Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, October 18, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 18, 2007

Yucca hearing set, fulfilling Clinton campaign promise

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee on Wednesday announced a hearing on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, enabling Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to claim credit for delivering on a campaign promise made to Nevadans over the summer.

The Oct. 31 hearing will be the first Senate airing of the proposed waste repository since Democrats took control this year. The Environment and Public Works Committee that is organizing the session is headed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a critic of the proposed repository, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The hearing probably will have political undercurrents as well.

Clinton sits on the committee and is expected to take part in the hearing. The senator from New York has sought to position herself as the strongest voice against the project among Democrats running for president in advance of the state's party caucuses in January.

"Senator Clinton has been working actively with the committee to schedule this hearing," said Rory Reid, Clark County commissioner and chairman of Clinton's campaign in Nevada, where the repository project is unpopular. "No other candidate for president has stood as strongly on this issue as Senator Clinton."

The hearing probably will provide Clinton and other repository opponents a fresh forum to criticize the controversial program. While it will be in a Senate committee room, the intended audience members really are voters in Nevada, said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"It is possible that something substantive could come out of this, but Yucca Mountain has been discussed for more than 20 years, and the sides are pretty well drawn," Herzik said. "This makes me think it will be more symbolic than substantive."

Committee aides and other Senate officials said witnesses are being invited and will be announced next week. The panel has jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, so it is possible those agencies will be represented, officials said.

One outstanding question is why the EPA is taking so long to issue required radiation safety standards for the project. Agency officials had promised Congress the standards would be released by the end of last year, and they are 10 months late and counting.

Project managers from the Energy Department and spokespeople for the environmental community also might be invited. It was not clear whether Gov. Jim Gibbons is being invited to speak or to send a representative.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he has worked with Boxer to schedule the hearing "for the last few months. I am confident the information that comes out will shine a bright spotlight on the problems associated with this dangerous plan."

Most elected leaders in Nevada oppose the proposed repository that is being designed to hold 70,000 tons of highly radioactive used fuel from commercial power plants and other forms of nuclear waste. They say they consider the venture unsafe and have little trust in the Energy Department to look after the health and safety of Nevadans.

Clinton has sought to portray herself as the state's biggest ally among presidential candidates.

On July 20, she said she would push for Senate hearings as a step toward delaying the project until she could be elected president in 2008.

If she wins, Clinton said, "I will not go forward with Yucca Mountain. My administration will not proceed with Yucca Mountain."

It was not clear Wednesday what role if any Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Clinton's perceived main rival in Nevada for the Democratic nomination, would play in the hearing. An Obama campaign aide said he might not be able to attend and ask questions because he is not a member of the Environment Committee.

"Senator Obama does not need hearings to know he does not support Yucca Mountain," the aide said. "To the extent this hearing will help raise public awareness, he supports it."

But a precedent might have been set for Obama's participation if he chooses, according to several Senate sources familiar with the Environment Committee. Several weeks ago, the committee chairman allowed nonmember Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., to take active part in a hearing about the Chesapeake Bay.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he challenged Clinton to try to kill the Yucca project outright.

"The Democrats are in charge, and the Democrats have done nothing to kill the project," Porter said. "Why is she going to wait to see if she wins? If she is sincere, she has the authority now."

"This is precisely why she requested this hearing," said Hilarie Grey, Clinton's campaign spokeswoman in Nevada. "There are many public safety issues and health issues that have not been addressed and she wants to be sure those questions are asked right now. Senator Clinton has been a consistent opponent of Yucca Mountain."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., noted the hearing will take place on Nevada Day, the Oct. 31 anniversary of when the state was admitted to the Union in 1864.

"Nevada's flag reads Battle Born, and we will keep fighting Yucca Mountain and those -- like President Bush -- who want to see the Silver State turned into the nation's nuclear garbage dump," Berkley said.

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

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UPI
October 18, 2007

Nevada wants Sandia out of Yucca plans

CARSON CITY, Nev., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Nevada is asking the U.S. government to remove Sandia National Laboratories from the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.

The state claims the company's memos show one of Sandia's managers prioritized meeting the federal government's deadlines over the quality of the science used in the project, the Albuquerque Journal reported Wednesday.

Sandia is a privately owned lab doing projects for the U.S. Energy Department in California and Nevada.

Officials with Sandia, which is heading the team of scientists charged with analyzing a Yucca Mountain site the federal government wants to use for burying dangerous radioactive waste, issued a response Tuesday defending the team's integrity.

Nevada officials claim an Oct. 10, 2006, memo sent by Sandia official Geoff Freeze to his staff revealed that Freeze considered the schedule more important than science.

"My responsibility ... is to ensure that the three priorities -- schedule, defensibility, credibility -- in that order, are satisfied," the state quoted the memo as reading.

"If we do not meet the June 30 deadline, 'we are all out of a job,'" Freeze allegedly wrote.

"Common sense and experience teach that a plan which puts schedule ahead of defensibility and defensibility ahead of genuine scientific credibility is a recipe for disaster," Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto wrote to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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Columbus Free Press
October 18, 2007

Nukes are back and so are we

Harvey Wasserman

The nuclear power industry is back to where it always goes when it wants to build new reactors---the taxpayer trough.

And those of us who've been fighting them for decades are doing it again, now with help from the musicians' community, and a petition drive (at nukefree.org) aimed at stripping the radioactive subsidies from the national Energy Bill now before Congress.

Time after time over the past half-century, the atomic energy industry has gone to the government to demand massive amounts of money. The most recent public gouging came during the Great Deregulation Scam of 1999-2001. As Enron and its cronies contrived phony energy shortages and nearly bankrupted California, the atomic pushers went before America's state legislatures and asked for a massive bailout. They complained that with the coming age of deregulation (about two dozen states deregulated their electricity businesses) nuclear power plants were too expensive, inefficient and obsolete to compete in the coming green age.

So they demanded---and got---more than $100 billion in “stranded cost” payouts. These were the ultimate admission that atomic power simply could not make it in the marketplace. As deregulation failed throughout the US, what Forbes Magazine labeled “the largest managerial disaster in business history” stayed alive as America's ultimate welfare cheat.

Now the industry is back for more. After complaining about its old reactors' lousy economic performance, it now argues that the new ones will be magically transformed, and that billions more should be spent building them.

The first of those is already under construction in Finland. Ground was broken just two years ago, but the project is already two years behind schedule and $2 billion over budget.

So a whole new cover story has been invented: nuke power will “solve global warming.”

The assertion is absurd. All reactors emit radioactive carbon, along with numerous other “hot” isotopes. Massive quantities of greenhouse gasses are spewed into the atmosphere during the mining, milling and enrichment of uranium fuel. The reactors themselves emit huge plumes of heat directly into the air and water.

Nukes perform poorly in hot weather, which is precisely when they're supposed to help with global warming. Reactors in both France and the US have been forced to shut because the rivers into which they dump their waste heat have exceeded 90 degrees Farenheit.

Still more greenhouse gasses have been created with the partial construction of the proposed Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada, which has already cost the public $11 billion. If it ever opens---it's not yet licensed, and many say it will never be---Yucca could cost $60 to $100 billion. Even then it couldn't handle the waste from the new reactors the industry wants to build---or even all the spent fuel from the old ones now in existence.

Yet the industry wants Congress to give the industry essentially a blank check for loan guarantees to the tune of $25 billion in 2008 and $25 billion more in 2009, with countless billions more still to come down the road.

Why? Because Wall Street just isn't buying. After fifty years, nuke power is the most expensive technological failure in US history. It can't get investors, liability insurance or a solution to its waste problem. It can't compete with new conservation, efficiency or renewables like wind power.

Since 9/11/2001, it's also become obvious that atomic reactors cannot be defended from terror attack. They are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction.

It's thus no accident that the push for new nukes with federal loan guarantees also comes with a demand for extended federal liability insurance. Who would invest in a reactor that might irradiate thousands of square miles and kill hundreds of thousands of human beings? The answer is simple: after fifty years, without federal guarantees---nobody!

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were tragic warnings, as was the fact that the first jet to hit the World Trade Center flew directily over the Indian Point reactor complex, 45 miles north. Had those reactors been hit, the death toll could have been in the tens of thousands by now. The property damage from irradiating southern New York, Long Island, and all of downwind New Jersey and New England would be beyond calculation.

Despite all that, Pete Domenici, the Senator from Nuke Power, slipped these loan guarantees into the 2007 Energy Bill that could become one of the most expensive and lethal rip-offs in US history.

Meanwhile, the renewable energy industry is soaring to new heights of power and profitability. Wind farming has boomed to a $10-15 billion per year industry, with worldwide growth rates surpassing 25%. Breakthroughs in silicon solar cells are taking rooftop photovoltaics (PV) to vastly increased levels of efficiency and profitability. Bio-fuels, tidal, geo- and ocean thermal, wave energy and many more rapidly developing forms of green power are also booming ahead.

In 1979, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash, through Musicians United for Safe Energy, helped organize five nights of No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. The accompanying rally at Battery Park City drew 200,000 people.

All of it was part of a successful grassroots campaign to stop the nuke industry. In 1974 Richard Nixon predicted there would be 1000 reactors in the US by the year 2000. But in the year 2000, there were just 103.

That's still 103 too many. Browne, Nash and Raitt are now working to help stop this latest bailout. In singing Stephen Stills's classic “For What It's Worth,” they joined Ben Harper and Keb Mo for a video that's linked through the www.nukefree.org web site, where a petition is being circulated and signed.

On October 23 they'll present the first round of petitions to Congress. In demanding the nuke subsidies be removed from an Energy Bill that contains many positive green features, they'll be joined by their fellow musician John Hall (D-NY), now a US Representative committed to shutting Indian Point.

They'll also be working with one of the most successful non-violent grassroots campaigns in US history. Should they stop this latest atomic assault on the public treasury, the door could finally open for a truly green-powered future.

--Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. His SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org.

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Forbes
October 18, 2007

U.S.-Russian Plutonium Poses Major Risk

Oxford Analytica

The U.S. Department of Energy is building a complex of facilities at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to convert over 50 tons of plutonium into fuel for use in commercial, light water nuclear reactors in the United States. Washington and Moscow have an inter-governmental agreement to convert their stocks of plutonium into forms less attractive for use in nuclear weapons as a counter-proliferation measure and to ensure that both states continue to reduce their nuclear stockpiles. Yet the program's progress has recently slowed in both countries.

To date, the United States has declared some 59 metric tons of plutonium from its nuclear weapons complex as "excess to defense needs" and designated it for conversion into forms unattractive for use in nuclear weapons. Former President Bill Clinton applied this designation to 52.5 tons of plutonium in the early 1990s, after the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) declared that excess plutonium from weapon stocks (especially in Russia) represented a "clear and present danger" requiring urgent international attention. U.S. efforts to dispose of excess plutonium were closely tied to those in Russia, which also declared 34 metric tons of plutonium as excess to weapons needs.

The United States originally adopted the recommendations of the 1994 NAS study by pursuing two parallel tracks for disposal of excess plutonium. The goal of both programs was to convert excess plutonium into forms no more attractive for weapons use than the plutonium contained in spent fuel released from commercial light water reactors:

- High purity plutonium (equaling 34 tons) was to be converted to mixed oxide fuels (MOX) containing both plutonium and uranium oxide, and then irradiated in commercial light water reactors.

- The remaining materials (some 17 tons) were to be encased in highly radioactive glass (vitrified) being produced as part of the high-level radioactive waste management programs in the Department of Energy.

- In both cases, weapons plutonium would be protected by high intensity radioactive barriers, which would serve as a major impediment to the use of the materials in nuclear weapons.

- Both the spent fuel and vitrified glass were then to be disposed of in the long-term nuclear waste geologic repository being built at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

In 2002, the administration of President George Bush revised these long-standing plutonium disposition plans, due to the soaring costs, and dropped the plan to vitrify the low-purity plutonium.

The original estimate for the cost of the entire U.S. disposition effort was $2 billion-- this figure had tripled to $6 billion by 2002. However, plans to dispose of the 34 tons of high-purity plutonium would continue. This change was forced, in part, by technical problems encountered in dealing with the high-level radioactive waste products that were to feed into the vitrification program.

Another important driver of change in the program was a fundamental alteration in how Washington perceived the issue of excess Russian weapons plutonium. The continued relevance of the plutonium disposal program is currently being called into question, not least in Congress:

The original goal was to ensure that excess Russian material was quickly disposed of. However, Moscow has experienced its own scheduling and cost problems, and only one-half of the international funding needed for the Russian MOX fabrication plant has been identified.

The goal of plutonium disposition was closely linked to the 1990s process of nuclear weapons reductions and elimination, a process now stalled by the U.S.-Russian impasse on the best way to address the bilateral nuclear balance.

The risk posed by the continued existence of large stockpiles of weapons-usable plutonium is serious. However, the comprehensive U.S.-Russia plutonium disposition program appears to be gradually collapsing. Increasing security around the facilities where such material is stored, rather than final disposal, may be the most likely course for the medium term.

--Oxford Analytica is an independent strategic-consulting firm drawing on a network of more than 1,000 scholar experts at Oxford and other leading universities and research institutions around the world.

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KOLO-8
October 17, 2007

Call for Investigation over Nuclear Dump Site in Nevada

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Nevada has petitioned to get Sandia National Laboratories investigated for what the state's attorney general described Tuesday as a focus on deadlines over safety and accuracy in doing analyses for a proposed high-level nuclear waste dump.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto also told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is considering licensing for the federal Department of Energy dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, that New Mexico-based Sandia should be barred from further Yucca project work for the DOE.

A Sandia spokesman defended the lab's work which was questioned in the petition, the latest in a long list of moves by Nevada officials to prevent the DOE from using the dump to store high-level radioactive waste from around the country.

Cortez Masto said in the petition to the NRC that the state found documents that showed, among other things, that the Sandia official responsible for Yucca Mountain scientific analyses told employees they'd be "all out of a job" unless they met the DOE's schedule for license-filing by June 30.

The attorney general said the official told staffers that Sandia's priorities for completing the analyses sought by the DOE ere "schedule, defensibility and credibility - in that order."

"This attitude is utterly incompatible with the dictates of nuclear safety," Cortez Masto said, adding that putting safety at the bottom of the priority list "is a recipe for disaster."

Sandia spokesman Michael Padilla said the lab is "confident in the integrity of its work and its management of this effort." Padilla added the Sandia team "will be pleased in 2008 to defend the license application and its technical basis."

"The transparency and quality of the technical basis provided in part by Sandia will enable the NRC to openly and fairly evaluate the safety of the proposed repository," he said.

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. The project's cost has climbed from a $57.5 billion estimate in 2001 to more than $77 billion.

Federal law limits the dump to 77,000 tons of such waste, although the DOE now is proposing to double that amount.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 17, 2007

Yucca Mountain: State says safety at risk

Contractor hurrying to meet DOE schedule, petition alleges

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A major contractor at Yucca Mountain might be compromising safety in a rush to meet deadlines for the nuclear waste project, Nevada told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a petition filed Tuesday.

The state requested that the contractor, Sandia National Laboratories, be suspended from the program and that the contractor's work environment be investigated.

Documents reviewed by state officials "clearly show Sandia has subordinated safety and scientific accuracy to meeting an artificial deadline set by DOE," according to the 12-page complaint filed by Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

In one undated e-mail to members of his team, a Sandia group manager said his responsibility "is to ensure that the 3 priorities -- schedule, defensibility, credibility -- in that order, are satisfied."

"If we do not meet the June 30 deadline, 'we are all out of a job,'" the manager wrote. "Any slips in schedule will be recovered by cutting scope. There is no allowance for not meeting schedule."

Another undated document forwarded to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appeared to be notes from a meeting on Oct. 2, 2006.

"Sandia will not let DOE down," the typed note said. "We will meet this schedule. Delays are not acceptable."

Because of several missteps and missed deadlines over years at Yucca Mountain, the Bush administration last year put former nuclear industry executive Ward Sproat in charge of the project.

Sproat made changes and a commitment to Congress that a repository license application will be finished by no later than June 30, 2008.

The complaint filed by Masto charged that meeting a hard deadline "will take on overriding importance, and safety will get shortchanged."

The material discovered by the state "shows this is precisely what has happened at Sandia," the state's complaint said.

"Nevada's allegations are baseless," Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson retorted. "Quality and schedule are not mutually exclusive. Sandia National Laboratories is a world-renowned scientific institution."

"DOE will submit a high-quality license application and defend it during the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing proceeding," Benson said.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the two documents were found when analysts reviewed Energy Department material in a database of Yucca Mountain documentation.

The state is looking through government paperwork for ammunition to fight the proposal to establish a nuclear waste site at the mountain ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Sandia was hired in January 2006 to prepare safety analyses that underpin the Energy Department's bid to license an underground repository in Nevada. The site is to store highly radioactive used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors and other forms of nuclear waste.

"Sandia is confident in the integrity of its work and its management of this effort," contractor spokesman Michael Padilla said Tuesday. "Sandia believes the nation and citizens of Nevada can be confident in the quality and integrity of the post-closure safety analysis."

Nevada has filed seven petitions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2002 in seeking changes in the agency's Yucca Mountain procedures or to point out perceived flaws in Energy Department preparations for what are expected to be long and contentious license hearings.

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Las Vegas SUN
October 17, 2007

Senate hearing scheduled on Yucca

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee will hold an oversight hearing later this month on Yucca Mountain.

It's the first time since Democrats took control of Congress that they will examine the planned nuclear waste dump project from the environmental perspective - rather than focusing on budgetary issues.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who chairs the committee, announced the October 31 hearing in a press release today.

Boxer has been opposed to Yucca Mountain.

The Environment and Public Works Committee has jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that will consider the Energy Department's application for a license to build the dump in the Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

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Las Vegas SUN
October 17, 2007

Nevada wants Sandia Lab off Yucca Mountain project

By Brendan Riley
Associated Press Writer

The attorney general said the official told staffers that Sandia's priorities for completing the analyses sought by the DOE were "schedule, defensibility and credibility - in that order."

"This attitude is utterly incompatible with the dictates of nuclear safety," Cortez Masto said, adding that putting safety at the bottom of the priority list "is a recipe for disaster."

"The transparency and quality of the technical basis provided in part by Sandia will enable the NRC to openly and fairly evaluate the safety of the proposed repository," he said.

Project officials have pushed back the target date for opening to 2017 or later. The project's cost has climbed from a $57.5 billion estimate in 2001 to more than $77 billion.

Federal law limits the dump to 77,000 tons of such waste, although the DOE now is proposing to double that amount.

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Albuquerque Tribune
October 17, 2007

Nevada calls for probe of Sandia National Laboratories

Brendan Riley
Associated Press

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Nevada has petitioned to get Sandia National Laboratories of Albuquerque investigated for what the state's attorney general describes as a focus on deadlines over safety and accuracy in its analysis of a proposed nuclear waste dump.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto on Tuesday also told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is considering licensing for the federal Department of Energy dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, that Sandia should be barred from further Yucca project work for the DOE.

A Sandia spokesman defended the work questioned in the petition, the latest in a long list of moves by Nevada officials to prevent the DOE from using the dump to store high-level radioactive waste from around the country.

The lab is "confident in the integrity of its work and its management of this effort," said Sandia spokesman Michael Padilla.

In Nevada's petition, Cortez Masto told the NRC that the state found documents showing, among other things, that the Sandia official responsible for Yucca Mountain scientific analyses told employees they'd be "all out of a job" unless they met a DOE schedule for filing the license by June 30.

She said the official told staffers that Sandia's priorities for completing the analyses sought by the DOE were "schedule, defensibility and credibility - in that order."

"This attitude is utterly incompatible with the dictates of nuclear safety," Cortez Masto said. Putting safety at the bottom of the priority list, she added, "is a recipe for disaster."

Padilla countered, saying the Sandia team "will be pleased in 2008 to defend the license application and its technical basis."

"The transparency and quality of the technical basis provided in part by Sandia will enable the NRC to openly and fairly evaluate the safety of the proposed repository," he said.

Project officials have pushed back the target date for opening to 2017 or later. The project's cost has climbed from a $57.5 billion estimate in 2001 to more than $77 billion.

Federal law limits the dump to 77,000 tons of such waste, although the DOE now is proposing to double that amount.

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Greenville News
October 17, 2007

Nuclear waste piling up at Oconee power plant

Solution to spent fuel not solved as talks grow for new reactors in state

By Anna Simon
Clemson Bureau
asimon@greenvillenews.com

An armed security guard walked alongside a forklift hauling new fuel rods to a reactor unit at Oconee Nuclear Station one recent morning.

The protected delivery was part of the preparations underway for a routine refueling and maintenance outage at Oconee's Unit 3 that starts this month.

Reporters on a media tour weren't allowed pictures of the guard with a big gun slung from his shoulder, a woman with a clipboard beside him or the cargo itself -- a long gray container not more than a couple feet high balanced on the prongs of the forklift.

Heightened security around the delivery at the Duke Energy facility was obvious.

Less obvious was a growing graveyard of nuclear waste elsewhere on the site that is filling up with material many in the nuclear industry expected would be at Yucca Mountain or some other national repository by now.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 called for the federal government to provide a permanent deep geological repository. A 1987 amendment called for the Department of Energy to locate, build and operate a repository by 1998.

At a time when one company has applied to build the first new nuclear plant in nearly three decades in the U.S., and several others, including Duke Energy, plan to do so in coming months, the pile of waste is growing.

"We are frustrated by the delays and continue to support the government's efforts for a central site. They have that responsibility under law, which they have not met yet," said Sandra Magee, a Duke Energy spokeswoman.

When new fuel rods go into the reactor, old ones come out.

Spent fuel rods go to contained storage pools in a protected area, where water and a series of redundant safety precautions surround the high-level radioactive waste.

Oconee's spent fuel rod pools are full, Magee said.

Because radioactivity dissipates over time -- 80 percent dissipates after the first year in the pool -- older used fuel is moved to dry storage to make room for new spent fuel rods in the pool, Magee said.

While Oconee has safely maintained dry storage on site for more than a decade and can add dry storage space as needed, used fuel "can best be managed in a central repository," Magee said. Duke Energy has paid more than $1 billion toward a central facility, Magee said.

"The pools and the dry cask storage facilities at the plants were never meant to be permanent and are not a substitute," Magee said. "They are not designed to function for the thousands of years a deep geologic repository would contain the fuel. From a scientific and technical standpoint a geologic site is a safe long-term solution."

Not everyone agrees.

"If they were shutting down the reactors and moving the waste to a central repository, that would be one thing. You are just creating one extra waste dump by opening up Yucca," said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace USA.

The utilities are "whining," Riccio said, and will get their money back, under terms of a lawsuit filed by the nuclear utilities over the failure of the federal government to take the waste.

There is at least a decade of lawsuits from Nevada, and Yucca Mountain isn't capable of holding all the waste, said Riccio, who added, "I don't see it happening any time soon."

Bob Loux, who heads the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and has worked for five Nevada governors to block Yucca Mountain plans, said used fuel should be kept in dry storage at the nuclear power facilities until a better solution is found, whether that be a repository or an alternate method.

Yucca Mountain "is an unsafe site. It was chosen for political reasons and not technical merit," Loux said. "The state proved twice that the site should have been disqualified."

Loux criticized Department of Energy handing of radioactive materials at other sites and elimination of many safety restrictions in plans for Yucca Mountain to try to push it through.

Thousands of shipments would be transported annually and could be targeted by terrorists or subject to human error, and support on Capitol Hill is fading, Loux said.

"I believe the project is going to be over with likely in the next 18 months," Loux said.

Not so, said Allen Benson, director of the Office of External Affairs in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution in 2002 asking DOE to proceed, overriding a veto from the state of Nevada. A House resolution this year to eliminate funding was soundly defeated, Benson said.

The Department of Energy plans to file a license application by June, and Yucca Mountain could begin operation as early as 2017, Benson said.

Safety is the agency's primary concern and will be assured, Benson said.

"The material will be transported and stored in specially designed containers. We have studied Yucca Mountain for 25 years and spent more than $9 billion. Yucca Mountain has been stable for about 10 million years," he said.

Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the license application from the DOE would be reviewed just as any application, whether it be from a small company or a big government agency.

"There is no preconceived notion within the commission about the acceptability of the site," Hannah said. The application "would be reviewed on safety and technical merits and nothing else."

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Canmore Leader
October 17, 2007

By Justin Brisbane
Justin@canmoreleader.com

Sean Russell was happy he didn’t get booed off stage.

As manager of technology development for the not-for-profit Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, talking about nuclear waste is often as technically and politically complicated a task as actually disposing of it.

But Russell said he’s accustomed to receiving a wide variety of reactions to his visits.

“The response I get is so varied. In Whitehorse, I only had one person show up, but in Timmins, Ont., it was a room of 95 screaming people who wouldn’t listen to anything I said,” said Russell.

Speaking at the Canmore Civic Centre last Thursday, Russell talked about the future of nuclear waste disposal.

“Canadian legislation is based on a polluter pays system, so the power companies are in charge of the cost,” said Russell. He said many power utilities include the cost of nuclear waste disposal – which could be upwards of $6 billion in current costs or $27 billion in total costs – in the utility bill. Currently, there is about $3.3 billion in savings for the waste storage facility.

“Ultimately, the cost comes from here,” said Russell pointing to his wallet.

A small crowd heard a presentation that outlined the pros and cons of a variety of disposal methods and the challenges and costs associated with storage of CANDU fuel bundles.

“It’s still radioactive for long periods of time. It takes a bundle between 100,000 and a million years to drop to natural levels,” said Russell.

He said the technology to store nuclear waste has been around for a few decades (although it hasn’t been proven in the field), however there has been no social will to move forward with planning until recently.

This past June, the federal government opted for a storage method called “adoptive phased management,” a plan that will see a single central location in the country selected, where a massive hole will be dug about 700 m under the earth and a storage container capable of handling the waste would be constructed. The system will allow the waste to be retrieved if future technologies are discovered how to better dispose of or reuse the nuclear waste. Russell said selection of the storage site is still about two years away, but it could be decades before actual work begins on the site. Yucca Mountain was selected as a storage site in the United States about 30 years ago, however very little work has been done on the site.

“It could be 90 years in the future before the site is operational,” said Russell.

The Canadian selection process was chose after an intense three-year study that included public consultation from both nuclear power supporters and detractors.

“It has been our experience that this tends to bring out people with strong points of view,” said Russell.

Currently, CANDU nuclear waste is held on-site at the nuclear plants across Canada, the majority of which are in Ontario.

Local residents concerned about nuclear waste will be relieved to discover that Canmore would make a pretty lousy nuclear waste dump.

According to Russell, an ideal underground site requires flat land, sedimentary rock, little or no mining history and a central location to the nuclear plants.

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Infoshop News
October 16, 2007

Chernobyl: Coming to a Highway Near You
The Pahrump Valley Times reported just last week the Department of Energy is proposing doubling the size of a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Flats in Nevada. 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.

Chernobyl: Coming to a Highway Near You

The Pahrump Valley Times reported just last week the Department of Energy is proposing doubling the size of a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Flats in Nevada. 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.

At about the same time a German anti-nuclear group said the world’s biggest supplier of enriched uranium, URENCO, is frantically seeking German and Dutch transport licenses to send waste to an open-air dump in Russia before Russia stops the dumping at the latest in 2009.

In Rome anti-Mafia police are investigating eight former directors of the country’s energy agency for alleged illegal trafficking in nuclear waste and “clandestine production of plutonium”. The accusation came after a 12-year inquiry into Mafia involvement in nuclear waste disposal. Mr Basentini said that the Mafia had organised the illegal disposal of nuclear waste at sea, in the Somali desert and at Matera, in southern Italy.

Sounds great, huh?

Well keep in mind nuclear waste likely passes through your burg all the time.

But what's happening today is nothing compared with what may be happening soon.

The same material that blew apart and burned during the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in 1986 – highly radioactive, irradiated nuclear fuel – would be transported through countless communities across the U.S. if the nuclear establishment gets its way. The U.S. Department of Energy proposes shipping tens of thousands of trucks, trains and barges carrying irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste through 45 states and the District of Columbia. DOE wants to dump these highly radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. A nuclear utility consortium called Private Fuel Storage, LLC proposes shipping 4,000 irradiated nuclear fuel railcars to Skull Valley, Utah for "temporary storage." Such proposals dwarf the 2,500 to 3,000 irradiated nuclear fuel shipments that have taken place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Nuclear Age well over 50 years ago.

As reported by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service each truck-sized container of nuclear material would hold up to 40 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The much larger train/barge containers would each hold over 200 times Hiroshima’s long-lasting radioactivity.

These shipping containers are vulnerable to severe accidents. Even a fraction of a single shipping container’s radioactive cargo escaping into the environment could prove catastrophic for an entire area downwind and downstream. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not even require them to undergo full-scale physical safety testing! The containers are also vulnerable to terrorist attack, making them massive “dirty bombs on wheels.”

Then think about that bridge accident near Los Angeles last week.

It is not a pretty picture.

The following is from Media With Conscience News News.

Folly of nuke waste transport plan
15-truck fiery pileup in California highlights folly of nuke waste transport plan

One might recall, last April (2007), when a section of freeway near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames.

One might recall a fire in a tunnel near Baltimore, when a train burned for five days and the heat was estimated at more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, exceeding design limits for nuke waste transport casks. It's easy to forget, because it happened July 18-23, 2001, but we must not forget.

The same tunnel will probably be used to transport nuclear waste from Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant to Yucca Mountain. Over 1000 tons of High Level Nuclear Waste is currently being stored at Calvert Cliffs, requiring hundreds of individual shipments. Every other nuclear power station in America also has many tons of nuclear waste stored dangerously outside the "containment dome."

One might recall (if you were me) that the Department of Energy told me -- when I mentioned the tunnel fire at a hearing on Yucca Mountain, and said "how are you going to guarantee that all those nuke transport vehicles won't get involved in something like that?" -- that they would be tracking all the other trains on all the other tracks that the nuke waste train would go near, so there could never be a combination of a nuke train and a fuel or hazardous / flammable waste train in a tunnel, on a bridge or overpass, or just simply passing each other at the same time. One would have to be very dense -- denser than D.U. -- to believe anything the D.O.E. tells you.

Today's fiery pileup in a California truck tunnel just points out, once again, that the nuke waste problem hasn't been solved. It won't be solved -- transporting waste will always be hazardous, risky, leaky, and foolhardy. But sooner or later, we're going to do it anyway, because the waste has to go somewhere. But transporting the waste won't be safe, and it won't be easy.

"Nuke waste transport routes cover hundreds of thousands of miles of old, dilapidated roadways. Bridges thought to be safe are collapsing around us, yet still the plan moves forward, as if there is no danger. As if the containers will be made magically strong enough to survive anything that can happen. It's a pipe-dream. It's terrorism. Domestic terrorism by our own government against our own citizens."

In today's fire, chunks of concrete and steel fell from the ceiling -- a container of nuke waste could be crushed and breached. Today's pileup happened just thirty miles from Los Angeles and closed one of the most important escape routes out of the city. Nuke waste transport routes cover hundreds of thousands of miles of old, dilapidated roadways. Bridges thought to be safe are collapsing around us, yet still the plan moves forward, as if there is no danger. As if the containers will be made magically strong enough to survive anything that can happen. It's a pipe-dream. It's terrorism. Domestic terrorism by our own government against our own citizens.

But what are our options? We can't leave the waste on the coasts, subject to tsunamis. We can't leave it near population centers. We can't leave it in earthquake zones. We can't just leave it be -- it must be monitored for hundreds of thousands of years. It will cost a bundle. The costs have not been factored in to the price you pay for nuclear-generated electricity, no matter what the nuclear industry claims to the contrary.

What about Yucca Mountain, I hear some naive pro-nukers cry! "That will solve our problem once and for all!"

No it won't. It won't even solve our problem once, let alone, for all time. Yucca Mountain probably will never be completed because 1) The people of Nevada have a say in their future, and they hate it. and 2) It's a scientific failure and a financial boondoggle, and 3) Even if built, it would only hold today's waste -- if that. It won't hold the waste the nuclear industry plans to make tomorrow.

Nuclear power is a crime against humanity. To call it anything less is an understatement. Nuclear power's supporters, with almost zero exceptions, all make a living, or made a living, from within the nuclear industry.

Nuclear reactors generate about 20,000 pounds -- 10 tons -- of high-level radioactive waste each day in America alone -- 100,000 pounds of new "HLRW" worldwide every day.

The day must come when this madness stops. Many pro-DNA people ("anti-nukers" is the term pro-nukers use, but we're really just "pro-DNA") believe that only a severe accident will stop the juggernaut. But humanity cannot wait for that -- the cost -- trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives -- would be too great to bear. It would bankrupt America, or any country it happens to.

Sanity -- stopping nuclear power entirely and immediately -- is the only choice.

That, or hell on earth. If you think a 15-truck fiery pileup in a truck tunnel in California, or a 5,000 degree fire in Baltimore, Maryland, or leaky containers along routes that pass within a few miles of 200 million Americans are bad things, then you need to protest not just "new" nuclear power, but "old" nuclear power, too. A closed reactor is much less vulnerable to terrorism, human error, environmental catastrophes, and aging ("embrittlement") accidents than an operating reactor, and perhaps most important, it's no longer generating new nuclear waste.

Nuclear power was a dream of cheap energy that failed miserably. It's time to put the nightmare to rest.

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

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Atlantic Free Press
October 16, 2007

Browne, Raitt and Nash reunite to fight nuke plant funding

Ed Kociela

Not much has changed in nearly 30 years.

Back in the 70s, musicians Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash led a group of activists concerned about nuclear power, waste and the poisoning of the planet from this garbage.

It all came together with a series of five concerts at Madison Square Garden in 1979. The "No Nukes" effort raised public awareness and fed a growing disenchantment with the concept of nuclear power.

Browne, Raitt and Nash are back together again, this time putting their name at the top of a petition to Congress to oppose a section of the Senate Energy Bill, currently before them, that would give $25 million in 2008 and another $25 million in 2009 to build new nuclear reactors.

There's a lot wrong with the Senate version of this bill.

First of all, everything always comes back to money.

Putting $50 million on the table for starters decreases the funds available to pursue alternative energy resources. Browne, Raitt and Nash point to a plant under construction in Finland. It is 18 months behind schedule and $900 million over budget. That's not a tab I want to be hit with as a taxpayer, nor should we drop this burden on our children and grandchildren.

The main factor, of course, is the danger these reactors create.

They super-heat rivers and streams; contribute to global warming through mining, milling and transportation of whole or waste products; they offer prime targets for terror attacks; they can melt themselves down, such as the case in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

There is no safe nuclear option.

The Department of Energy had glorious plans of taking the nation's nuclear waste and storing it in a dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The plan is flawed.

The site is susceptible to water leakage and sits atop an active seismic fault. The routes to deliver the waste follow many of our most traveled highways through beautiful rural and urban settings that risk the population to exposure in the event of an accident or terror attack.

There are safer, more coherent options out there to protect the planet and its people, from wind, solar and bio-fuels to ocean thermal energy.

For years, we've heard Congress and White House administrations talk a lot about alternative fuel development. Not enough has been done, however, to advance the discoveries of these fuels to put them on the market.

A number of activists have already signed the petition, as have such important organizations as Physicians for Social Responsibility, Nuclear Energy Information Service, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility and tons of others.

You can do something by going to www.nukefree.org and signing the petition. Browne, Raitt and Nash will deliver the petition to Congress during a press conference on Lobby Day on Oct. 22.

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation has produced a video that offers even more information on the dangers of nuclear power, set to an adapted version of Stephen Stills' song "For What It's Worth."

No matter how lame we may think Congress has become, it's still our responsibility to send the message: "No Nukes!"

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Huffington Post
October 15, 2007

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Harry Shearer

I was but a babe when the Atomic Age began -- babe in the infant sense, babe -- and a mere tot when the decision was made to tame the mighty atom. Viewed from this distance, Atoms for Peace (as the taming project was called) seems impossibly wrongheaded, an invitation to mischief, suspicions of mischief and mischievous suspicions of mischief.

Atoms for Peace, announced with grandiose fanfare by President Eisenhower, was the launching of the civilian nuclear-power industry. No longer was the split atom to be the symbol only of hideous warfare on a scale unimaginable to humans before Hiroshima; now our smiling atomic friend was to power the all-electric homes of our future, a cheerful accomplice to nothing more threatening than Westinghouse and General Electric. Better yet, countries that cowered in fear of our nuclear might would soon become happy customers of our nuclear bounty.

Flash forward half a century, and both Iran and, more recently, Syria stand as testimony to the lunatic flaw in that strategy. If the same technology, embodied in the same infrastructure, can be used either (or both) for peace and war, one's ability to detect preparations for war is seriously, if not fatally, compromised. And a country which intends nothing more than the ego boost (and power boost) of a civilian nuke plant may not mind a bit of vagueness about whether the centrifuge array can enrich to greater than three percent, the way Saddam didn't mind a bit of vagueness about his capabilities, just to keep the nasty neighbors in check. When the vagueness proves to be, or can be used to seem, truly threatening, as we learned in 2003, it can be too late for all concerned.

How much easier this current moment would have been if nukes were weapons of war, period. Of course, then we wouldn't be looking at a nearly $60 billion bill for the country's only high-level nuclear waste disposal facility, Yucca Mountain, years away from opening, and only a couple of decades from closing, having reached its storage capacity. Then, while the Mountain only has to protect its contents for the next several thousand years (warning signs are to be erected in less than a dozen current human languages -- save your dictionaries, folks), our mid-century quest will be for the next storage site, and the next.

But how much easier life on the world stage would be, as well. Indonesia wouldn't at this very moment be contemplating nuclear plants near the site of active volcanoes, and A.Q. Khan might be far better known (and perhaps even prosecuted) as a lunatic rogue threat to world peace, having sold or given nuclear knowhow and technology to, among others, Libya, North Korea and Iran, from his position as the father of Pakistan's A-bomb.

Atoms for Peace allowed everything to be fudged. We just need a clean source of electricity, the plant-builders say. They're hiding their true intentions, the war-mongers say.

And we, trapped in the great middle, can just say, "Thanks a lot, Ike. Next life, try promoting Heroin for Peace."

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Portsmouth Herald News
October 15, 2007

Case made for nuclear energy

Ex-EPA head: It must be part of energy mix

By Shir Haberman
shaberman@seacoastonline.com

PORTSMOUTH — Thirty-five to 40 new nuclear power plants need to be built soon or the country will not have enough energy to supply commercial, industrial and residential needs by 2030, says Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and former director of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Whitman is now co-chairman of the CASEnergy Coalition, a large grass-roots coalition that unites unlikely allies across the business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. CASEnergy believes nuclear energy can improve energy security, ensure clean air quality, and enhance the quality of life and economic well-being of all Americans, according to its Web site, www.cleansafeenergy.org.

"Nuclear is one of the options we need to look at," Whitman said during a telephone interview with the Herald.

The inability of the federal government to fulfill the promise it made to the nuclear industry to open a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada can be solved, Whitman said.

"The waste issue is not a science issue, it's a political issue," she said. "Those concerns (about seismic and water leakage at the proposed repository) can be addressed."

Another answer to the waste problem is for the United States to begin recycling nuclear fuel, a process Whitman contends will ease the burden on Yucca Mountain and produce reusable nuclear fuel from spent fuel rods. She brushed aside concerns that a byproduct of recycling is weapons-grade plutonium and that creating more of this substance creates the risk of some of it getting into the hands of international terrorists groups.

"I have been told there are ways of rendering (the plutonium) unfit for nuclear weapons," said Whitman, while admitting she had no knowledge of how that would be done. "It would cost more, but I think it is a worthwhile cost."

Whitman also had no specific information on just how those new nuclear plants would be configured or their size in terms of megawatts of electricity produced. She said that to her knowledge, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now looking at three designs that could be approved.

Whitman said her purpose in contacting the media is to begin the debate on the nuclear issue. "This is not a partisan issue, it is not a political issue, it's a policy issue. ... Nuclear alone won't get us to where we need to be, but we won't get there without it."

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Nevada Appeal
October 14, 2007

Thoughts on immigration, Yucca Mountain and Ruvo

Guy W. Farmer

Last month I wrote about arrogant U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials who believe that they can defy federal court orders in their unseemly haste to open a huge nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain only 90 miles north of Las Vegas, the nation's fastest growing city. After asserting that they had the right to ignore a federal court order barring them from using state water to drill test holes at the dump site, they now want to double the size of the so-called "repository" in defiance of our elected representatives and more than 70 percent of Nevada residents. Truly, DOE arrogance knows no bounds.

A couple of weeks ago a high-ranking DOE bureaucrat told the House Budget Committee that his Department wants to expand the nuclear waste dump's capacity from 77,000 tons of highly toxic nuclear waste to 150,000 tons. And furthermore, Yucca Mountain Project Director Ward Sproat told Congress that DOE would need more than $77 billion (that's "b" for billion) to complete the project, a 35-percent increase over the $57.5 billion that DOE projected in 2001 - an illustrative example of how DOE is spending your hard-earned federal tax dollars. Can you say "fleecing of America?"

To their credit, Nevada officials immediately fired back at Sproat. "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," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told the Associated Press. And Nevada Nuclear Projects Chief Bob Loux branded as "invalid and likely illegal" an environmental study outlining the super-sizing proposal. According to the AP, the study's release came as DOE ramps-up efforts to meet a June 30, 2008, deadline for submission of an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to operate the huge toxic dump in a state that doesn't generate any nuclear waste.

Originally, DOE planned to open the Yucca Mountain dump by 1998 but the original timetable has been slowed by lawsuits, quality control concerns and funding shortfalls, thanks to Sen. Reid and Nevada's bipartisan congressional delegation. As a result, DOE has pushed back the target opening date to 2017, or later. With luck, however, it will never open.

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Foster's Daily Democrat
October 14, 2007

License extension in offing for Seabrook Station

By Robert M. Cook
Staff Writer
bcook@fosters.com

Seabrook Station officials say they have no plans to bring a second nuclear reactor online, but they may apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew the power plant's license in the future.

Al Griffin, a Seabrook Station spokesman, said the plant is in the 21st year of its 40-year license, which was granted in 1986. He said the plant's owners could apply for the renewal, but could not say when.

But, he said, there are "no plans, and there is nothing on the horizon" regarding a second reactor, for which the plant already is licensed.

David McIntyre, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman at the agency's headquarters in Rockland, Md., said Seabrook Station's license expires on Oct. 17, 2026.

The plant's owner, Florida Power & Light Energy of Juno Beach, Fla., had not filed any letters of intent or applications for a license renewal as of Friday afternoon, McIntyre said.

Renewal licenses extend a power plant's life by 20 years.

The NRC has granted 42 reactor renewals so far, he said.

"There's no restriction on the number of times they can renew, but no one has applied more than once," McIntyre said.

The NRCrecommends nuclear plant operators begin the renewal process at least five years before the facility's current license expires. Some operators choose to give themselves much more lead time, McIntyre said.

Several steps are required for a renewal.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board holds a public hearing, giving all parties a chance to discuss why a plant should or should not have its license renewed.

Federal regulators also examine the plant, including the safety of its emergency core cooling system, the condition of its reactor vessel and the piping in the cooling system, McIntyre said.

If the NRC fails to finish the review process before the plant's license expires, the agency grants an exemption so the plant can keep operating until the review is done, he said.

Until recently, a great deal of the NRC's work revolved around license renewals, he said.

But the nuclear industry is seeing a resurgence, and the NRC will be busy reviewing new projects, McIntyre said.

In September, the agency, for the first time in nearly 30 years, received an application to build new reactors. The NRC also expects to receive 21 applications through 2009 from companies seeking to build 32 reactors. Also, 15 firms are expected to apply to build uranium enrichment facilities to provide nuclear fuel, McIntyre said.

Seabrook Station's parent company and a subsidiary plan to apply to build two more reactors at their Turkey Point complex in Florida by 2020, according to information provided by the businesses, the FPL Group Inc. and the Florida, Power & Light Company, a principal FPL Group subsidiary.

Seabrook's second reactor site dome was deconstructed in 2005.

Griffin said he believes support for nuclear energy never has been stronger than it is now.

"There is nothing like experience, and the industry has matured and come a long way," he said. "It is gratifying to hear this growing support for nuclear energy and for Seabrook Station."

But he would not speculate on whether New Hampshire citizens or the cities and towns in the plant's 10-mile radius would support a second reactor.

Seabrook Station had to overcome four years of legal challenges between 1986 and 1990 before it got its operating license from the NRC, Griffith said.

Thousands of protesters tried to block the plant's construction in the mid-1970s. Fifteen years after Seabrook Station began generating power, it has not had any problems, Griffith said.

He called the station, which produces about 1,220 megawatts of power, New Hampshire's largest electricity producer. It can produce enough power for more than one million homes at peak efficiency, he estimated.

Fred Welch, Hampton's town manager, said he thinks public attitudes about Seabrook Station have changed over the years. He said since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, people tend to be more concerned about the plant's security than its operation.

Hampton's year-round population of 16,000 residents swells to as many as 100,000 during the summer at Hampton Beach, which overlooks Seabrook Station, Welch said.

He served as Seabrook's town administrator for four years and said he lives near the plant.

If Seabrook proposed building a second reactor, Welch said people likely "would be more receptive compared to 20, 30 years ago."

"People are frightened about what's going to happen when the oil runs out," he said.

Sandra Gravutis, executive director for the C-10 Research & Education Foundation in Newburyport, Mass., said anti-nuclear power groups like hers, the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League in Portsmouth and others would stage protest marches if Seabrook Station announced plans to build a second reactor.

She said she's not sure how the general public would react.

"The problem is that the industry has lulled the public to believe everything is fine," she said. "Unfortunately, it took 9-11 to bring this country to its knees and show how vulnerable we are."

Her group continues to urge the State of New Hampshire to take notice of the stored nuclear waste Seabrook Station must keep on site until the Yucca Mountain Central Repository in Nevada is ready to receive it.

The waste continues to be a tempting terrorist target, she said.

--Robert M. Cook can be reached by calling 742-4455, ext. 5396 or via e-mail at bcookfosters.com.

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Foster's Daily Democrat
October 14, 2007

Dozens of new nuclear projects to be reviewed

By Robert M. Cook
Staff Writer
bcook@fosters.com

Nuclear power is hot these days.

Federal regulators expect to get 21 applications through 2009 from companies seeking to build 32 nuclear reactors. Also, 15 firms are expected to apply to build uranium enrichment facilities to provide nuclear fuel, said David McIntyre, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman at the federal agency's headquarters in Rockland, Md.

The firms that own Seabrook Station in New Hampshire also plans to apply to build two more reactors at the Turkey Point complex in Florida by 2020, according to information provided by the businesses, the FPL Group Inc. and the Florida, Power & Light Company, a principal FPL Group subsidiary. The projects would provide 3,000 more megawatts of electricity to Florida, according to company officials.

The companies also plan to add 400 megawatts to existing reactors at the Turkey Point, Miami-Dade County and St. Lucie nuclear plants.

"Nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases, and that is vital as we all work to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are at the heart of climate change concerns," FPL President Armando Olivera said in an August statement. "Moreover, adding more nuclear power will further diversify our fuel mix, which should contribute to increased price stability for our customers."

The NRC received one formal nuclear reactor license application in September — its first in 29 years. It came from two companies that want to build two reactors in Texas, McIntyre said.

NRG Energy Inc., of Princeton, N.J., and South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company of Bay City, Texas, filed the application, to build two reactors that will produce 2,700 megawatts of electricity — enough to power up to two million homes, according to information from the companies.

McIntyre said the NRC also hopes to begin its licensing review for the Yucca Mountain Central Repository in Nevada in June. The repository will store all nuclear waste produced by the nation's nuclear plants.

The project, approved by Congress, has been held up by numerous court challenges filed by the state of Nevada.

The NRC also hopes to hire 400 staff members to assist with the license review process, McIntyre said. The employees would replace an estimated 200 workers who soon will retire as well as add another 200 people to work on each proposed project's license review, McIntyre said.

"It's a good time to be studying physics, geology, hydrogeology, mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering," he added.

He called energy legislation that became law in 2005 a catalyst for the industry, though momentum was building for quite some time before then, he said.

The bill's incentives included a 1.8-cent-per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit for electricity made by new nuclear power. The bill also provides for insurance to protect investors if litigation causes unexpected delays for a project.

Some recent nationwide polls show more Americans are more willing than in the past to give nuclear power a chance. For example, a Bloomberg-Los Angeles Times poll between July 28 and Aug. 1, 2006 showed 61 percent supported more nuclear power, compared to 30 percent who opposed it and 9 percent who were unsure.

The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,478 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

A CBS-New York Times poll released on June 1 showed 51 percent of those questioned supported the construction of nuclear plants, compared to 42 percent who opposed it and 7 percent who were unsure.

The poll, taken from April 20 to April 24, involved telephone interviews with 1,052 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus of 3 percentage points.

Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow focusing on the environment and energy for the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, Texas, said the Northeast traditionally has been cool to the idea of adding more nuclear power.

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch and Maine Gov. John Baldacci, both Democrats, previously have said they wouldn't support expanding plants or building new ones in their states.

Democratic New Hampshire Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter also indicated this week that she favors the development of alternative energy, such as wind and solar power, over nuclear energy.

"People in my district fought long and bitterly to keep Seabrook from being built, and they would not accept any expansion there,"she said in a statement. "Today, we are still partly dependent upon nuclear power, but our nation needs to find clean, safe, reliable, and renewable sources of energy."

Seabrook Station has operated since 1990. It is licensed to have two nuclear reactors, but has only one. Company officials have said they don't plan to bring a second reactor online. The plant generates 1,220 megawatts of electricity, enough to power up to two million homes.

In Maine, Maine Yankee was located on Montsweag Bay in Wiscasset and was the state's top generator of electricity for 25 years, according to the company. Maine Yankee had a federal license to operate for 40 years, until 2008, but the plant's board of directors decided to close it in 1997.

Burnett argues that renewable energy will not be enough to meet New England's future power needs and the region may have to accept more nuclear power.

Meanwhile, states in the Southeast and West realize nuclear power is the best way to meet energy needs while cutting greenhouse gases, Burnett said.

--Robert M. Cook can be reached by calling 742-4455, ext. 5396 or via e-mail at bcookfosters.com.

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Pahrump Valley Times
October 13, 2007

For Yucca, size doesn't matter

By Mark Waite
PVT

The 90-day comment period on a supplemental environmental impact statement, or EIS, to allow more storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is expected to begin today.

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management announced last week it was analyzing increasing the effects of building a repository built to hold up to 135,000 metric tons of high level nuclear waste, or about double the 70,000 tons authorized by Congress.

Bob Gamble, the Nye County representative at the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, said it could be spring 2009 before Congress can vote on permitting the additional storage. The additional storage capacity would mean a longer period of time the nuclear waste would be passing through Nye County to the site, Gamble said.

A base inventory of 70,000 metric tons in 2002 also considered additional inventories of nuclear waste. "So the fact that the EIS is looking at the possibility of additional inventory is not new," Gamble said.

The county's point man on nuclear waste, Gamble speculated the additional waste could be stored at another mountain range just west of Yucca Mountain. But he said there are numerous possibilities for expansion.

Cash Jaszczak, with Nevada operations of SRS Technologies, said "there's a lot of different dynamics that go into this ... The repository as envisioned with its legislative limits was going to be filled before it was opened, so to speak."

Projections are 70,000 tons of nuclear waste already stored at the nation's 104 nuclear reactors to fill the repository by 2010. The latest projections are the Yucca Mountain facility may not be open until somewhere between 2017 and 2022.

"Anybody who thinks we're not going to have any changes and adjustments to this process as we move forward has to have no sense of history, because that's exactly what's happened up to this point," Jaszczak said.

Dave Swanson, assistant project administrator of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Office, said the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the director of the Office of Civilian Waste Management, Ward Sproat, to make a recommendation by 2010 on a second nuclear waste repository to be located in the East. Gamble said Sproat is likely to give that recommendation either late this year or early in 2008.

When asked the county's position on the expanded repository proposal, Jaszczak referred to the Nye County Community Protection Plan, which discusses protecting the health and safety of county residents and gainng economic benefits from the project.

The county's analysis would be that 80 percent of the 3,000 workers at Yucca Mountain would live in Nye County, the opposite of the Nevada Test Site whose 80 percent of the workers live in Clark County, Gamble said.

"When the law was passed and Yucca Mountain was selected, Nye County had no say in it. That decision was made by others elsewhere, and the most Nye County can hope for is to make this a success," Jaszczak said.

While Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has pledged the Yucca Mountain repository will never happen, Jaszczak noted the House of Representatives recently voted 350-81 against a motion by U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., to kill funding for the project.

The damages the utility companies are seeking for delays in the project are another factor influencing the DOE right now, Gamble said.

"So between DOE progress toward licensing, what the choices are for the second repository, damages for failure to accept the waste, those are going to get people's attention," Gamble said.

Another factor complicating the situation is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which will present an EIS on recycling nuclear waste. The partnership hasn't made any recommendations or decisions yet, so the DOE can't make any decisions about reprocessing at this point, Gamble said.

Speaking of the proposed reprocessing of nuclear waste, Gamble said that "will give us another supply of fuel for reactors; it would reduce the volume and radiological toxicity of the waste that has to be disposed of at Yucca Mountain."

The Nye County Nuclear Waste Project Office will have representatives at each of the eight public hearings scheduled on the latest EIS, Lacey said.

Mineral County residents will have the first chance to comment, with a public hearing Nov. 13 at the Hawthorne Convention Center.

After meetings in Caliente and Reno, a public hearing is scheduled from 4 to 7 p.m. Nov. 26 at the LongStreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa Valley. The hearings move to the Goldfield School Gymnasium at 4 p.m., Nov. 27. From there the DOE moves to public hearings in Lone Pine, Calif., Nov. 29, the Cashman Center in Las Vegas Dec. 3 and Washington, D.C., Dec. 6.

Jaszczak said the amount of money Nye County receives for oversight of the project is influenced more by the total budget for the Yucca Mountain project than by the size of the facility.

Swanson said judging from the response at the nuclear waste and environmental advisory board booth at the Pahrump Fall Festival last weekend, there may not be much of a local outcry over a larger repository.

"We talked to a lot of people, a whole lot of people stopped by. There was one woman who expressed anxiety about nuclear material, one person out of everybody we talked to over a period of three days and I was absolutely surprised by that," Swanson said.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which is composed of members opposed to Yucca Mountain, will meet at Las Vegas City Hall at 10:30 a.m. today. It will be the first meeting attended by Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts, who was appointed to the committee by Gov. Jim Gibbons last summer.

Requests for additional information may be submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, 1551 Hillshire Dr., Las Vegas, Nev. 89134, by calling 1-800-967-3477 or faxing 1-800-967-0739. Written comments may be submitted to the same address and fax, or logging on to www.ocrwm.doe.gov.

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KLAS-TV
October 13, 2007

Two Nuke Waste Trucking Routes Proposed Through Las Vegas

Edward Lawrence

The state commission formed to fight the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain says the timetable is politically motivated.

The head of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects says the Department of Energy wants to ram through the license for the nuclear waste repository before the current president leaves office.

Eyewitness News has uncovered new information about transportation and safety, which could impact the entire Las Vegas Valley.

More trucks with spent high level nuclear waste would be rolling through Las Vegas than first thought according to two more supplemental drafts of the Environmental Impact Study released relating to the overall project.

Friday, the state agency fighting the Yucca Mountain repository was briefed about the fine print in the reports. This is a fight that has the state of Nevada hunkered down behind a collective "not in my back yard" approach.

Elected officials from Nevada, including the governor to the most powerful senator in the United States all say storing nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain repository would endanger our health, way of life, and future.

The executive director of the state agency fighting the federal government says new Department of Energy reports validate the fears.

Bob Loux, with the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said, "We have seen documents from Sandia [in New Mexico] that say schedule is more important than scientific integrity. Schedule is more important than anything else. Others that say if we don't make the June filing date the DOE has told us we are all out of jobs."

Loux says the Department of Energy is recklessly rushing to submit a license application to open the nuclear waste dump before President George Bush leaves office so it can be rubber stamped.

"There are only going to be 30-percent of the designs for these facilities available. There is not going to be emergency plans and plans for retrieval available because they don't have time to do them," Bob Loux continued.

Also, Loux says the Department of Energy added an 11th hour plan into new environmental impact draft statements. The latest surprise shows the numbers of high level nuclear waste shipments on Nevada roads will more than double what was originally proposed.

The new report shows 2,700 truck shipments would come in on two possible routes: Interstate 15 to US-95, or Interstate 15 to the 215 Beltway to US-95.

That goes through Las Vegas City Councilman Larry Brown's district.

Councilman Brown said, "Then you start impacting communities like Sun City Summerlin. You are getting into the core of residential areas in Southern Nevada. The politics will raise itself at this stage of the game."

The Department of Energy says no formal trucking route has been selected. The federal agency also says the license application will meet all rules and regulations.

Clark County recently did a study showing 76-percent of residents oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Following that information, the state formally asked the city of Las Vegas and Clark County to become partners in the fight. Up to now both local governments officially watched from the sidelines.

The city's sub-committee on Yucca issues will meet soon to discuss entering an agreement. The county commission will be briefed on the issue over the next month.

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KVBC-3
October 13, 2007

DOE's Yucca deadline looming

There's new optimism that the Yucca Mountain Project will never store nuclear waste northwest of Las Vegas. That's according to Richard Bryan, a former governor of our state.

He was among those telling southern Nevada officials what's recently changed in the fight against Yucca, and what's at stake for all of us. News 3's Mitch Truswell reports.

June 8, 2008. It's a deadline for the Department of Energy. That's the day the DOE has to complete its license application to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Many don't think the DOE will make it.

"It's (the project) really on life support and this attempt to get this license application in by June 8 is a last ditch effort to breathe life back into the project," Joseph Strolin with the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects said.

"From the state's perspective, I am more optimistic today than I have ever been," former Nevada governor Bryan said added. Now that's not to suggest we fold our tents, declare victory and go home. Because the nuclear power industry is a formidable presence on Capital Hill; they spend a fortune lobbying this."

So what's changed? Two of the big supporters in Congress are on their way out. Senator Larry Craig will leave office at the end of his term, maybe sooner. Senator Pete Domenici, the ranking member on the Energy Committee, has announced he won't seek reelection.

There are other concerns. Years after work began at the site, evidence seemed to show an earthquake fault line was running through the repository. That caused many state officials to question the DOE's expert opinions.

In the DOE's favor, while many people say they're opposed to the repository, it fails to draw a big crowd during public hearings. That may change, state officials think, once it becomes known how nuclear waste will get to Nevada.

The Department of Energy has a much different take on the issue. Spokesman Allen Benson said:

I'm not sure Congress would appropriate money for a program that was not needed or necessary. We're complying with the congressional will. We've been directed to develop a repository for the nation, and that's what we're doing.

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MWC News
October 13, 2007

Folly of nuke waste transport plan

Investigating Reports
By Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

15-truck fiery pileup in California highlights folly of nuke waste transport plan

One might recall, last April (2007), when a section of freeway near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames.

What about Yucca Mountain, I hear some naive pro-nukers cry! "That will solve our problem once and for all!"

Nuclear reactors generate about 20,000 pounds -- 10 tons -- of high-level radioactive waste each day in America alone -- 100,000 pounds of new "HLRW" worldwide every day.

Sanity -- stopping nuclear power entirely and immediately -- is the only choice.

Nuclear power was a dream of cheap energy that failed miserably. It's time to put the nightmare to rest.

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Epoch Times
October 13, 2007
Nuclear Power’s New Dawn

Caylan Ford and Matthew Little

Epoch Times Staff

Once synonymous with cash pits, bureaucratic incompetence and environmental disasters, nuclear is now experiencing a resurgence in popularity around the world, sending demand for uranium sky-high.

That’s big news for uranium-rich countries like Canada, which produces 28 percent of the world’s uranium supply. But the heightened demand has also stirred up controversies in Canada, where some are still nervous about the environmental and political implications.

In total 13 countries are in the process of building new nuclear reactors. According to the World Nuclear Association, more than 34 reactors are currently under construction, 81 are planned, and over 223 more are being proposed.

For the first time since 1978, the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission is receiving applications for new plants, and a flood of them, at that. The commission expects to receive five applications in 2007 and 14 more in 2008.

The British government is breathing new life into its aging nuclear power industry and making it easier to build new reactors by removing legal and bureaucratic barriers. Several other European countries such Finland and France are actively pursuing their nuclear programs with new reactors. China expects to quadruple its nuclear power output by 2020; and India and Russia also have major expansion plans.

Even in Australia, which has shunned nuclear power in spite of being one of the world’s largest uranium suppliers, Prime Minister John Howard has conceded that nuclear power is an inevitability.

It’s not without reason. Unlike oil, which tends to be located in politically unstable nations such as Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela, the world’s largest uranium deposits lie mostly in Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan. Nuclear power is also relatively inexpensive to produce, although reactors are massively expensive to construct.

Perhaps most importantly, in today’s political climate, nuclear power is an effective way to curb the carbon emissions produced by coal and gas power, which are widely believed to be causing global warming.

Yes, But …

And as new and refurbished reactors come online, the demand for uranium is soaring. Uranium prices have leaped to 15 times what they were in 2001. The pricing boom has reinvigorated Canada’s uranium mining industry, but important questions remain.

Among the leading concerns related to the rejuvenation of the nuclear power industry is the issue of nuclear waste disposal. Most countries with nuclear reactors agree that burying the spent fuel deep underground is the best option for disposal, yet no such long-term receptacles yet exist.

The United States has 55,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in temporary storage waiting for such a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada that is still in the process of receiving regulatory approval. At the earliest, that facility wouldn't be operation until 2017.

One possible solution has been proposed by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a U.S.-led initiative that seeks to expand peaceful use of nuclear energy while safeguarding against nuclear weapon proliferation. As a condition for membership, uranium-producing nations must agree to accept, process, and dispose of the spent nuclear fuel from other member states. Canada is not a member of the GNEP, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper was involved in discussions during the APEC summit in Sydney, Australia, over joining the partnership—a move that stirred indignation back home.

"The Bush nuclear program would turn Canada into an international radioactive waste dump," said Greenpeace Energy Coordinator Dave Martin.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion suggested the proposal be subject to public debate before Canada sign on. Canada has not yet decided if it will join the GNEP, though it did send an observer to the group’s conference in Vienna on September 16.

Interestingly, Australia—the world’s second-larges uranium exporter—signed onto the GNEP at the Vienna conference, but refused to accept spent fuel.

Uranium Mining

Many in Canada also take issue with the uranium mines themselves, citing land contested claims and concerns about possible contamination.

Some of the strongest opposition to uranium mining is coming from aboriginal communities who say provincial governments are handing out mining permits on traditional territories that were never ceded to the Canadian government.

Organic farmer David Gill is an adopted Algonquin, one of Canada's First Nations peoples. He recently completed a canoe trip from the headwaters of the Mississippi watershed to the Ottawa River to protest the expansion of uranium mining.

Gill took water from the headwaters and then poured it on the steps of Canada's parliament building to remind government that even distant mining sites can have huge impacts downriver.

“The water gets contaminate and when it seeps out, it gets into the watershed and causes all kinds of problems,” he said.

First Nations have blockaded access to a uranium exploration site near Sharbot Lake despite a court injunction ordering them to leave. Supporters say the delay will allow time to bring about a moratorium on uranium mining.

Gill says he and others will continue to fight against uranium mining because of the threat it poses to the environment and future generations. They are calling on the government to explore other alternative forms of energy.

Martin agrees, saying that he is also concerned about the environmental impacts of mining uranium. He points to environmental disasters in Canada's history as evidence of what can go wrong.

Martin says in the early 50s and 60s a lack of regulation allowed companies to dump tailings from uranium mining in the Elliot Lake basin in Ontario.

Contaminated water flowed through the Serpent River and the tailings acidified the water and killed off life in the river.

Canada’s First Nation peoples used to take drinking water directly from the river. Martin said many died from cancer as a result of the contamination. Birth defects were also common, he said.

“It really was an environmental disaster of major proportions.”

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Concord Monitor
October 13, 2007

Christie Whitman on the road for nuclear energy

By Lauren R. Dorgan
Monitor staff

Nuclear power is a crucial part of America's energy future, former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman said yesterday.

The United States is projected to use 40 percent more electricity by 2030, Whitman said. Right now, nuclear supplies about one-fifth of American power - and if that ratio is going to be kept up, the nation will need 35 to 40 new nuclear plants by then, she said.

Whitman, co-chairwoman of the nuclear-industry-funded Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, delivered her pro-nuclear message to a climate change conference in Manchester and in an interview with the Monitor.

"As one environmentalist said to me, if you're worried about asthma, care about climate change, you've got to start thinking about nuclear," she said. "Because nuclear is the only base form of power that does not emit any greenhouse gases."

Whitman served as EPA administrator at the beginning of President Bush's tenure. She resigned in 2003, after sparring with the White House over the limits on power plant regulations known as new source review.

She said that as governor she'd been a part of lawsuits against power plants that polluted New Jersey's air. "I wasn't going to sign a regulation that was going to undermine those cases," she said.

"It was clear to me after two-and-a-half years of arguing this back and forth that the levels were going to be set such that we were going to lose most of those cases," she said. "The president was elected, not me, so he had a right to set those policies."

People who are worried about carbon emissions from gas and coal-filed power plants should consider nuclear, she said. "It's great to say no to everything, but how are you going to meet that demand? Conservation and renewables will only get you so far," said Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey.

At present, renewable sources like wind and solar produce 2.5 percent of American's energy. "So if you double or triple that, which is really putting a strain on that industry, you're still not going to get to the 40 percent," she said.

Whitman pointed to the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which sparked nationwide concern and new regulation of the nuclear industry, as a success of sorts. No one died or suffered injuries in the accident, she said.

"There were mechanical failures there, but everything that was put in place to protect the public worked. No worker glowed in the dark," she said.

Waste is one of the thorniest issues in nuclear power. Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been selected as the repository of nuclear waste, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has vowed to block the project.

"That is a political science issue, not a nuclear science issue," Whitman said. But she pointed to France, which gets nearly 80 percent of its power from nuclear plants.

The technology developed and used there is so superior that 96 or 97 percent of the fissionable material in a spent rod is recycled, Whitman said. The key to giving American companies to develop that kind of technology is showing them that nuclear is worth investing in.

"If companies see that nuclear is going to be a part of the future, it becomes a necessity to use that power," she said.

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KVBC
October 12, 2007

DOE's Yucca deadline looming

There's new optimism that the Yucca Mountain Project will never store nuclear waste northwest of Las Vegas. That's according to Richard Bryan, a former governor of our state.

He was among those telling southern Nevada officials what's recently changed in the fight against Yucca, and what's at stake for all of us. News 3's Mitch Truswell reports.

The Department of Energy has a much different take on the issue. Spokesman Allen Benson said:

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North County Times
October 12, 2007

Unleash power of the atom

North County Times Opinion staff

Our view: It's time to lift California's ban on new nuclear energy plants

Sixty years into the Atomic Age, apocalypse has not yet been visited upon us. That fact and our surging demand for energy compel Californians to seriously consider the effort by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, to overturn the state's 1976 moratorium on nuclear power plants.

With California's population predicted to rise 36 percent by 2050 to almost 60 million people, energy demand seems likely to keep growing.

Those arguing against the need for more nuclear power, especially in coastal California, are losing ground ---- almost literally, as concerns grow over rising sea levels due to global warming. A tough new state law that seeks to cut greenhouse gases by 25 percent all but requires new nuclear reactors.

Clearly, Californians want to stop relying on dirty fossil fuels, such as coal, for electricity production. But there is little evidence that clean alternative energies ---- wind, solar, geothermal or wave-generated ---- can meet increased demand. That leaves nuclear.

Although nuclear energy production will never be safe enough to satisfy opponents, advances in technology promise to reduce the already remote chance of a catastrophic meltdown.

Opponents stand on sturdier ground when they warn about the lack of storage for nuclear waste. Fortunately, the United States built the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada for precisely that purpose. It is primarily politics that prevents us from using that facility.

More nuclear power will mean building new generators at old sites, like San Onofre. Though its vulnerability to tsunamis and earthquakes shakes our confidence in our nearby site, building a state-of-the-art, smarter reactor there won't tip the safety equation on the site significantly.

We support striving for cleaner air, reduced reliance on fossil fuels and lower greenhouse emissions. Like it or not, those goals won't be achieved without more help from nuclear power.

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Grist Magazine
October 11, 2007

Tancredo on the Issues

A look at Tom Tancredo's environmental platform and record

Environmental and energy issues don't seem to be top priorities for Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo. He rarely mentions them on the stump and he doesn't highlight them on his campaign website. When he does talk about his vision for America's energy system, he calls for reliance on the free market rather than regulation, and -- like everyone else -- stresses the importance of reducing U.S. consumption of foreign oil. His lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters is 11 percent.

Key Points

Says Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is the last book of fiction he's read.

Says global warming appears to be happening, but argues that the jury is still out on whether human activity is responsible. "There's plenty of reliable research on both sides," he says.

Opposes a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Supports expansion of nuclear power, as well as storage of nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

Supports continued use of coal as an energy source, including liquefied coal.

Supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore in U.S. waters.

Calls for decreasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

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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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