troubled past, uncertain future,” Dayton Daily News, a series published Nov. 12-14, 2006).

First, there is construction to build a plant “to convert 20,000 cylinders of old enrichment waste…to a more benign chemical form.” The 14-ton cylinders contain “radioactive ‘depleted uranium hexafluoride so corrosive it could eventually eat through the metal and release toxic gas.” If the conversion plant opens in 2008 as planned, it “will take until 2026 to convert the existing backlog of cylinders.” In the meantime, other plans for Piketon will generate additional radioactive wastes. And, whether there are 20,000 cylinders of waste or 40,000, there is no place to which it can be transported.

Second, the facilities are home to the Uranium Management Center, which stores 4,500 metric tons of radioactive metals, powders, and fuel pins, much of it from federal cleanup projects at the Feed Materials Production Center near Fernald, Ohio, and the Hanford weapons plant in Washington state. One Ohio EPA official described “shipping dangerous material between plants” as “a kind of shell game.” Officials connected to the center hope they can process and sell this stuff. But there are no buyers and, in the meantime, it is yet another source of radioactive waste at Piketon.

Third, plans by American Centrifuge for a new uranium enrichment plant have been accepted by the Department of Energy. The plan is to build a structure or structures that will house “12,000 machines towering 43 feet in the air” that will “separate uranium isotopes with centrifugal force, creating a power source that can be used for electricity – or bombs.” But, if the “engineering problems, delays and spiraling costs” can be managed, the enrichment plant “will generate tons and tons of radioactive waste – enough over 30 years to fill 41,000 cylinders weighting about 14 tons apiece, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All of that waste – added to the 20,000 cylinders already piled up at the plant – would have to be converted to a more stable form before it can be hauled away” to a yet to be identified repository.

Fourth, a group called the Southern Ohio Nuclear Integration Cooperative (a for-profit enterprise) has received $674,000 from the DOE to submit a plan for building a reprocessing plant at Piketon. This plant would “remove plutonium from highly radioactive spent fuel rods for reuse in an advanced burner reactor.”The spent rods would come from across the United States and perhaps overseas and would be stored at Piketon.” Local citizen groups in Portsmouth and surrounding communities fear that massive quantities of this radioactive waste will accumulate at the site, but that the reprocessing plant will never be built. Even if there is a reprocessing plant at some future time, reprocessing nuclear materials yields some nuclear waste as well as useable nuclear fuel for electricity generation or nuclear bombs.

Two groups in the Piketon/Portsmouth area have been working to support an accelerated cleanup of the facilities, keep any additional nuclear wastes from being generated there or brought from outside, and to pressure the federal government to provide just compensation to workers who have been made sick by the contaminated conditions of the facilities or to families of deceased workers. You can contact them at the following addresses or phone numbers and learn how you can support their efforts.

1 ) Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS) –P.O. Box 136, Portsmouth, Ohio 45662, or Vina Colley, President, at vcolley@earthlink.net, cell phone: 740-357-8916, or Joni Fearing, Vice President, at FearNot2624@aol.com, or 740-353-6536.

2) Southern Ohio Neighbors Group (SONG) – P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661, or at SHIPPSONG@aol.com, or 740-289-2549.

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
August 21, 2007

Letter: Nuclear negativity

I was disappointed at the biased and negative coverage given nuclear power in Sunday's paper ("Nuke doubts still at the core," Aug. 19 and PghTrib.com).

Almost all of the people cited as sources were left-wing environmentalists, the same people responsible for the current energy shortage. (Their hostility to drilling for domestic oil and building nuclear power plants has made us slaves to imports.)

The Trib's article exaggerated some people's fears about nuclear power without mentioning the many positives.

For example, a nuclear facility can generate more power with a smaller footprint than coal generators or wind farms. The worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, killed only 50 people (under conditions that would never occur in the U.S.).

The so-called "issues surrounding transport and long-term storage of radioactive material" have been studied and solved. Ever hear of Yucca Mountain?

France has generated the majority of its electricity from nuclear facilities for decades. If a country that cannot even provide air conditioning to its elderly can run nuclear power plants safely, surely America can.

Brad Tupi
Upper St. Clair

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Boston Globe
August 21, 2007

Yankee plant closed but its waste remains

By Adam Gorlick
Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD -- With the site of one of the country's first nuclear power plants finally considered safe for public use, all that remains of the reactor that stood for 47 years in the woodsy town of Rowe is its radioactive waste.

The federal government announced this month that the Yankee Rowe site had been officially decommissioned. But 266,000 pounds of spent fuel is still sitting on about 3 acres of land, sealed in protective barriers in the Western Massachusetts town teetering on the Vermont border.

Yankee owns the 30 acres the plant was built on, and company officials are deciding what to do with it. Some ideas have included turning the space and an adjoining 2,000 acres owned by the company into an area for recreation and land conservation.

A report on possible land uses is expected to be submitted to Yankee's operators this fall, company spokesman Bob Capstick said.

"They can do whatever they want with it," said Dave McIntyre, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The land wouldn't be released if it weren't safe."

The Yankee Nuclear Power Station was built in 1960 and went online a year later. At the time, it was the country's third nuclear plant and was expected to generate power for about six years. It wound up churning out 44 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for New England customers until 1992, when it was shut down.

Since then, workers have been dismantling the plant and cleaning the area.

Now all that is left of Yankee Rowe is its waste. Contained in 15 concrete containers standing 13 feet high and designed to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, and small plane crashes are 533 spent fuel assemblies.

The radioactive material was sealed in the dry storage casks about five years ago.

As the spent reactor fuel continues to cool off inside the casks, Yankee officials wait for the federal government to approve plans to store the country's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.

There are 28 nuclear power plants in the country that are decommissioned or in the process. Along with Rowe, eight communities in seven other states are waiting for the Department of Energy to haul away nuclear waste, McIntyre said.

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World Nuclear News
August 21, 2007

Yankee site returned to public use

Most of the site of the former Yankee nuclear power plant near Rowe, Massachusetts, has been released by regulators for unrestricted public use.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said in a statement that its release action completed the decommissioning of the majority of the site, where the nuclear power plant itself stood. The NRC said that residual radiation dose to anyone at the site would not exceed 25 millirem (0.25 mSv) per year, compared to the natural US background level of 300 millirem (3 mSv) per year.

The Yankee plant was a 185 MWe pressurized water reactor built by Westinghouse between 1957 and 1960. It was then operated by owners Yankee Atomic Electric Company until October 1991. It is now the tenth US nuclear power plant site to be released to the public.

About five acres (2 ha) of the former site is still under NRC regulation. That portion is the dry store of used nuclear fuel which awaits a permanent storage site.

It is currently American policy to develop a permanent geologic storage site for all the nation's used nuclear fuel within Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Detailed development of the facility, which would contain up to 70,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive wastes from power generation, industry and the USA's military nuclear programs, is still underway.

Although Yucca Mountain was originally envisaged to operate from 1998, progress has been rather disappointing and it is now thought that it could begin to accept shipments of used nuclear fuel from sites such as Yankee only in 2017. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is preparing documentation on the design of the store to be presented to NRC as part of a licence application expected in June 2008.

Further information

Yankee Nuclear Power Plant
http://www.yankeerowe.com/

WNA's Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities information paper
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf19.html

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 20, 2007

Reid says he will fight coal plant

By Mark Waite
PVT

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D.-Nev., said Wednesday he will fight to prevent a $3 billion, coal-fired power plant from being built in White Pine County and he urged utilities to invest in alternative power instead.

Reid made the comments during a town meeting Wednesday at the Bob Ruud Community Center.

The Senate leader from Searchlight focused on Nevada's role in achieving energy independence.

But attendees among the crowd of over 250 were able to get in questions about Iraq, Yucca Mountain, gas prices, Social Security and school prayer.

"I made the decision about a month ago that I could not stand by and let a White Pine County coal fire generating plant be built. Why? The first year this plant would be up, they would burn 7 million tons of coal in one year," Reid said. "Thirty-five miles below Searchlight we had the dirtiest plant in all of America, the Mojave Generating Facility -- 1,500 megawatts of power. We had polluted the Grand Canyon.

"It was a dirty plant, it was coal. It's closed and I'm glad."

"Let us spend a few billion developing what we have a lot of. We have a lot of sun, we have a lot of wind and we are the Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy," he said.

Reid said power companies haven't shown a willingness to buy alternative power. He said California only gets 1 percent of its electricity from coal.

The day of his speech, Reid said the U.S. will use 21 million barrels of oil, of which two-thirds is imported from overseas.

"The sooner we move toward the sun, the wind, geothermal, biomass, the better off we'll be, and we will never do it until we have a tax policy that gives people an incentive to invest in these industries because the big oil companies have controlled America.

"It has never been about energy. No one has been more supportive of the oil companies than this administration. Both Bush and Cheney made their fortunes in oil, and they have shown their gratitude by giving these oil companies everything they want," Reid said.

(Reid also said he will lend his support toward the effort to locate a federal detention facility in Pahrump. See the story on page A12.)

Two protesters held signs outside urging action to protect America's borders. Reid said his staff members suggested he talk about immigration, a major issue in Pahrump. Reid said he agrees with President Bush on few issues, but his immigration plan was one of them.

"Why are they here illegally? Because we have had a law that has not been enforced. We have a porous border, and we have employers who hire with impunity people who have improper papers," Reid said. "We're the only superpower left in the world. We should be able to control our borders."

The U.S. could follow Israel, which has detectors allowing border agents to quickly apprehend intruders, Reid said. He also spoke about supporting a $3.5 billion bill to help immigration officials better track people already in the country.

Reid said certain industries, like agriculture, need temporary guest workers. Legislation should be enacted, he said, to allow people like onion farmers in Lyon County to import guest workers.

The estimated 12 million people in the country illegally should be allowed to apply for citizenship, if they have a job, pay taxes, learn English, stay out of trouble and pay penalties and fines, he said.

Reid told another member of the audience he supports a national identity card that would be foolproof.

Some attendees were told Reid's office would look into their concerns. One was Gerald Homm, who complained Nellis Air Force Base was objecting to the height of a proposed 230-kilovolt transmission line around Mount Sterling.

"Valley Electric has been more cooperative than the other big company in Nevada," Reid said. "One of the things we need in Washington is to give tax incentives for alternative energy development."

Tax incentives for alternative energy have only been offered for a year or two., Reid said. "We need large sums of money invested so we need at least a 10-year tax package to allow people to come in and most of the time borrow money, invest money in these projects."

David Stevens called the local Desert View Regional Medical Center "a distribution center," complaining he still had to pay $12,000 for a helicopter medical evacuation. Reid said the federal government helped with the local hospital. But he added, "This is another issue we need to look at -- I have not had a report in many months with the hospital here in Pahrump." (Hospital CEO David Rencher abruptly resigned earlier this week -- see story on page A1.)

Reid told long-time Yucca Mountain critic Sally Devlin, "Yucca Mountain will never come to be."

(He said after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, "There's no way in the world we're going to allow the shipping of tens of thousands of tons of the most dangerous substances known to man across our highways and our railways, past our schools, our churches, our businesses, our towns -- we're not going to let it happen.")

Floyd Banks asked if Congress will make sure future intelligence reports don't lead us to another Iraq war. Reid said he was the first Democrat to announce publicly his support for the invasion, based on reports Saddam Hussein had biological, nuclear and chemical weapons.

"I was misled," Reid said. "I believe we should start redeploying troops within 90 days. I think by May 1st of this next year, our troops should be out of Iraq except for people who are trained in counterterrorism, training Iraqis and protecting our own assets there. That would be a much, much smaller force."

It's more important for Americans to build good relationships with the millions of people in impoverished countries that may sympathize with the few thousand terrorists, the senator said.

Reid told another audience member it was a myth the Social Security is going bankrupt. He called it "one of the ploys of President Bush" who wanted to privatize Social Security ever since he ran for Congress in 1977 and "doesn't like anything that has government fingertips on it."

To Kathleen Rowland, Reid said the U.S. is too stretched militarily to attack Iran. He suggested diplomatic relations, as occurred with North Korea, which was persuaded to shut down their nuclear facilities.

Finally, Cynthia Jones asked about school prayer.

"My wife was Jewish and as a little girl she was humiliated a number of times with Christian prayer in schools," Reid said. "I would hope that those people who believe that prayer is so important do it on their own and don't force our prayers on me."

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
August 20, 2007

Nuke doubts still at the core

By Bonnie Pfister
Tribune-Review

The renewed push for nuclear energy may be an economic boon to Western Pennsylvania, as reactor designer Westinghouse Electric Co. hires hundreds of high-end staffers. But for many people, serious doubts about the technology remain.

Reactors cost billions to construct and insure, with taxpayers picking up a large share of tab. They burn cleaner than coal-fired plants and with a smaller volume of waste, but issues surrounding transport and long-term storage of radioactive material remain unresolved. Some fear that terrorists could target domestic reactors -- or divert nuclear waste abroad for weapons. And fires and shutdowns last month in Japan and Germany underscore safety concerns about the reactors themselves.

A July 16 earthquake on Japan's western coast sparked a reactor transformer fire and leak of radioactive water. Officials say the 22-year-old facility may have been unknowingly been built atop an active seismic fault. Regulatory records show at least four other serious incidents worldwide, including a radiation release, since 2001: in Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden and Taiwan.

"Even in Japan, with a very mature nuclear industry, these problems exist," said Josh Dorner, spokesman for the Sierra Club. While some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear because of concerns about global warming, the Sierra Club remains opposed. Subsidies to U.S. companies help them expand abroad where, Dorner said, regulation is often lax and lines are more easily blurred between civilian and military uses of nuclear material.

"Imagine the kind of oversight you will have with, say, 50 new reactors in Africa, or in other less-stable parts of the world," he said.

Closer to home, the worst case of reactor corrosion on American soil came five years ago at a plant just 200 miles from Pittsburgh.

FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse plant near Toledo was closed for two years, through March 2004, after workers found boric acid had eaten through a nearly 7-inch carbon steel reactor cap. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that the radioactive steam could have burst through the remaining 1/2-inch stainless steel lining within as little as two months.

Instead of fully investigating whether leaking acid was causing underlying damage, FirstEnergy workers for years had simply cleaned up the leak as best they could during routine refueling shutdowns, said David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety program. The group does not oppose nuclear power, but monitors reactor safety. "But when it came time to restart the reactor they'd stop that job -- whether they were finished or not -- and start the thing back up."

FirstEnergy, which operates the twin-reactor Beaver Valley plant in Shippingport, was fined $5.45 million for failing to properly maintain the reactor head over several years, as well as $28 million for covering up the leak in its NRC reports. It spent more than $600 million to replace the lid, upgrade safety and replace power promised to the grid.

Spokesman Todd Schneider said safety is the top priority at all of the Akron, Ohio-based company's facilities.

"The bottom line is (Davis-Besse) shut down safely," Schneider said. "The reactors are built with redundant systems in place so that if something does occur, there is another system to back it up and shut the plant down safely, if needed."

The United States is home to 104 of the world's 439 nuclear reactors, and 20 percent of the nation's electricity comes from atomic energy. The last U.S. reactor was licensed in 1978 -- one year before a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg.

Storage of nuclear fuel is another concern. To date, spent nuclear fuel is cooled for at least five years in 40-foot pools of water at plant sites. After that time it may be stored in dry casks -- large steel and concrete containers that have been in use at 39 facilities, some for more than 20 years. That's because proposals from the 1980s to keep waste in a federal facility near Yucca Mountain about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas are stalled amid resistance by Nevadans, and others.

"Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania would be a major transportation route for nuclear waste -- by rail, by river, by all sorts of sources," said Dr. Daniel Fine, a retired kidney specialist from New Kensington and officer with the local chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Low levels of radiation can impair fertility and fetal growth, and lead to leukemia and other cancers, he said. High-level exposure can severely damage the immune system, bone marrow and brain, or cause death.

"From the public health perspective we view it as being both dirty and dangerous," Fine said. "There is no medical treatment for the effects of radiation, whether it's low-level or leaked."

Fine theorized that nuclear waste transports could become targets for terrorists. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, some elected officials have called for nuclear plants to be made aircraft-proof. But while reactors are designed with several feet of concrete around them, Lochbaum said control facilities, switchyards and emergency generators are far more lightly protected -- even in new plant designs.

Nuclear waste produced by overseas power plants could be attractive to those looking to build weapons of mass destruction. While President Jimmy Carter halted the reprocessing of nuclear waste domestically as an anti-proliferation move, agencies in Britain, France and Russia have continued reprocessing, said Judi Greenwald, director of Innovative Solutions at the Pew Center On Global Climate Change.

Reprocessing spent fuel reduces its radioactivity, easing storage and disposal, Greenwald said -- but it also makes it easier to strip out the weapons-grade plutonium for troubling uses. Citing reports of involvement by residents of Kazakhstan in black-market sales of nuclear technologies, four anti-proliferation groups are opposing the planned sale by Toshiba Corp. of 10 percent of Westinghouse to that nation's state-run energy company, expected to be completed in September.

"To some extent, people are more concerned in a post-9/11 world about this than they were before," Greenwald said. "I don't know the details of the controls in Kazakhstan, but I'm certainly among those who are nervous about reprocessing technology."

--Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.com or 412-320-7886.

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Workforce Management
August 19, 2007

A Credibility Project

Chastened by allegations of fabricated data, the Yucca Mountain Project introduces rigorous training for all employees, covering everything

Scientists working on the Yucca Mountain Project are learning more these days than how to safely dispose of radioactive nuclear waste. Since January, they have been trained and tested on tasks ranging from communication skills to the proper procedures for recording research data.

Refining these and other skills could come in handy should they need to testify before Congress and defend their research—a likely scenario when lawmakers hold hearings in 2008 on the future of Yucca Mountain.

Rather than sitting in classrooms, scientists receive training online via 20-minute modules that are followed by exercises in which they demonstrate applied knowledge of the information. Flash-animated and narrated PowerPoint demonstrations are used to drive home key points and make the material interesting.

Training is oriented around common procedures that scientists use on a daily basis, says Cheryl Ann Seminara, who in January was hired to lead organizational development initiatives for Yucca Mountain’s 625-person workforce, including about 400 research scientists.

"What we’re doing is training them not just on how to follow a procedure, but also the impact on the entire organization of not following those procedures," Seminara says.

Renewed focus on training corresponds to organizational change taking place at Yucca Mountain, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. Federal officials envision Yucca Mountain, situated about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a possible dump site for the nation’s nuclear waste. A congressional committee in October 2006 appointed Sandia National Laboratories, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to manage the Yucca Mountain Project, replacing Bechtel SAIC as prime contractor.

Rather than try to coordinate training remotely through the Albuquerque headquarters, Sandia officials decided to bring programs in-house. That necessitated creating training programs from the ground up, says Patrice Sanchez, the business operations manager for Sandia’s Yucca Mountain Project office.

Particularly challenging is the fact that all employees—from scientists to administrative support workers—are bound by certain procedures.

"We have some very unique requirements around procedures that we have to follow, particularly because all of our processes are auditable," Sanchez says.

For example, scientists are being trained to follow prescribed procedures when they make entries in scientific notebooks. Haphazard scribbling is out; instead, researchers have a long list of painstaking rules to follow.

Stipulations include what information can be written in page margins, whether accompanying documents may be affixed with staples or adhesive tape, how corrections are to be handled, how often the recorded work has to be reviewed by superiors, and a slew of other details.

"All of our data is recorded into scientific notebooks, and [the data] forms the basis for longer documents such as reports. Everything we do is based off that data," so failing to adhere to the procedure could cast doubt on the validity of the research, Seminara says.

Previously, training consisted of little more than scientists acknowledging that they had reviewed existing procedures, she says.

The need to improve training procedures was underscored in 2005 following allegations that some former Yucca Mountain scientists had fabricated their data. A Department of Energy report in March blamed upper management at Yucca Mountain for failing to hold workers accountable and neglecting to put effective reviews in place to ensure the integrity of the research being performed.

The new training initiatives are an attempt to address those concerns, Yucca Mountain officials say. Thus far, about eight programs have been developed, with a catalog of 30 training courses expected to be available by July, Seminara says. A committee comprising representatives from the training department, a manager and subject-matter experts is assigned to evaluate each new training initiative every six months, "to make sure it’s still applicable."

Scientists are performing tests and analyzing various scenarios in connection with a license application to be submitted this month to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Obtaining the license is required before the Energy Department can begin construction of the repository.

--Garry Kranz is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Virginia. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 19, 2007

Erin Neff: Reid feels heat from global warming

Despite what you might glean from the majority of writers in this section, the overwhelming majority of scientists and world leaders realize something must be done to try to lessen human-caused warming of the Earth.

Now that it's finally fashionable to wear green on your sleeves, and that the (compact fluorescent) lightbulb literally went on at Nevada Power marketing, it's politically OK for elected officials to stray into Sierra Club territory.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has accepted an invitation to join other Western mayors in a delegation to the United Kingdom next month to examine steps Great Britain has taken to reduce emissions.

Even "independent like Nevada" Harry Reid is joining the mix. Reid usually reaches out to the environmental community when he's up for re-election.

To be fair, Reid has his share of enviro bona fides -- voting against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and working procedural miracles to gut funding for the Department of Energy's planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

But the nation's top Democrat has taken his good ol' time acknowledging global warming as a political issue.

If the House and Senate can compromise on their different energy bills, you can be sure the finished product (which could contain both strict renewable portfolio standards for power companies and vastly increased mileage standards for car manufacturers) is likely to draw a presidential veto.

And while global warming is still trumped by the war in Iraq and health care as a national issue, it's near the point that Reid can't ignore it back home.

"I sat around, I believe, far too long and did nothing about it," Reid told Review-Journal business reporter John Edwards after an event in Pahrump last Wednesday. "I just couldn't in good conscience keep my mouth shut."

A lot of people have sat on their collective consciences for way too long.

Back in 1997, the state Legislature set a very modest portfolio standard goal for Sierra Pacific and Nevada Power. At the time, the hope was that 1 percent of the energy used by the state's two power companies would be derived from green sources such as wind, geothermal and solar.

The companies have complained each time lawmakers have increased the standard. And they don't just whine about it -- they fail to meet the requirements.

If you or I break a law, we'd suffer the consequences for our actions. When Nevada Power didn't meet the solar requirement, everyone just decided the law wasn't working.

Reid