Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, October 11, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, October 11, 2007
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Pahrump Valley Times
October 11, 2007

Yucca seeks to double nuke waste

They're Dreaming, Says Reid Of 150,000-Ton Plan

Special to The PVT

The Department of Energy is proposing doubling the size of a national nuclear waste repository it plans to build deep below an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert.

Citing ongoing production of waste at nuclear power plants around the country, the Energy Department has revealed plans to entomb almost 150,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.

Nevada's senators and a state official said Friday they doubt Congress would revise a law that caps the Yucca Mountain project at 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, and will balk at a price tag that now tops $77 billion.

"If they think they are going to get more money for an irresponsible plan to ship nuclear waste across the country and into Nevada's backyard, they're dreaming," Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state's chief anti-Yucca administrator, branded an environmental study outlining the proposal as "invalid and likely illegal.''

He said it went beyond Congressional authorization under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and sought exemptions from transportation regulations and hazardous waste laws.

The release of the environmental study, which triggers a 90-day public comment period, came as the Energy Department ramps up efforts to meet a self-imposed June 30 deadline to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to operate the repository in tunnels 1,000 feet below the desert surface.

On Thursday, project chief Edward F. "Ward" Sproat III, in testimony before the House Budget Committee, raised the projected cost of the project to more than $77 billion, or about 35 percent more than the $57.5 billion the Energy Department projected in 2001.

Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson in Las Vegas said the revised figure reflected an "update" of an environmental study that Congress relied upon in 2002 when it picked the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas to bury the nation's commercial, military and research nuclear waste.

"It reflects the new repository design," Benson said, calling it "prudent and wise" to analyze a larger repository to contain waste being generated by 121 reactors in 39 states.

The federal government is mandated by law to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste, and the Energy Department was supposed to open the Nevada site by 1998. But the Yucca Mountain project has been slowed by lawsuits, quality control concerns and funding shortfalls.

Project officials have pushed back the target date for opening to 2017 or later.

Nevada's congressional delegation is united in opposition to the project, and Tory Mazzola, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., called passage of any bill increasing the storage limit "unlikely.''

"This is just another example of DOE's attempt to move this project forward, but objective observers aren't so sure," Mazzola said.

The environmental study makes crucial projections on radiation emissions, and airs plans for transporting and burying waste that scientists say will remain radioactive for millions of years.

The study predicts "no adverse health effects to individuals" from radiation levels of up to 0.24 millirem per year measured 11 miles from the site for the first 10,000 years and no more than 2.3 millirem per year after 10,000 years.

By comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure.

The projected emissions would be well below a standard proposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency after a federal court in 2004 threw out an earlier radiation standard.

The study calls for utilities operating nuclear power plants to be responsible for loading and sealing waste "transport, aging and disposal" canisters at sites in 39 states around the country. The canisters would be shipped by rail and remain sealed during handling and entombment at Yucca Mountain.

Another environmental study issued Thursday identifies the so-called "Caliente Corridor" as the preferred route across Nevada for the Energy Department to build a railroad to the Yucca Mountain site.

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Pahrump Valley Times
October 11, 2007

Letters to the Editor

Vacation for Gary

Gary Hollis completed his fact finding trip for the Department of Energy. How thrilling.

The rooms only cost $264 per night. Not to worry, it was "Nuclear Waste Oversight Money." I think another term for that is taxpayer funded. Your tax money at work to give Gary another vacation. If Yucca Mountain Repository ever gets up and running it will be the greatest disaster that this country has ever seen. Nobody in the DOE ever reads the reports of railroad accidents. If it was so safe to ship this poison across our country, I would suggest that they build a landing strip at Yucca and fly it in. The inspection group should have gone to France and observed the four mile long nuclear waste recycling facility instead of looking at another hole in the ground that's predestined to poison the environment. You must remember though, recycling is more expensive that burying and the Department of Energy is extremely cautious how they spend our taxes. Like sending county commissioners around the world. Hollis said that as congressional delegation is working against Yucca Mountain. Isn't it strange that the US Congress is against it and our county commissioner is for its support?

I wonder, if and when the Pahrump Valley gets incorporated, who will get the Focus Group funding behind their mayoral campaign, Peter or Gary?

Richard A. Brown

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PowerNews
October 11, 2007

Soaring Yucca costs may prompt fee hike request

The head of the DOE’s Yucca Mountain program has revealed that the full cost of the troubled nuclear waste disposal project appears to be 35% higher than most recently thought and that—in a proposal that utilities and state regulators would loathe—the DOE may soon recommend a hike on surcharges that nuclear ratepayers pay to fund Yucca.

After a House Budget Committee hearing that produced lots of fresh information about the stalled project, Ward Sproat, director of the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told reporters that projected costs for the underground repository in Nevada are soaring.

That is because the energy department will have to store 25% more spent nuclear fuel at Yucca than previously expected, Sproat told reporters, noting that reactors are operating for longer periods of time and at higher output than contemplated when the DOE estimated costs in 2001.

Although the DOE is still crunching cost numbers, Sproat indicated that the department now thinks Yucca’s lifetime costs will be $75.6 billion, dating back to 1983—when analysis of the Nevada repository site began—and running through construction, operation, and closure of the repository.

“The costs are about 35% higher than they were in 2001,” when the DOE estimated a life cycle cost of $56 billion, Sproat said.

That is only the latest price increase for a project that was initially intended to open in 1998 as a permanent disposal site for spent commercial nuclear fuel and defense- related nuclear waste.

Sproat now says that Yucca could open as soon as 2017, but that 2020 or 2021 is more likely.

And in order to stay on track for those targets, Sproat floated the possibility of a funding mechanism change that most utilities, ratepayers, and state regulators would likely strongly oppose: raising surcharges paid by nuclear ratepayers into the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF), a pot of money legally intended for use in developing Yucca. Ratepayers currently pay 1 mil, or one-tenth of penny, on each kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity they use.

The NWF has long frustrated the DOE, the nuclear industry, and ratepayer groups because Congress has spent the fund—which now stands at nearly $20 billion—on projects other than Yucca.

For years the DOE has tried and failed to shepherd legislation through Congress that would have improved its access to NWF monies.

Based on the belief that federal appropriators will be particularly loathe to provide access to the existing $20 billion in the NWF, or to the interest earned on the fund, the DOE has recently focused on getting access only to the NWF’s cash intake, which is $750 million to $800 million annually.

But Sproat suggested that may not be enough, and that if the DOE has to rely on that funding source, ratepayers would have to pay more for Yucca to get adequate monies.

“Funding from the annual Nuclear Waste Fund fees alone at the current 1 mil per kilowatt hour level will not be sufficient to fund the program,” Sproat said, adding that the DOE will “address the program’s funding needs in the context of developing the president’s annual budget.”

The hearing also focused not just on the costs of developing Yucca but also on the growing costs faced by the federal government as a result of the repository’s delay, including damages the DOE owes utilities for breaching contracts to begin picking up utilities’ spent fuel in 1998 for disposal at the repository.

In the latest of those cases, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington last week awarded Minneapolis-based Northern States Power $116 million to cover the utility’s costs of managing waste from its Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants between 1998 and 2004.

That is somewhat more than courts have awarded other nuclear utilities for comparable time periods because Northern States faced unusual state compliance costs to continue storing nuclear waste in Minnesota, including requirements that the utility fund state renewable and efficiency efforts.

Overall, the DOE’s liability to utilities “currently stands at $710 million,” from eight judgments in favor of the utilities and seven settlements, according to testimony from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz of the Justice Department.

Fifty utility lawsuits are still in the courts and have not been ruled upon; two more have been ruled upon but could still be appealed, Hertz said.

Hertz said the DOE estimates a total liability of about $7 billion, based on the highly optimistic assumption that Yucca will open in 2017. Hertz also cited industry estimates that utility claims will reach $50 billion, although it is unclear what time period that covers.

The courts have generally limited utility lawsuits to cover the periods between 1998 and the time that each lawsuit was filed. As a result, utilities are expected to file a second round of lawsuits, to cover the subsequent period of time in which utilities bore additional spent fuel management costs.

The first of the second round of suits came in August, when Xcel Energy filed to recover spent fuel management costs between 2004 and 2007.

Although the DOE has fared poorly in courts in the utility breach-of-contract cases, Hertz pointed out in written testimony a few “major” issues before appeals courts that could trim the DOE’s financial exposure.

For instance, he noted that courts have yet to reach a final conclusion on whether the energy department could invoke a clause in its contracts with the utilities that would give it some relief if performance delays were “unavoidable.”

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BBC News
October 11, 2007

US eyes boom in nuclear reactors

By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News, Washington

Almost three decades have passed since the last application was filed to build a new nuclear reactor in the US. Now, up to 30 are expected in the next three years.

As time has passed, memories have faded of the 1979 radioactive leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that threw the US nuclear industry into disarray.

Meanwhile, energy security concerns and worries about climate change have reshaped the debate, and financial incentives and a new licensing process have altered the economics.

The first full application for two new reactors, in southern Texas, was submitted at the end of September.

Another four are due by the end of the year and a dozen in 2008, many in south-eastern states, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said.

The earliest could be in operation by 2015.

A range of factors is fuelling the renewed enthusiasm:

* The introduction of a new fast-track combined construction and operation permit, making new reactors easier and cheaper to build

* A tax credit, introduced in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 6,000 megawatts generated by nuclear plants

* Risk insurance adding up to $2bn for the first six plants to be built, protecting companies against the cost of delays in construction

* Multi-billion-dollar loan guarantees

* A likelihood that the cost of emitting CO2 will rise as the battle against climate change intensifies

* But the impending flood of applications is fuelling a new row over whether nuclear power represents a bold step to address 21st Century needs or a mistaken return to flawed 20th Century technology.

'Reliable source'

Supporters say new reactors are the only way to meet a projected 40% increase in US electricity demand by 2030 - a result of the country's growing population.

"Our country needs the electricity and it needs clean sources of electricity that are reliable - and that's exactly what nuclear energy is," says Steve Kerekes, spokesman for industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).

Thanks to improvements in efficiency, 104 reactors across 31 states already produce 20% of the nation's total electricity supply, he points out.

The NEI also argues that nuclear power is cleaner than gas and coal-fired plants and says studies show that over a nuclear plant's life-cycle - including construction and the mining of uranium ore - its greenhouse gas emissions are comparable to those of wind and hydro power.

"We wouldn't pretend for a second that we should be 100% of our energy supply going forward - but there is a role for us to play in a diversified energy supply that includes renewables, coal and nuclear," says Mr Kerekes.

'Massive subsidies'

However, others dispute this.

"It is absolutely not a clean energy source," says Tyson Slocum, director of energy policy for public interest group Public Citizen.

"Does it produce less greenhouse gas emissions than coal or gas? Yes.

"But it produces waste potentially more problematic not only from the mining aspect but from the high-level radioactive waste that a commercial nuclear reactor is going to produce."

Mr Slocum says the industry's apparent renaissance is due very largely to "massive - you could say unprecedented - federal subsidies".

"If you had a programme like this for wind and solar, wind and solar would be the biggest energy sources in the next 20 years," he said.

Security risk?

The question of how nuclear waste is stored is already a controversial issue in the US.

A planned national repository for spent fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has run into sustained opposition from some local lawmakers, including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The government is due to submit an application to the NRC to start construction at the site by 30 June next year. But while it is scheduled to open before 2020, it could still be delayed or blocked altogether.

In the meantime, nuclear waste will continue to be stored on site at power plants.

Critics argue that this inevitably increases the risk that plants will become a terror target, despite steps to give nuclear facilities extra protection after 9/11.

Local fight

Public reaction to the planned expansion in reactors has so far been fairly muted.

Opponents say that is because the nuclear lobby has exploited concerns over climate change.

But the NEI points to evidence that people living near existing plants are more strongly in favour of nuclear power than the general public.

At least one proposal has sparked local opposition, however.

This is a bid by US energy firm Constellation, in partnership with France's EDF, to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland - the companies filed a partial application in July and are due to file the rest of the paperwork early next year.

In June, Green Party activist Steve Warner founded the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition to fight the plan, bringing together local people, environmental and public interest groups.

He argues the addition of a new reactor, generating as much power as the two already at Calvert Cliffs, will push combined radioactive emissions above safe levels.

Of particular concern to the campaigners is whether the reactor could have an impact on the marine wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay, known for its blue crabs.

The project has been backed by the Calvert County authorities because it promises to create 700 jobs, but the coalition hopes to persuade the state legislature to oppose it.

"The main focus is to not build any more reactors until we resolve the waste issues and get some reasonable assurance of how they monitor the emissions," Mr Warner said.

"We would really like to see other forms of energy investigated."

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ZDNet
October 11, 2007

The public face of nuclear power in the U.S.

By Michael Kanellos

It's probably one of the toughest talking gigs in the country. As CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, retired Navy Adm. Frank Bowman serves as the public face for the U.S. nuclear industry.

Although nuclear power is gaining in popularity, it remains extremely controversial. To get the industry's view across, Bowman speaks regularly at governors' conferences and local public forums.

He's also well versed in the subject. He served as the director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program and was responsible for operation of more than 100 reactors controlled by the Navy. Currently, he also serves on the board of directors for Morgan Stanley Funds, on the BP America Advisory Council, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear Engineering Visiting Committee and other organizations. In 2006, Bowman was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

CNET News.com recently sat down with him to discuss nuclear energy's future.

Q: Can you give us a snapshot of the U.S. nuclear power industry?
Bowman: Sure. There are 104 nuclear reactor plants in this country on the commercial side--there are also 103 Navy nuclear power plants too, by the way. Of the 104 commercial plants, 69 of them are the so-called pressurized water reactor version and 35 are boiling water reactors. They're scattered around on 64 different sites, so many sites have two or three reactors.

What is driving the resurgence in interest in nuclear?

Bowman: It's is a confluence of factors. There are important leaders in the country who used to think that there was no room for nuclear who are now realizing that in this era of climate change, global warming and greenhouse gas concerns, nuclear does in fact deserve a seat at the table.

There is concern about the very high volatility of natural gas prices in this country, the recognition that nuclear is operating safely and productively, the fact that we are looking for energy security.

I won't use the word energy independence because I don't think the country will ever really get to energy independence, but secure is a different matter. The fuel necessary for nuclear generation comes either domestically or from friends like Canada, Australia--not exactly the same group of people that provide (fossil fuels).

This is not an all-in love affair. They all have, not all, but many have legitimate concerns. And it's my position that we (the nuclear power industry) owe it to these people who have devoted their entire careers to public service, or to ordinary citizens who are concerned about these issues, to talk to them factually, adult to adult, and not be arrogant about it.

Was attitude a problem in the past?

Bowman: I think to a certain extent. After Three Mile Island happened, there was a tendency to sort of want to dive into the fox holes. I think we are taking a more serious effort in addressing peoples' concerns.

Has the performance of nuclear plants improved? In the past, uptime and other factors were problems?

Bowman: Beginning about 15 years ago there was a major, major upswing in key performance indicators of safety and capacity factors. Capacity has to do with the total amount of electricity generated divided by the total amount of electricity that could be generated if the plant were online 24/7. That number went from like 75 percent 15 years ago to 90 percent today.

Also, we're very proud of the safety record, but at the same time we realize that we have to keep our eye on the ball and that complacency is a bad thing. As soon as we start being proud of ourselves, danger lurks around the next corner.

What are some of the safety precautions?

Bowman: We insist on the highest possible quality in all the components. We insist on the very best of people to hire and then we train them to the zenith. We test their qualifications periodically. We then have a very stringent and tough regulator in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that does day-to-day kinds of inspections and then full-blown inspections twice at each reactor.

The plant sites have at least two resident inspectors. Some have as many as four, but these resident inspectors can come in the plant anytime they want to. This regulatory agency, unlike other regulatory agencies in the other sectors in this country, has the authority to shut down operations, to fine the plants.

Layered on top of Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the industry-initiated group called the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. INPO inspects (a single plant) once every two years and when they finish a very detailed two-week inspection, the report goes not just to the plant operators, but to the chief executive officer of the organization and if there's a holding company involved, it goes all the way to the chairman of the holding company and then subsequently to the group of CEOs in INPO. They share data, they share lessons learned. It's a very open transparent situation even though there is some competition among some of these folks.

The idea then is that if there is one shaky member...

Bowman: An accident anywhere is an accident anywhere. That is sort of the mantra.

Let's look at cost for a moment. Some people claim that nuclear is the only form of energy that goes up, rather than down, over time.

Bowman: That's wrong. I'm not suggesting that nuclear is cheaper as time goes on, but neither are others. In fact, they're all on a very sharp up ramp because of shortages of commodities like concrete and steel. Human capital, too. I read recently about a coal plant where the cost escalated by a factor of two because of a queue for commodities.

The idea now is to complete the doggone design, lock it in concrete, standardize the design for that type of plant, and then go build it. Now you get on a learning curve so that by the time you are on the fourth or fifth type of plant, there are no more change orders.

Secondly, the cost of nuclear will come down because we're going to steal ideas from my nuclear neighbors in the Navy. We are now building submarines and aircraft carriers in the most modular fashion you can imagine to the point where submarines are done in hull segments. Workers can go into those hull rings and install the piping components and weld standing up in a straight position rather than upside down or hanging on monkey bars. That has saved us enormous amounts of money in the submarine business and we intend to employ that same kind of logic in building these new nuclear plants.

Assuming the new applications come in, when will we see the first new plants in this country?

Bowman: There are 17 companies that are supposed to have signaled intent to the NRC to file a Combined Construction and Operating License (COLR). We would expect a minimum of four of those applications this calendar year (one has been filed since the interview) and as many as seven. We would expect somewhere around eight next year.

The NRC has recently declared that they will allow themselves 60 days to accept the application. They want a 60-day review to make sure it's all there before the clock starts ticking. They have essentially declared that they will adjudicate in 36 months to 42 months. So, if you start in 2008 and add three years, 2011, for the COL license to be approved and then add four years for construction--I think it'll be little less--then you're up to 2015 or so, so I think we could be online with the first of these new plants in 2015, 2016.

But you have to be careful because there's no question people are going to watch very closely how the first group goes. If they go well, it's going to be here come a whole bunch more. If they go poorly, people are going to pull their cards and hold them closer to their chests and hold back until the bugs are worked out of the system.

Do we have the expertise? In the 1960s and 1970s, there were certainly a lot of nuclear engineers, but fewer and fewer people have gone into it since then.

Bowman: Two years ago we recognized that there was a graying of our industry and we started doing some things to mitigate the possible fallout of not having sufficient manpower. For example, we formed a Center for Energy Workforce Development. It's a group of industry people across all energy sectors--oil and gas is involved, renewables are involved. We're trying to highlight to educators in this country that energy is a viable vocation for kids. Additionally, individual utilities have entered partnerships with community colleges in their areas. We're seeing dramatic increases in enrollment in nuclear engineering.

It's risen to the level of attention of the governors. A few weeks ago in Biloxi, Mississippi, I met with the Southern Governors' Association to talk about exactly this issue of workforce. They asked me, "What can we do for you? What are we missing? How can we help?" Well, some of the answers were easy. You encourage these partnerships. I'm talking about these community college utility partnerships where utilities pay certain expenses and the students come back and work.

One of the things I suggested was, all of us cringe when we hear about dropouts, we don't like that. So what are we doing to have dropouts drop back in? Maybe an idea would be to establish something like a co-op program that we use today in some colleges where you go to school for a semester and you work for a semester. Maybe that would appeal to some of these youngsters in high school who have dropped out. Another idea was, "why are we allowing able-bodied men and women of age 55 to retire? If they have the skills that we need, let's go talk to them about it and let's incentivize them."

How about disposal? I grew up in Nevada. I am familiar with the Yucca Mountain and, it kind of looks like it is stuck in neutral.

Bowman: Well it is, and we recognized that also a couple of years ago, and we began thinking, "Shouldn't we take Yucca Mountain and move it off the critical path. Is there another approach that we've been missing, because we have been so Yucca-centric?"

Congress asks frequently, "Why does France recycle their used nuclear fuel and reduce the volume of stuff that has to be buried?" The story is that France, U.K., Russia, and Japan use a process that we invented in this country called "PUREX," which stands for plutonium uranium extraction. We devised that method at the beginning of the Cold War as a means to build nuclear weapons. Gerry Ford came along and said, "We got enough plutonium, we got enough nuclear weapons, we'll stop doing this--and if we stop, maybe we can stop the rest of the world. It's the right thing to do." Jimmy Carter often gets blame or the credit for this, depending upon the camp you're in, but it was really Gerry Ford.

We haven't processed since then. But remember: this process by its very nature has plutonium coming out at one end of the pipeline. Well, that's a terrorist's dream. They have the technology, they just don't have the material. So we don't want to go that way, but that doesn't rule out the goodness of recycling. It rules out a method.

So somebody then said, "What if we come up with a laboratory scale way to reprocess partially used fuels and chemically bond that plutonium to the really nasty stuff that's in here--the long lived radio nuclei that are there forever and generate a lot of heat--and make it unappealing to the terrorists?" That is, it would kill them if they came out and tried to take it. If we could do that, that would be good in and of itself because that would give us access to all of this uranium we're not using, that in the old way we would just stick in the Yucca Mountain and leave there.

What if we go to the next step now and take that bound up plutonium and make fuel out of that? Now you reduce by orders of huge magnitudes the volume, the heat load and the radio toxicity of the stuff that has to go into an ultimate geological repository. The old way leaves 95 percent of the energy content in the fuel rods that would go into a Yucca Mountain.

How far along is this process?

Bowman: Some of it has been demonstrated. Not building the fuel but separating plutonium and chemically pinning it to other stuff--that has been done at the laboratory scale. The Department of Energy picked up this ball and started running with it and asked for communities to volunteer--unlike Nevada that didn't get a choice in that matter--to participate in developing this, which is a $30 billion R &D project. The used fuel would have to be positioned in these communities in the interim until the new process is ready to go.

Sixteen communities across this country raised their hands and showed interest. The DOE energy department picked 13 of them, and each got $1 million to develop a program to show how it makes sense there.

Do we still need a deep geological in-ground repository? Yes, because you can't make it go to zero. But we've moved the need for Yucca Mountain way the hell downstream if this is successful, and we've moved the volume requirements and the capacity requirements and the requirements of the earth to absorb this toxic waste.

How about proliferation?

Let me put my old Navy admiral hat back on again. I'm also interested in the global aspects of this. I'm not particularly happy that Iran is flirting around with developing nuclear weapons capability or some other country yet to be named. The Bush administration--good idea--has talked about guaranteeing fledging countries low enriched uranium so they won't be forced to develop an enrichment capability that could be turned into a bomb producing capability. If you can enrich to 3 percent, which is all a commercial plant requires, you can keep on going and enrich to 93 percent. Then you have bomb materials in the front end. If there's a global pool overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, there's no incentive to develop enrichment on the front end.

Now, to prevent the countries from being extended to develop reprocessing on the back end, the rest of the agreement would be that these countries give us back the old fuel and we'll take it home and reprocess it by ourselves.

What's the reaction then overseas?

Bowman: Reasonably positive. The investment costs of getting nuclear started in a country that doesn't have it today are enormous, they're too big to swallow, they're overwhelming, so it's not even on the radar screen.

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Hanford News
October 11, 2007

Hanford briefs

Nuclear society group to review Yucca Mountain

An update on the status of Yucca Mountain, Nev., is planned at the Tuesday meeting of the Eastern Washington Section of the American Nuclear Society.

Abraham Van Luik, Department of Energy senior policy adviser on the project, will speak. Yucca Mountain is being built as the nation's repository for spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants and high-level radioactive waste, including waste glassifed at Hanford's vitrification plant. Van Luik will speak at 7 p.m. at the Shilo Inn, Richland. The talk is free but the social hour and dinner at 6 p.m. is $22. Dinner reservations should be made by 4 p.m. Friday by calling 376-3162.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 10, 2007

Letter: DOE's ambitions could kill Yucca

To the editor:

So, the Energy Department wants to double the storage capacity at Yucca Mountain (Review-Journal, Friday). How can you double the capacity of something you haven't got?

The DOE hasn't yet obtained approval to build a repository at Yucca Mountain and is already asking Congress to double the capacity. Doesn't that nullify the Environmental Impact Statement for the 70,000 metric-ton facility?

Actually, the DOE might have just shot itself in the foot. Interest in the repository is waning on Capitol Hill anyway, and the thought of doubling the size and doubling the expense will drive the last nails in the facility's coffin.

Ron Bourgoin
Rocky Mount, N.C.

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Las Vegas SUN
October 10, 2007

Craig Walton: 1934 - 2007

UNLV professor was 'voice of ethics'

By Mary Manning
Las Vegas Sun

Craig Walton, UNLV's emeritus ethics professor and president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, praised Secretary of State Ross Miller's decision in March to learn more about a legal defense fund set up for Gov. Jim Gibbons.

The governor had failed to report $169,000 the fund collected last year on his Jan. 16 financial disclosure, and Miller wanted to know why.

"It ought to be wide open and out in the public view," Walton said. "Everybody is well served by an open process, including the governor."

Walton thought ethics courses at all levels of education could help people end corruption among public officials, whether it was county commissioners trading votes for money or judges seeming to play favorites in the courtroom.

Walton, 72, died Monday from complications of surgery at a local hospital, his family said.

Jim Rogers, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education and Walton's longtime friend, said Walton was the voice of ethics in Nevada.

"He was a stickler for what was right and wrong. He was concerned about his community," Rogers said.

In October 1984 Walton began planning the Institute for Ethics and Policy Studies at UNLV, which opened two years later.

Before his retirement in 2004, he pushed to incorporate ethics throughout UNLV's curriculum and continued to work on developing a training program for K-12 teachers to help them address ethics in the classroom.

An international scholar on the philosophy of David Hume and Thomas Hobbes, Walton taught at UNLV for 33 years.

He stridently opposed the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump and championed public lands for public use.

Walton, who was born on Dec. 6, 1934, in Los Angeles and was an Air Force navigator, earned his doctorate in philosophy at Claremont (Calif.) Graduate University in 1965. He taught philosophy at the University of Southern California and Northern Illinois University before arriving at UNLV in 1976. In 1988 UNLV awarded him the Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award.

Walton used his own hands to build a home in Las Vegas and a cabin in southwestern Utah.

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Oct. 27 at Lamb of God Lutheran Church, 6220 N. Jones Blvd. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Davis Funeral Home and Memorial Park on Eastern Avenue.

Walton is survived by his wife, Vera; children Matthew Andersen of Flagstaff, Ariz., and Ruth Devlin, Peter Andersen, Richard Walton, Ben Andersen and Kerry Livengood, all of Las Vegas; and nine grandchildren.

--Mary Manning can be reached at 259-4065 or at manning@lasvegassun.com .

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Deseret News
October 10, 2007

Yucca Mountain is a loser

Deseret Morning News editorial

Leave it to Washington bureaucrats to look at the momentum building toward the construction of more nuclear power plants and see only one solution — doubling the size of the proposed repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

They might as well propose the construction of a perpetual-motion machine.

In truth, the only thing in the world that seems to generate its own perpetual motion is the political debate over Yucca Mountain, which already is nearly a decade past its scheduled opening date. The projected price tag recently shot up to $77 billion. That's real money, even for the U.S. government, and especially during a time of war.

Oh yes, and that fellow from Nevada, Harry Reid, remains the Senate majority leader, and he hates the idea. That makes final congressional approval of Yucca about as likely as seeing a unicorn leap through the halls on Capitol Hill. Even in this Halloween season, no one will be able to conjure up that kind of trick, regardless of the treat.

The answer, of course, is for Congress to provide some sort of incentive toward the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods. Only then will nuclear power, already the safest and cleanest of all viable energy sources, be embraceable. The Yucca option has so many downsides, from the need to transport highly radioactive waste nationwide to prohibitive costs and a never-ending need for more space, that it isn't likely ever to open for business; nor should it.

The momentum toward nuclear energy is unmistakable. At the moment, it is felt most in China, India and Russia, where new plants are being considered. Already, the price of uranium has soared to levels approaching those of the mid-1970s. Here in Utah, old claims are being reopened. Uranium mines once again hold the promise of making a few people quite rich.

Despite the cries of environmentalists, a lot of people realize that nuclear power is a way to generate a great deal of affordable energy without contributing to global warming. Other clean alternatives, such as solar or wind-generated power, have not yet developed to the point where they are viable.

But if the spent fuel rods generated by nuclear plants were reprocessed, the amount of waste requiring long-term storage would be greatly reduced. Likewise the amount of energy generated by endless debates in Washington over whether to spend billions on Yucca Mountain.

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Salem Statesman Journal
October 10, 2007

Commentary

Former interior secretary on mission to preserve public lands

By Diana Marrero
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has joined actor Edward Norton and other land conservationists on a campaign to protect wild and scenic lands out West.

The two recently announced creation of the National Conservation System Foundation to raise awareness of the threats facing these lands and ways people can help shield them from destruction.

Babbitt, who worked to get these lands designated as conservation areas under former President Clinton, recently spoke with Gannett News Service about protecting 26 million acres of national monuments, historic trails and wilderness areas that dot the West. He also answers questions about global warming and the environment.

Question: What are some of the biggest threats to public lands today?

Answer: The reckless process by which lands are being opened up to marginal oil and gas development. The oil and gas prospecting is taking place in a lot of very inappropriate places.

Q: What about threats to lands within the National Landscape Conservation System?

A: The leasing of lands in some of the archaeologically sensitive areas. It’s just tragic to see the threats and the destruction of really fabulous cliff dwellings, Anasazi ruins.

The lands in the system generally call for management plans in which these decisions are made and evaluated. Many of the plans are very inadequate. The control of off-road vehicles is a major issue in all of these plans. They can be terribly destructive of archaeological resources, of biological resources.

Q: Why should Americans care about protecting these lands?

A: That’s like asking a Frenchman why should we protect Notre Dame Cathedral. America’s cathedrals and America’s heritage are our national landscape. That’s our heritage.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish through the foundation.

A: The really important piece now ... is getting public support to work with local communities. The West is urbanizing so fast. People see the changes, the demands on the land. They’re really now starting to think we could wind up destroying the very values that brought us here in the first place, that make this such a distinctive area.

How we move to protect these landscapes is complex. Therefore, we really need a strong, vigorous dialogue at the local and state level.

Q: What are your favorite national monuments or wilderness areas?

A: I would say that my two favorites are the Missouri River Breaks and the Vermillion Cliffs.

The Missouri Breaks is where I made friends with Steve Ambrose. He wrote a fabulous book about Lewis and Clark, “Undaunted Courage.” We spent time together on the river. It was so awesome to be drifting through the White cliffs in a canoe with Steve Ambrose reading aloud the journals of Lewis and Clark as they floated through the breaks.

The Vermillion Cliffs are right in my own back yard. It is a true desert landscape. You can stand up there and can look for 100 miles in every direction. There’s a sense of openness and space.

Q: How would you characterize the state of the nation’s environmental protections?

A: This administration has been reckless in the way it’s gone about reducing protections for public lands, opening them up to road building, timber cutting and drilling for oil and gas. What is really interesting as this administration comes to an end ... there’s really a flowering at the grass roots in reaction to this policy in Washington.

Q: What should be done about global warming?

A: It is the most urgent problem of our time. We must have an international treaty to reduce emissions in carbon dioxide. Once we have the next presidential election, it will happen. Washington is not responding but out in the American land, people understand this. We must have a mandatory emission control.

Q: Should the U.S. continue its effort to develop a nuclear repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., given this renewed interest in developing nuclear energy?

A: We need a repository system irrespective of what we do with nuclear energy. We have to gather it together and store it. I think Yucca Mountain is the most obvious choice. We’ve been at it for 20 years.

--Contact reporter Diana Marrero at dmarrero@gns.gannett.com.

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Charlotte Observer
October 10, 2007

2 groups oppose plan to send more plutonium to S.C.

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. --Two groups that oppose an Energy Department plan to send more plutonium to South Carolina for processing have filed a petition with a federal licensing board, hoping to halt construction of a plant at the Savannah River nuclear complex.

The Energy Department said last month it plans to send plutonium in Washington state and at research laboratories in New Mexico and California to the Savannah River complex near Aiken to improve security and reduce storage costs.

The plan calls for the plutonium to be either converted into a mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, for use at commercial nuclear power plants or be encased in glass logs for eventual transfer to the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository being planned in Nevada.

MOX plant construction began Aug. 1.

The groups against the proposal, Nuclear Watch South and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, said the new plans should require the MOX plant to be redesigned. That would in turn require more environmental studies, the groups said.

Federal officials disagreed.

"We are disappointed that this group continues to make frivolous and unsupported claims about this important nonproliferation project that will not only get rid of nuclear waste material but also bring local jobs to the community," said Julianne Smith, a spokeswoman for National Nuclear Security Administration, which is overseeing the MOX facility construction.

About 400 people are building the facility, which is expected to employ about 800 when it opens in 2016.

The plant still needs an operating license, which is under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

Nuclear Watch South and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League filed the petition with the licensing board Friday hoping to stop construction, said Nuclear Watch coordinator Glenn Carroll.

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Wilkes Barre Times-Leader
October 10, 2007

Energy conserving/educating touted

Public’s involvement is key, say state industry workers.

By Rory Sweeney
rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

SALEM TWP. – Forget ethanol; forget the nuclear renaissance; forget renewable technologies, like wind and solar.

Yes, according to industry members, they’re all well on their way in Pennsylvania, but the lowest of the low-hanging fruits on the future-of-energy tree are things most consumers ignore: education, energy efficiency and conservation.

Addressing 11 members of the state House Republican Policy Committee during a discussion on energy Tuesday, industry workers touted their respective sectors, but several also noted people can easily save energy and money by using efficient appliances and vehicles with electric motors.

“We also need more in the way of demonstration and consumer education,” said Dennis Buffington, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State.

“I think that’s the biggest problem we have today,” concurred Rep. Stan Saylor, R-York, who co-chaired the meeting with Rep. Karen Boback, R-Harveys Lake.

The meeting was held at the visitors’ center for the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant, which was apt because nuclear represents much of the power industry’s recent past in Pennsylvania and stands to play a dominant role in its future.

Nuclear accounts for 21 percent of the state’s production capacity, but produces 35 percent of its electricity, according to Doug Biden of the Electric Power Generation Association. In conjunction with coal, nine reactors at five nuclear plants – about 9,229 megawatts of capacity – create the state’s power-generation backbone.

That makes Pennsylvania second nationally in nuclear capacity only to Illinois’ 11,379 megawatts, third in total generation to Texas and Florida and first in net exportation of electricity – 70 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, Biden said.

And while companies like PPL are considering increasing their nuclear capacity, that could die quickly if legislators stick their noses into the market system.

“A key component is regulatory certainty,” including predictable costs and schedules, said Bryce Shriver, who heads PPL’s nuclear arm. “If we would enact legislation that would return to rate caps, it’s very unlikely that PPL would proceed with additional nuclear capacity.”

Even if nuclear capacity were to be increased, another problem would be finding trade-workers to build plants and qualified engineers to run them, according to Jack Brenizer, who chairs the nuclear engineering program at Penn State. “Most of us in the industry are very concerned about manpower,” he said.

Just 324 nuclear engineers graduated in 2006, and half of them entered grad school rather than the work force.

Though renewables account for 6 percent of the state’s capacity and generate just 3 percent of its energy, according to Biden, wind is the fastest-growing energy resource.

Renewable energy is now “big business,” said Eric Thumma of Iberdrola Renewable Energies USA, a subsidiary of the Spanish-owned wind utility. Pennsylvania is “well positioned” to lead because it has some wind resources and is close to high-demand areas.

While barely on the industry’s radar, “there’s just no comparison” in the energy production ratio between ethanol from corn and that from fodder beets, said Sweet Valley farmer LaRue Sutliff. He would know – he spent years gaining a federal grant in the early 1980s, only to see a petroleum price-drop make his idea unviable. Still, he enjoyed Boback’s support.

“She’s got her heels dug in on this, and I appreciate that,” he said. “The waste you don’t have to worry about storing in Yucca Mountain. You store it in the belly of that cattle” and after that, onto fields.”

On the business side, the state should provide matching funds for start-ups that raise $1 million, suggested John Nikoloff of the Pennsylvania Energy Resources Group, a clean-energy consulting firm. They could also use a distribution system to match the ramped-up production, including a targeted rail program, he said. “Every six months’ delay means other states are going to start attracting these companies,” he said.

While Nikoloff mentioned returning to wood-burning stoves, Scott Singer, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, suggested burning pelletized biomass instead. It would keep native grasses and soils on fields, reduce oil dependency, eliminate the low-density problem inherent in transporting plant matter and give farmers a way to add value to products.

“That improves the rural economic greatly,” he said. “This will come in as a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels.”

However, he warned that pelletizing the residual waste from corn production could cause soil erosion and water pollution.

--Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 09, 2007

'Lapse' caused rolling tanker

Officials discuss train incident

By Lisa Kim Bach
Review-Journal

A runaway train tanker loaded with enough chlorine gas to unleash Clark County's worst-case disaster scenario was set in motion by human error: one mistake compounded by another.

Union Pacific railroad officials detailed the events of Aug. 29 for a round table of federal, state and local officials called together Monday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

The first mistake was a switching error at the Arden train yard, said Tom Jacobi, regional vice president for Union Pacific. A switch, which controls train access to tracks, was improperly set. While the tanker was rolling, it gained access to the main track.

The second mistake was a series of decisions that let the tanker escape the Arden train yard. An investigation is still being conducted, Jacobi said. The incident will be detailed in a final report to be submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration.

Jack Fetters, director of the Nevada Legislative Board for the United Transportation Union, offered the public and the assembled group of community leaders and lawmakers the apologies of the Union Pacific employees involved.

"I know the crew on that train and that switching job," said Fetters, who is a conductor for Union Pacific. "They're heartily sorry. It was a lapse in judgment. It wasn't anything on purpose that they had done."

In 2006, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Institute for Security Studies identified a chlorine gas accident as the most deadly disaster the state could face. Chlorine gas is a toxic inhalation hazard that can cause lung damage and death.

According to the institute's vulnerability assessment, the amount of chlorine gas in an average railway tanker has the potential to kill between 74,000 to 91,000 people if the hazardous substance is released in a populous area, such as the Union Pacific overpass on Charleston Boulevard.

The uncontrolled chlorine tanker crossed that overpass on Aug. 29 and traveled about 20 miles on its south-to-north journey through the most populated parts of Clark County, passing within sight of Las Vegas resorts, the Clark County Government Center, schools, businesses and housing developments. The runaway car reached speeds of 49 miles per hour.

"At what point do we acknowledge to citizens that there's a chlorine tanker on the loose?" Porter asked the emergency responders among those gathered for the meeting at the Fire Training Center in Henderson. "At what point do we notify officials in the community?"

Tim McAndrew, emergency management officer for Las Vegas, said things happened so quickly that the incident ended while the fire departments were being notified. Las Vegas police had said the event was reported to police at 8:47 a.m. and was over by 9:11 a.m.

"By the time it had been determined where the car was, it had already been stopped," McAndrew said.

Other fire officials said that public notifications and evacuations would not start unless a derailment or a release of toxic material occurred.

Most of the emergency responders who spoke identified communication between the railroad and local agencies as a problem area. Members of the community were calling in reports on the runaway tanker to 911 operators while Union Pacific officials in Omaha, Neb., were speaking to Las Vegas police dispatchers. Las Vegas police did not know the runaway tanker contained a hazardous substance until about eight minutes into the episode.

Al Gillespie, fire chief for North Las Vegas, said there was difficulty getting information on what exactly was happening.

"Hence, we didn't know where to respond to and with what resources," Gillespie said.

Jacobi said that Union Pacific is working with Clark County officials to make improvements and prevent a reoccurrence.

Improvements have been made at Arden yard, where anchor cars with set handbrakes block the north end of every track, blocking potential runaway cars. An additional rail car diversion track has been built to make sure that no cars can move from the switch yard to the main track.

A chance of an accident always exists, Jacobi said, but the new safety measures make a repeat of the runaway tanker incident much less likely.

Porter said Monday's discussion of the transportation of hazardous waste through Nevada communities is just a starting point. The issue is bound to mushroom as the debate surrounding the transport of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain continues, he said.

Emergency responders were vocal in pointing out safety measures that will help them in their jobs.

Fire officials emphasized the need for all trucks and train cars loaded with hazardous materials to be marked with placards.

Richard Brenner, hazmat coordinator for the Clark County Fire Department, acknowledged that such placards fly in the face of homeland security concerns that marked hazmat carriers are potential terrorist targets. But emergency responders have to know what they are dealing with, Brenner said.

Mary Martini, district engineer for the Nevada Department of Transportation, said the state has a traffic management system that allows visual monitoring throughout Clark County. Some dark spots exist, she said, but the system might have been helpful in locating and following the runaway train tanker.

During Vice President Dick Cheney's last visit to Las Vegas, that system was used to monitor his entire route.

Porter said he plans to take all of the concerns made by local officials back to Washington, D.C., where debates on rail safety are unfolding in Congress. The topic is a complicated one, Porter said. Railroads are designated carriers, which means they cannot refuse to haul hazardous materials. But communities should have a say about how and where hazardous materials are passing through, he said.

Some cities, such as Washington, D.C., have tried bans on the transport of hazardous materials to force railroads to take an alternate route. The bans are facing legal challenges by the railroads.

"I say let them challenge," Porter said. "If in fact we don't have a choice about letting these materials pass through our communities, we should at least have a say in the routes."

Contact reporter Lisa Kim Bach at lbach@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0287.

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EcoWorld
October 09, 2007

The Nuclear Option

We have posted features on nuclear power - reader comments aren’t yet possible on our features - and we’ve received several emails reacting to these stories. Two of these features were “Nuclear Power - Cleanest & Coolest Choice?” and “India’s Nuclear Power.” Here is an email just received from a reader in France:

“Dear Editor: To me it is amazing somebody promoting an “EcoWorld” should have the gall to pretend “the US desperately needs to become more like France” meaning they should produce more nuclear electricity as this (but maybe you don’t know it) bypasses two major issues :

1. France as only a tiny country on a world map, is the third producer in the whole world of death weapons, of which nuclear weapons represent a rising percentage, nuclear weapons produced from the enriched uranium and plutonium produced by France’s oh so wonderful and civil nuclear power plants!!! (not even to mention the dictatorial system which keeps all nuclear related information top secret under defense policy, just to show how very harmless and civil it is!!!)

2. Not a single person, be they laymen or specialists, have a clue as yet of how to manage the waste generated by the numerous nuclear plants in France of which many are already obsolete and therefore even more dangerous (aside from the risks linked to accidents, earthquakes and terrorist attacks) and not a single politician has the faintest idea where they’ll find the money for the horrendously high cost of dismantling the old, i.e. obsolete plants.

I take it that you have the solution so would you please make it available to French Government Officials? This will allow many French citizens to, at last, feel safe and thrilled about their nuclear program!

Maybe someone editing for Ecoworld should at least go to the trouble of finding out what ecology is about! If you truly and sincerely believe that consuming more and more, jumping at every new fad, presenting cursory and fallacious solutions to the world energy problem is it, then we can all rest assured: the Planet Earth IS already lost. ”

And here is our response:

“First of all, I probably will not change your mind. You have the tone of someone who passionately believes their position. Second, I didn’t say “the US desperately needs to become more like France,” referring to nuclear power. One of our contributing writers, Dr. Ed Wheeler wrote that. Sometimes Dr. Wheeler can be a bit sure of himself. My apologies for that. We encourage all credible viewpoints, and Dr. Wheeler’s arguments are well reasoned.

In any event, I totally agree with your comments regarding the French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific. Thankfully they are no longer blowing up the Moorea atoll. That was a terrible mistake.

Where we disagree, I regret, is regarding the overall future of nuclear power. I do think there are safer technologies available now, and I think the new upgraded plants can be built on the same sites as the old plants. I think the waste can be safely stored in caves. In the US we have constructed the Yucca Mountain complex, and I think it is plenty safe in there. Please bear in mind in the years to come we’ll learn all kinds of even better ways to process waste, and if there are problems, we can go in and clean it up.

Before you are so certain nuclear is the worst energy choice possible, consider what we have done to the rainforests to grow biofuel. This is well documented, and it is an utter catastrophe. The loss of what is now 60% of our planet’s tropical forests may be a bigger factor in climate change than CO2. I would rather have nuclear power than biofuel from rainforests.

Please accept this one statement: I am very concerned about the environment of our planet. I just don’t automatically believe everything I’m told. I do my own research. You know, in one way, we might be experiencing very similar emotions. You are upset, probably, because the concern about global warming is leading people - thoughtlessly you may feel - to take another look at nuclear power. I am upset because the concern about global warming has overridden concern for the rainforests - in the name of biofuel.

Thank you for your email. I respect your opinions.”

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 08, 2007

Study details scope of rail project needed for Yucca

By Steve Tetreault and Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

An average of 17 trains would chug across rural Nevada each week for 50 years carrying nuclear waste, construction materials and scraps to and from the Yucca Mountain repository being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

During a railroad construction period that could take anywhere from four to 10 years, as many as a dozen construction camps 30 miles apart would be set up for workers in the Nevada outback.

The crews, drawn largely from Clark County and some from Nye County, would build up to 240 bridges, 138 large culverts and up to five highway crossings along the line running from Caliente and heading west and then south to the repository.

At locations along the roughly 330-mile route, a total of 176 wells would be drilled to provide water for the effort. Coarse rock needed for rail bed ballast would be excavated from four new quarries.

Some details of what the largest U.S. railroad construction project in 80 years might look like emerged from an environmental impact study the department released late Thursday.

The rail study, and an associated report on the potential impacts of how nuclear waste containers would be handled once they arrive at the Yucca site, are steps forward in the DOE's campaign to establish a repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Information within the 1,263 pages of the repository report will be incorporated into a construction license application that department officials said they plan to file with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June.

The environmental impact statement analyzing the so-called Caliente railroad corridor totals 2,544 pages, including discussions of alternative routes through Nevada that were studied and rejected.

For the first time, DOE indicated it would be wiling to share the railroad with commercial shippers for general freight, a decision that had been sought by Nevada farmers.

Rail cars carrying commercial freight would not be included on nuclear waste trips but could share a ride with cars carrying repository construction material, water and fuel, the department said.

The DOE announced a series of hearings in Nevada and California for November and December for the public to comment.

The reports, available at www.ocrwm.doe.gov, were issued without fanfare.

"The documents speak for themselves," DOE spokesman Allen Benson said.

The release of the voluminous materials triggered officials for the state of Nevada, as well as environmental advocates and industry officials, to begin their own analysis on Friday.

"We and other parties are going to have to take the time to look at it," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Robert Halstead, a transportation consultant for the state, said at first glance he identified a half dozen issues that Nevada probably will challenge, including a mention that more nuclear waste might travel through the state on truck.

He said he is concerned that DOE officials think "they can ram this Caliente rail route through. I know for sure we're going to fight them to the mat on the Caliente route," Halstead said late Friday.

While most radioactive material would travel by rail under DOE's plan, some 9,600 rail casks, the number of truck shipments was increased from 1,110 to 2,700 in the new report.

DOE said it assumes that trucks will be needed to haul waste from the 22 to 26 reactors that don't have rail access. Previously it was assumed rail spurs would be built.

"We need to know what they mean when they say that," Halstead said.

The consultant also said the state might question DOE on "regions of influence," the land surrounding the rail line that might be disrupted by construction and operations. Halstead said the department's quarter mile wide areas might be too narrow in some valleys.

Special canisters for transporting, aging and disposing waste would be loaded with spent nuclear fuel assemblies at reactor sites and sealed after arriving at an above-ground receipt facility. From there, canisters would be put in aging casks and moved to concrete pads.

Once the thermal heat output "decayed to an acceptable level" the canisters would be repackaged and hauled to a 41-mile maze of tunnels for entombment, according to a summary of the documents.

Surface facilities would be constructed in phases. That means "for several years, radiological operations would be occurring while construction" is ongoing, the summary reads.

Waste transfer operations would be conducted "using mostly remotely operated equipment.

Thick, reinforced concrete shield walls, shielded canister transfer and controlled access techniques would protect workers from radiation exposure," project planners wrote.

They estimated that about 80 percent of the doses to workers would occur during operations "principally from surface handling of spent nuclear fuel and subsurface monitoring and maintenance activities."

State consultants have said the aging pads and surface facilities make for an interim storage site that is not allowed in the same state hosting the repository.

Changes would have to be made to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to address the surface facilities issue as well as DOE's draft plans for doubling the repository's capacity to hold 135,000 metric tons of spent fuel and other highly radioactive waste.

"This requires congressional approval, which I don't think they can get," Halstead said.

Other issues that need to be resolved, according to DOE officials, include the need for Congress to withdraw land from public access for the repository, surface facilities and a buffer zone.

In addition the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must finalize their two-tiered radiation safety standards for covering both a 10,000-year period for the repository and a 1 million-year period during which peak doses would occur.

"Water use and water development projects will continue to be a major concern in the region of influence regardless of the water demands associated with the proposed repository or railroad," the summary notes.

"Growth in water demand in Nevada has been very rapid: water use against the backdrop of regional water transfer plans remains an over-arching controversial issue."

--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@ stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760. Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 08, 2007

Week in Review: Yucca Mountain Project has DOE seeing double

Nevadans who fear the Yucca Mountain Project might have twice as much to worry about now.

The Department of Energy is almost doubling the size of the proposed repository as it completes new environmental studies and long-term cost estimates of burying nuclear waste in Nevada.

The department on Thursday issued a draft study that the project's director said analyzes the potential environmental effects of a repository built to hold up to 135,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste.

Energy Department officials also are finalizing long-range cost estimates for Yucca Mountain on the assumption it could be expanded at some point, project Director Ward Sproat said.

The repository project's price tag could total in the range of $77 billion, a 35 percent increase from a 2001 estimate.

"Doubling the size of Yucca Mountain will only double the danger," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "This is not a bad dream; it's a nightmare."

A federal law passed in 1982 set the Yucca Mountain capacity at 70,000 metric tons.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 05, 2007

Yucca Mountain: DOE: Enlarge repository

Agency studies nearly doubling nuclear waste capacity

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Nevadans who fear the Yucca Mountain Project now might have twice as much to worry about.

The Department of Energy is almost doubling the size of the proposed repository as it completes new environmental studies and long-term cost estimates of burying nuclear waste in Nevada.

The department late Thursday issued a draft study that the project's director said analyzes the potential environmental effects of a repository built to hold up to 135,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste.

Further, DOE is finalizing long-range cost estimates for Yucca Mountain on the assumption it could be expanded at some point, project Director Ward Sproat said. The repository project's price tag could total in the range of $77 billion, a 35 percent increase from a 2001 estimate.

The department's actions laying groundwork for a possible expansion at Yucca Mountain opened a new flash point of opposition in Nevada. State leaders argue nuclear waste burial is unsafe, and they do not want a repository of any size, let alone one that could be almost twice as large as originally planned.

"Doubling the size of Yucca Mountain will only double the danger," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "This is not a bad dream; it's a nightmare."

A federal law passed in 1982 set the Yucca Mountain capacity at 70,000 metric tons.

But while the project has been delayed for years, commercial power plants have gotten life extensions and are generating waste at a rate of 2,000 metric tons per year.

With the waste already waiting for disposal at 121 locations, that means a Yucca repository effectively would be "full" long before it might open in the next decade or two.

Sproat said 135,000 metric tons is estimated as the entire waste output of nuclear plants through their operating lives.

The Energy Department has asked Congress to pass a bill that would remove the 70,000 metric ton cap at Yucca Mountain, but it has drawn little interest from lawmakers. DOE also is preparing a report on whether the government should consider building a second repository.

The Electric Power Research Institute, an arm of the utility industry, said in a study completed in June that the repository could be redesigned to hold at least 260,000 metric tons of waste and up to 570,000 metric tons with additional site characterization.

"Additional drifts can be successfully excavated, loaded and cooled during a 50-year retrievability period such as the capacity of Yucca Mountain can be increased by at least a factor of three," said the study, which was overseen by John Kessler, Electric Power Research Institute manager of high-level waste and spent fuel.

Sproat said Thursday he anticipates charges that the Energy Department is being presumptuous in examining issues related to an expanded Yucca repository.

"People will absolutely say that, but we don't have any other basis to do anything else," Sproat said.

If DOE limited itself to preparations for a 70,000 metric ton facility, policymakers "would ask me, what about everything else?"

"I am probably in a no-win situation, but I like the way we are going," Sproat said.

The project director said that DOE still plans by the end of June 2008 to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 70,000 metric ton facility.

If Congress were to lift the cap, DOE would move forward at that point, he said.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said DOE is setting the stage to push Congress to enlarge the Nevada site.

"Once they convince themselves the science is safe, they will use that as an argument to expand," he said.

At a congressional hearing Thursday, Porter argued that Congress should move in the opposite direction and end the project.

When it was conceived in 1982, Sony had just come up with the portable CD player, cell phones and the Internet did not exist, and the top-selling record was "Thriller" by Michael Jackson, he said.

"In 25 years, we have studied a hole in the ground to death," Porter said. "We have spent 10 billion to 11 billion dollars but have not moved one inch on the playing field."

Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the state will evaluate the legality of the department's actions.

"I think it certainly calls into question the validity of the environmental impact statement if they are doing an analysis for a scenario that is illegal under federal law," Loux said. "The only way they could be directed to do this is to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act," the 1982 law.

But another observer said room appears to exist in another law, the National Environmental Policy Act, for what the department is doing.

"I think in the world of NEPA, you are supposed to identify reasonably foreseeable increases in scope," said Brian O'Connell, nuclear waste adviser at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. "If you err on the side of a larger impact, you can always scale back."

--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.

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Las Vegas SUN
October 05, 2007

Energy Department proposes doubling size of Nevada nuclear dump

By Ken Ritter
Associated Press Writer

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Department of Energy is proposing doubling the size of a national nuclear waste repository it plans to build deep below an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert.

Citing ongoing production of waste at nuclear power plants around the country, the Energy Department has revealed plans to entomb almost 150,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.

Nevada's senators and a state official said Friday they doubted Congress would revise a law that caps the Yucca Mountain project at 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, and will balk at a price tag that now tops $77 billion.

Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state's chief anti-Yucca administrator, branded an environmental study outlining the proposal as "invalid and likely illegal."

He said it went beyond Congressional authorization under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and sought exemptions from transportation regulations and hazardous waste laws.

"It reflects the new repository design," Benson said, calling it "prudent and wise" to analyze a larger repository to contain waste being generated by 121 reactors in 39 states.

Project officials have pushed back the target date for opening to 2017 or later.

Nevada's congressional delegation is united in opposition to the project, and Tory Mazzola, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., called passage of any bill increasing the storage limit "unlikely."

"This is just another example of DOE's attempt to move this project forward, but objective observers aren't so sure," Mazzola said.

The environmental study makes crucial projections on radiation emissions, and airs plans for transporting and burying waste that scientists say will remain radioactive for millions of years.

By comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure.

The projected emissions would be well below a standard proposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency after a federal court in 2004 threw out an earlier radiation standard.

Another environmental study issued Thursday identifies the so-called "Caliente Corridor" as the preferred route across Nevada for the Energy Department to build a railroad to the Yucca Mountain site.

--On the Net: U.S. Department of Energy, http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/

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KOLO
October 05, 2007

Nevada Officials Deride Proposal To Double Size Of Nuclear Dump

Nevada officials say they doubt Congress will let the federal Energy Department double the size of the nuclear waste repository it plans to build in the Nevada desert.

The agency released a draft environmental study on the proposal to increase from 77,000 tons to almost 150,000 tons the amount of radioactive waste that would be entombed at Yucca Mountain.

Meanwhile, the project chief is telling Congress that the cost of the Yucca project could top $77 billion -- or 35 percent more than the $57.5 billion estimated in 2001.

Nevada is fighting the plan.

Senator Harry Reid says the Energy Department must be dreaming.

And Nevada's chief anti-Yucca administrator says the proposal is -- quote -- "invalid and likely illegal."

An Energy Department spokesman says planners needed to update the plan to account for waste still being generated at 121 reactors in 39 states.

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Hemscott
October 05, 2007

Correction: Yucca Mountain story

(AP) - In an Oct. 4 story about the proposed nuclear-waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, The Associated Press misstated how the program is funded. The Energy Department relies on money appropriated by Congress, not fees collected from nuclear power producers.

A corrected version of the story follows:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The proposed nuclear-waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada will need up to three times its current funding or the program's 2017 opening date will have to be delayed, a top Energy Department official said Thursday.

Edward F. Sproat III, director of the agency's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told the House Budget Committee that beginning next year a doubling or tripling of annual project funding would be needed.

The cost of building and operating the nuclear waste site through 2119 was estimated in 2001 to be $57.5 billion, including costs incurred since the project began in 1983. A revised estimate expected by the end of this year will include the cost of accepting about 30 percent more spent nuclear fuel through the repository's closing in 2133, Sproat said.

Without the increased funding, Sproat said, it will not be possible to set a credible opening date for the nuclear waste repository and the government's financial liability will continue to grow.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., criticized the new Yucca Mountain price projections and said she will continue to fight a Bush administration push to increase the amount of waste dumped there.

'Yucca Mountain is nothing more than radioactive pork that benefits the nuclear power industry and now the price tag for this failed project is going to top the $80 billion mark,' Berkley said in a statement, adding that on-site storage of nuclear waste is cheaper and safer.

Yucca Mountain was designated in the 1980s as the country's nuclear waste repository and the Energy Department was required to open the Nevada site by 1998. But the project has been bogged down by lawsuits and other controversy, and the earliest possible opening date is 2017.

The program has spent $11 billion in 2000 constant dollars since 1983. It is financed by congressional appropriations, but Sproat requested that it be funded by a per-kilowatt-hour fee on all domestic nuclear generation. That fund currently has a balance of about $20.7 billion invested in U.S. Treasury instruments. The government receives about $750 million per year in revenue and the fund averages roughly a 5.5 percent annual return.

Without the fix, Sproat estimated that funding is currently insufficient by about $1 billion to $1.5 billion per year.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters at a nuclear conference that 'it's up to the Congress to make a determination.'

Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., called Sproat's assessment 'very serious,' and a 'political problem' similar to other underfunded budget liabilities like Medicare and Social Security.

The initial reason for the House hearing was to examine Yucca-related legal judgments against the government, which have added billions 'to an already hugely expensive project,' Spratt said.

Litigation settlements or damages related to Yucca Mountain are paid from a separate taxpayer-subsidized fund. The estimated current potential liability is about $7 billion if operations begin in 2017.

'Delaying the opening of the repository to 2020 could cost taxpayers as much as an additional $4 billion from the judgment fund to pay damages,' Sproat said.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims last week awarded Xcel Energy Inc. $116.5 million over the government's failure to open Yucca Mountain on time. Northern States Power Co., a predecessor to Xcel Energy, sued the Energy Department, claiming breach of contract.

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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