Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, November 2, 2007
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Senator Harry Reid
October 31, 2007
Reid Testifies at Senate Committee on Yucca Mountain Licensing Process
Washington D.C.- U.S. Senator Harry Reid testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works’ oversight hearing on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
“This was a great day for Nevada to get our concerns about the licensing process on record,” said Reid. “This is a step in the right direction that gets us that much closer to putting the final nail in the coffin that is Yucca Mountain.”
Reid called into question the integrity of the licensing process and raised questions about the security of the proposed dump. Reid also discussed the importance of the Federal Accountability for Nuclear Waste Storage Act. The legislation, introduced by Reid and John Ensign earlier this year, calls for nuclear waste to be safely stored at the facilities where it is produced, rather than shipping it thousands of miles across the country to Nevada.
Later this afternoon Reid is scheduled to hold a press conference with Ensign and Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto to discuss the hearing, which will investigate the licensing process for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
Reid’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below.
Oversight Hearing on the Yucca Mountain License Application Process
Before the Committee on Environment and Public Works
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
I want to thank the Chair, the Ranking Member and other members of the Committee and for the opportunity to present testimony on this important issue to the State of Nevada. As some of you may know, today is Nevada Day, the day on which Nevada became a state in 1864. Many of you may know that the motto on Nevada’s state flag says “Battle Born,” a saying that is just as appropriate now, as it was back then. And now the State of Nevada is in a battle of its own, to protect the lives of its citizens from radiation exposure, to protect their land and water from misuse and contamination, and to expose a government bureaucracy that has been rife with corruption, flawed science and quality assurance failures.
And so, Nevada continues to fight a battle that was rigged from the beginning. After passing comprehensive and thoughtful legislation in 1982 to tackle this difficult issue, Congress then changed the rules of the game and Yucca was chosen as the only site to be closely researched. This was a political decision that was counter to the spirit of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act – science, safety, and security clearly did not drive this decision. This same rigged process allowed the State of Nevada to veto the decision, but also allowed Congress to override it – essentially an empty promise.
GAO has reported exhaustively on quality assurance failures with the research done at the site - science has been manipulated, secret meetings have been held without public oversight or participation, and the timeline and designs are ever-changing without any repercussions for the Department of Energy. And don’t forget that EPA has no plans to release its radiation standard before the Department of Energy files its license application, an environmental standard upon which the success of the entire license application rests.
Now that the license application process is upon us and we ready for what many believe will be the final battle against this dump, Nevadans are again left shaking their heads in dismay as they see that the decks are again stacked against them. The timeline to review the application has been unrealistically compressed to 3 years, even though the NRC took 8 years to license the proposed interim storage facility in Utah. The License Support Network that the Department of Energy has recently certified is filled with thousands – maybe millions – of superfluous documents to make searching for the relevant information like finding a needle in a haystack. The Department of Energy’s Performance Assessment computer model, which is the basis for the license application and purportedly will prove that the Department can meet all the environmental standards required by law, can’t be reviewed by any other entity except itself.
Think about that. Essentially, this computer model is the license application. But DOE will not let anybody access it - not the State of Nevada, and not even the NRC.
I’d like someone here to explain to me how the Department of Energy can write a computer modeling program that can prove it can meet an EPA radiation standard that doesn’t exist. I don’t care how many servers or processors that the Department of Energy uses in its complicated computer assessment of the Yucca Mountain site, you can’t prove that you can meet a standard that has yet to be written – unless of course, the Department of Energy has told EPA how to write it. Interesting assumption, isn’t it? A little backward is how I would describe it. We are talking about the most dangerous substance known on the face of the earth. And instead of seriously studying whether or not the proposed site at Yucca Mountain is safe to store this waste, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are cooking up their own set of books to write a radiation standard that can be met at Yucca Mountain.
As many of my colleagues will remember, EPA already published an earlier version of the radiation standard in 2001. And in that standard, EPA went too far to accommodate the Department of Energy’s desire to build a waste dump at Yucca Mountain and deliberately violated Congressional instructions in the 1992 Energy Policy Act. Thankfully this rule was thrown out by the courts.
The EPA wrote a newly proposed draft in 2005 – two years ago - which has yet to be finalized. Where is it? It is obvious to me that the EPA is having trouble writing a final radiation standard that can meet current law without disqualifying Yucca Mountain as a suitable site to dump nuclear waste. And EPA knows if they fudge the exposure numbers they will end up back in court.
Instead of sticking to the commitment that Yucca Mountain would proceed only if it would actually protect public health, EPA has cast sound science aside in favor of politics in the myopic pursuit of Yucca Mountain. And now they are delaying publishing a final radiation standard because they know the Department of Energy cannot meet the requirements required by law. And they also know that if they delay long enough that the State of Nevada will run out of time to take this issue back into the courts. Again, this is a rigged process.
How are we to secure the waste in the interim? We leave it on-site in dry cask storage, where it is already safely and securely stored at most nuclear plant sites and where the experts and the nuclear industry have demonstrated that it will continue to be safely stored for decades.
Senators Ensign and Bennett joined me in introducing the Federal Accountability for Nuclear Waste Storage Act earlier this year. This bill is a road map and a timeline for safely securing our spent nuclear fuel for one to two hundred years, giving us time to find a safe, scientific long-term solution to this national security issue.
Thank you again Chairman Boxer for holding this important hearing. The people of Nevada, as well was the rest of the United States, deserve answers to their many questions about the safety of a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. We are only 8 months away from the Department of Energy’s deadline to submit the license application for review by the NRC. I am anxious for this final battle to be over so that we can move on to resolving the underlying problem of what to do with our country’s nuclear waste.
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Senator Barack Obama
November 02, 2007
October 31, 2007
Obama: Time To End Debate On Yucca, Find Alternatives
Obama Has Consistently Opposed Yucca Mountain as a Storage Site for Nuclear Waste
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) yesterday sent the following letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) Chairman Barbara Boxer, calling on them to use today's EPW Committee hearing on Yucca Mountain to explore new alternatives for safe, long-term solutions for storing spent nuclear fuel.
Obama, who has been a consistent opponent of Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository for nuclear waste, urged the Committee and federal government to move past the decades-long debate on Yucca Mountain and focus on finding new alternatives to Yucca.
In the letter, Obama stated, "the selection of Yucca Mountain has failed, the time for debate on this site is over, and it is time to start exploring new alternatives for safe, long-term solutions based on sound science."
Below is a copy of Obama's letter:
October 30, 2007
The Honorable Harry Reid, Majority Leader
528 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Barbara Boxer, Chairman, Committee on Environment and Public Works
410 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Leader Reid and Chairman Boxer:
I understand that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is holding a hearing on October 31 entitled, "Examination of the Licensing Process for the Yucca Mountain Repository," at which Senator Reid is scheduled to testify. I know both of you have been working on this issue for many years, so I am writing to share my perspective on the issue given its importance to my home state of Illinois. Although I am no longer a member of the EPW Committee, I respectfully offer the following views and ask that they be included as part of the hearing record. Separately, I will be submitting questions for the hearing witnesses.
Given the nation's rising energy demand and the serious problems posed by global climate change, we need to increase the use of carbon-free energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal energy. But we cannot deny that nuclear power is – and likely will remain – an important source of electricity for many years to come. How we deal with the dangerous byproduct of nuclear reactors is a critical question that has yet to be resolved.
As you may know, Illinois has 11 nuclear reactors – more than any other state in the country. Nuclear power provides more than 50 percent of the electricity needs of Illinois. Where and how we store spent nuclear fuel is an extremely important issue for my constituents. Currently, in the absence of any alternative, spent nuclear fuel generated by Illinois' reactors is stored in Illinois.
In 1987, Congress attempted to reach a national solution to the storage of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste by abandoning the scientific consideration of a wide range of possible sites and instead unilaterally imposing a final decision to focus only on Yucca Mountain, Nevada. During the past 20 years, over the strong opposition of the people of Nevada, billions of dollars have been spent by taxpayers and ratepayers in the construction of this location. Millions of dollars have been spent on lawsuits, and hundreds of millions more will be spent in the future if the Department of Energy fails to meet its contractual obligations to nuclear utilities.
Proponents suggest Yucca Mountain will not be ready to accept spent fuel shipments for another 10 years; more realistic prognostications suggest we are at least two decades from Yucca Mountain accepting shipments.
Legitimate scientific questions have been raised about the safety of storing spent nuclear fuel at this location. With regard to Yucca Mountain, the National Academy of Sciences maintains that peak risks might occur hundreds of thousands of years from now. In 2004, a federal court questioned whether standards developed by the Environmental Protection Agency for the Yucca Mountain repository were sufficient to guarantee the safety of Nevadans.
Questions also have been raised about the viability of transporting spent nuclear fuel to Nevada from different locations around the country. Although it would seem to serve the interests of Illinois – and other states with nuclear reactors – to send our waste to another state, transporting nuclear waste materials poses uncertain risk. In fact, since a large amount of this spent fuel would likely travel by rail, this is a serious concern for the people of Chicago, which is the transportation hub of the Midwest.
Because of these safety issues and the unwavering opposition from the people of Nevada and their elected officials, there is strong reason to believe that many more billions of dollars could be expended on Yucca Mountain without any significant progress in moving towards a permanent solution to the problem of where to store spent nuclear fuel.
For these reasons, I believe that it is no longer a sustainable federal policy for Yucca Mountain to be considered as a permanent repository. Instead of re-examining the 20-year licensing process and the billions of dollars that have already been spent, the time has come for the federal government to refocus its resources on finding more viable alternatives for the storage of spent nuclear fuel. Among the possible alternatives that should be considered are finding another state willing to serve as a permanent national repository or creating regional storage repositories. The federal government should also redirect resources toward improving the safety and security of spent fuel at plant sites around the country until a safe, long-term solution can be implemented.
Regardless of what alternative is pursued, two premises should guide federal decision-making. First, any storage option should be supported by sound science. We need to ensure that nuclear waste can be safely stored without polluting aquifers or soil and exposing nearby residents to toxic radiation.
Second, we should select a repository location through a process that develops national consensus and respects state sovereignty, not one in which the federal government cuts off debate and forces one state to accept nuclear waste from other states. The flawed process by which Yucca Mountain was selected now manifests itself as a profoundly expensive endeavor of monumental proportion.
In short, the selection of Yucca Mountain has failed, the time for debate on this site is over, and it is time to start exploring new alternatives for safe, long-term solutions based on sound science. I thank you both for your leadership on this issue, and I appreciate your consideration of my views.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator
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Palm Beach Post
November 02, 2007
Nukes: The issue is waste
Palm Beach Post Editorial
For Florida Power & Light, this week's news that five outsourced security guards slept during their shift at the company's Miami-Dade County nuclear plant was badly timed, not just embarrassing.
Two weeks earlier, FPL had filed with the Florida Public Service Commission to add two units at the Turkey Point complex in southern Miami-Dade. The request is part of FPL's push to increase its reliance on nuclear power. Earlier, the company announced plans to increase capacity of the two existing reactors at Turkey Point by 14 percent and the two on Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie County by 11 percent.
Several factors explain the company's decision. FPL generates roughly half of its power using natural gas, which burns cleaner than oil and coal but can rise quickly in price. After allowing FPL's gas-fired plant in western Palm Beach County, the Public Service Commission told FPL to decrease its dependency on gas. Also, Gov. Crist wants utilities in Florida to generate at least 20 percent of their power from renewable sources, and FPL considers nuclear to be a renewable source.
Some environmental groups have dropped their three-decades-old opposition to nuclear power because nukes emit no greenhouse gases. But the continuing problem is that the plants produce power through nuclear fission, which generates waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years. Plants must store that waste safely and securely to protect public health and prevent theft by terrorists, who could use it to make a radioactive bomb.
At St. Lucie, two below-ground pools hold all the spent fuel produced since the plant opened in 1976. According to a spokesman, FPL "does not intend to build any additional" pools. Cramming too much waste into the pools can cause safety problems. Instead, the company wants to build above-ground dry storage containers.
For state and federal regulators who must approve FPL's plans, the decisions would be easier if there were a national storage site. But 20 years after Yucca Mountain in Nevada was targeted as the location, there is no site. If Yucca Mountain does open, FPL estimates that it won't happen until 2017. FPL hopes to complete the upgrades at St. Lucie and Turkey Point by 2012.
FPL is coming off a big loss in June, when the Public Service Commission rejected its planned coal-fired plant in Glades County. The company's request to add nuclear capacity makes more sense. FPL will have a better chance of making its case if the company can reassure regulators that the case of the sleeping guards was an exception.
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Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
October 31, 2007
Statement of Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons
Honorable Madame Chair and members of the committee, it is my honor as the Governor of the State of Nevada to submit these written comments for the Committee’s consideration. While I could not be present today to testify in person, I ask the Committee to carefully consider these written comments, as well as the comments presented by Nevada’s federal delegation and Nevada’s Attorney General. I am pleased that all of us stand in unified opposition to the Yucca mountain project.
During my ten years of service to the State of Nevada in Congress, I fought tirelessly against this flawed project. Now, as Governor, I appreciate the opportunity the people of Nevada have given me to continue the fight.
The Yucca mountain project always has, and always will, be based on unsound science, questionable legal interpretations, and poor public policy. I trust this Committee will carefully consider Nevada’s views. As a matter of both science and law, and in the interests of state comity and sound national policy, Yucca Mountain should not be developed as a high-level nuclear waste repository.
Nevada has done more than its share with respect to exposure to high-level radioactive waste. Nevada served as a nuclear weapons testing area during the Cold War. Hundreds of millions of radioactive curie contaminants from those tests remain embedded in Nevada soil to this day, exposing many Nevadans to serious health risks. Nevadans have not forgotten this legacy.
Now, the Department of Energy seeks to foist even more harmful contaminants on the people and lands of Nevada. Not only does the Department of Energy seek to store radioactive waste in Nevada, but by necessity, seeks to transport that same waste through Nevada, including through and near major metropolitan areas. The Department of Energy has mismanaged this project from its ill-conceived inception. This mismanagement is well-documented and has been the subject of numerous legal challenges and repeated public testimony by Nevada public officials.
The geologic issues at Yucca mountain are numerous and concerning. The Department of Energy has not been able to demonstrate that the planned repository is able to geologically isolate radioactive waste. The Nevada Nuclear Regulatory Commission has identified hundreds of technical issues that remain unresolved to this day. The Yucca mountain project site is located in an area that has been identified as prone to volcanic activity. Even more concerning is the seismic integrity of the site. Yucca Mountain sits in the heart of one of the largest earthquake fault zones east of California. Hundreds of earthquakes greater than magnitude 2.5 have occurred at the Yucca site just in the past twenty years. The Yucca mountain site is also prone to serious groundwater seepage.
Recognizing the deteriorating effects groundwater can have on storage casks, the Department of Energy has suggested that a drip shield is appropriate. This Committee should ask itself, if this site is truly geologically appropriate, why does the Department of Energy need to spend billions of dollars on a man-made drip shield?
Against this backdrop are the recent and continuing disingenuous actions of the Department of Energy. Just this year, Nevada was forced to go to court to stop the Department of Energy from flaunting Nevada water law in an attempt to drill bore-holes for soil samples at the Yucca site. The Department of Energy chose to ignore Nevada law and simply drilled numerous bore-holes without permission. Fortunately, a federal district court recognized that the Department of Energy is required to follow Nevada water law just like everyone else, and the bore-hole drilling project was stopped. However, the cavalier attitude the Department of Energy has taken towards the state of Nevada is telling, and is certainly cause for grave concern.
In the next few days many of you will return to your homes thousands of miles away from Nevada, but for many in the hearing room today, Nevada is home. Nevadans are the ones who have to risk deadly exposures based on the Department of Energy’s culture of ignoring science in favor of expediency. And I remind you that there is still no viable plan for transporting this deadly waste through our communities for thousands of miles. The safety of the American people along the transportation route is in jeopardy due to this moving hazard that too easily could be a moving target. It is my hope that our federal public officials will fully examine this project in a common-sense and scientifically sound manner and be able to ignore the pressures of rubber stamping this project. It is Nevada’s hope that you will see the flaws and the risks associated with opening Yucca Mountain and transporting high-level nuclear waste. It is our hope that you will protect the people of Nevada and of this great nation.
I thank you for you time today, and I respectfully request that these comments be introduced into the record.
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KLAS-TV
November 01, 2007
U.S. Senate Holds Contentious Hearing Regarding Yucca Mountain
Jonathan Humbert
A heated debate and now new hope in the fight against Yucca Mountain -- this time from the United States Senate. Wednesday, the environmental committee held a contentious hearing aimed squarely at shutting down the proposed nuclear dump.
Reporter Jonathan Humbert was the only local television reporter at that hearing in Washington.
Nevada senators Harry Reid, John Ensign, Barbara Boxer and even Hillary Clinton fresh from the campaign trail. It wasn't about slowing down Yucca Mountain -- it was about ending the project forever.
After three decades of controversy and stalling, democratic leaders say Yucca Mountain could be closed within a year. Wednesday's hearing offered no binding commitments, but it did renew the call to cut off funding and squeeze the project dry.
Nevada's senators face an uphill battle against a Bush administration war chest of $400 million. They also face opposition from many states with nuclear power who want to see the multi-billion dollar dump house their waste.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig, already considered a senate outsider, took the lead for nuclear power. He says the government must finish Yucca Mountain. "And if we don't, we either become a less productive nation or we're dirtier nation based on current technology."
Senator Hillary Clinton was one of the harshest voices. She grilled nuclear experts over what she sees as a shoddy process. Nevada Senator John Ensign broke from the party line though to blast the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.
"What we should not do is push an incomplete application for a flawed site through a rushed site and an incoherent process," said Sen. Clinton.
"I think that we are really pouring money down a large rat hole in the state of Nevada," said Sen. Ensign.
From here, the Department of Energy will submit another application by June of 2008. That could be the end to the mountain of waste in Nevada's backyard.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 01, 2007
Yucca project debated anew
With Democrats in charge, hearing takes on a different tenor
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Even though there still are gaps in safety rules and designs, the Department of Energy is rushing to show progress on Yucca Mountain before President Bush leaves office, Nevada leaders charged at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
The hearing, in which leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton played a key role just two months before Nevada's early caucus, signaled a shift in how the controversial nuclear waste project is being discussed on Capitol Hill.
The state's senators urged Congress to take a fresh look at pulling the plug on the long-delayed nuclear waste repository that is largely unpopular among Nevadans who perceive that it carries safety and health risks.
Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto warned that the government is heading into chaos. Eight months before the Energy Department expects to file for a construction license, plans for radiation health standards, safety-related designs, shipping casks, emergency response strategies and repository security appear to be up in the air.
"This lack of complete design and planning information is wholly attributable to DOE's rigid insistence on its self-imposed June 2008 license application date," Cortez Masto said.
"In my opinion Yucca Mountain is never going to be completed. We should look for alternatives," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "We are pouring money down a huge rathole and we should be putting that money to good use."
But Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said it is too late to turn back now, with the Energy Department so close finally to completing decades of studies and compiling them into a license package that will be judged for safety by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
If Yucca Mountain is abandoned after billions of dollars have been spent, Inhofe said, "how do you justify this to taxpayers?"
Ward Sproat, the Department of Energy director in charge of Yucca Mountain, said the criticism is unfounded. He said the project, the work of "2,700 professional engineers and scientists," will meet or exceed standards.
"It doesn't do me any good for the DOE to deliver up a license application and then have it rejected," Sproat said. "We are now at the point where the science is ready."
The arguments during a 21/2-hour hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee largely covered familiar ground. But the atmosphere seemed to have shifted after years where supporters of the Yucca project headed key Senate committees and encouraged the program along.
With Democrats in charge of the Senate and many of them generally less enthusiastic about Yucca Mountain, all the Democratic presidential candidates have announced their opposition, the hearing allowed Ensign, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other repository opponents to begin assembling a new, more critical public record while putting the project on the defensive.
Reid said afterward that the tone of the session "makes it very clear that Yucca Mountain is in big trouble," and that senators who customarily have been vocal supporters of the repository had lost some swagger.
Ensign said he reported the same impressions to a White House meeting later Wednesday among Republican leaders, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on a variety of subjects. He would not give their reaction.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a Reid ally who became chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this year, ran the hearing and stressed her opposition to Yucca Mountain.
She had several tart exchanges with Bush administration witnesses and committee Republicans. At one point she scolded Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who said senators "have a responsibility beyond politics" when it comes to nuclear matters.
"Since I called this hearing, I will tell you what this hearing is about," Boxer snapped. "It is about whether Yucca Mountain is safe."
The Nevadans also were aided by Clinton, D-N.Y., who is running for president and who said her platform includes killing the Yucca project if she is elected.
Clinton showed up on time, was in attendance for 80 minutes and carried out a promise to grill the Environmental Protection Agency about radiation standards for the nuclear site that have not been finalized for almost two years.
Robert Meyers, an EPA deputy administrator, would only say the standards would be ready "soon," despite Clinton's pressing. Clinton said the delay suggested that EPA is having troubles that merit holding up the project.
"What we should not do is push an incomplete application for a flawed site through a rushed and incoherent process," Clinton said, adding, "That is precisely the course of action that this administration intends to pursue."
But Sproat said the licensing process for the repository "is the most transparent regulatory process the federal government has ever seen." He said DOE has been required to share its documents with the state of Nevada and other stakeholders in advance of license hearings.
Ensign said so much time has passed since plans got under way in the early 1980s for underground nuclear waste disposal that technologies such as nuclear fuel recycling are on the horizon, which might alter the need for a dump site.
There also is consensus that nuclear waste safely can be stored at reactors in above-ground containers for 100 years or more, which could buy time for further studies, he said.
But Craig said a repository still will be needed. Government-managed nuclear waste still sitting in Idaho that originated at Three Mile Island and at the long-closed West Valley reprocessing plant in New York might not be able to be reprocessed, he said.
Craig said "responsible senators" need to find a solution. If a repository is scrapped, he said as he looked at Clinton, "do we return (the waste) to West Valley, New York?"
"It is so easy to be against, but it is fundamentally important to act in a responsible manner," Craig said. "We cannot have it both ways."
--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 01, 2007
Yucca gets its 15 minutes of fame
Politics put nuclear dump on front burner
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Let's be honest. There was no real news at the Senate's big Yucca Mountain hearing Wednesday.
No upturned scientific fact. No shocking political flip-flop. No government admission to forever alter the course of the debate.
But boy, was the theater compelling.
For the first time in years, Yucca Mountain climbed out of the shadows of Washington and into the klieg lights. Marquee names were falling all over themselves to talk about the best way to store nuclear waste. The issue that has been so important to Nevadans was suddenly hot again on the Hill.
Sure it was grandstanding by the Democratic presidential candidates. They saw media spots. Why none thought to speak so passionately about nuclear waste until now, with Nevada poised to hold an early presidential caucus, is obvious.
But sometimes soapboxes work: Promises were made that a Yucca Mountain dump would be killed. Federal witnesses squirmed in their seats. And some couldn't help but see a new era of debate over storing the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Consider this loosely transcribed exchange, about an hour into the hearing, between committee member Sen. Hillary Clinton and Bush administration officials.
On the witness stand were Robert Meyers of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is in charge of determining how much cancer-causing radiation Nevadans can be exposed to from the nuclear waste; Edward Sproat, the project manager at the Energy Department, which is designing the repository; and a representative of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will ultimately decide whether the dump can be licensed. The radiation standards have been in limbo for a year, with no indication of when they will be released to the public.
Clinton: When will EPA finalize the radiation standards?
Meyers: In my written testimony I indicated that it is our hope to get that done soon.
Clinton: And what does "soon" mean?
Meyers: " Soon " means that it will probably be in the normal medium term ... It's our intention to continue work on this and get it done, soon.
Clinton: That's very enlightening, Mr. Meyers, I must confess. (The crowd awakens with chuckles. The senator smiles diplomatically.) Will "soon" be before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has to act?
Meyers: We are focusing on the process, Sen . Clinton, and completing our process.
Clinton: Well that's the problem. Because if the standard is not finished soon ... then the NRC will be acting without the standards. Do you agree with that?
Meyers: That could be hypothetically correct.
Clinton: Mr. Sproat , why is the Department of Energy rushing to finalize the license application by June of next year in the absence of final EPA standards?
Sproat: Good question, Senator. (He explains that while he awaits the data, he's estimating there won't be much cancer-causing radiation from Yucca Mountain - about as much as you get from a cross-country airplane ride.)
Clinton: What I'm picking up is that there's a disagreement here. And that DOE is going full -fledged ahead, and EPA is dragging its feet because EPA doesn't want to be on the record of either contradicting DOE or having to once again mangle science in order to get some preconceived outcome that will suit those who wish to move forward on this.
That's the kind of talk you can hear any day of the week from Nevada officials fighting a Yucca repository. That's not what you typically hear in Washington.
Clinton had called for the hearing and stole the stage, vowing to kill the dump at Yucca. Not to be outdone, fellow presidential hopefuls John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama countered Clinton's brash vote-getting campaign with their own.
Obama dashed off a letter saying the time for new alternatives to Yucca is now. His campaign offered up a former energy secretary to vouch for him. Edwards reiterated his opposition.
The Republican National Committee was at the ready, poised to offer a comment if needed.
A cynic would say this was nothing more than Yucca Mountain's 15 minutes of fame on the campaign trail. An optimist would counter that it signal ed the beginning of a new era when a Yucca repository no longer gets a pass.
Maybe it was a little of both.
One thing is certain: After past Yucca Mountain hearings, no matter how battered and bruised the project was after disclosures of cost overruns or delays, the Republicans in Congress almost always picked up the pieces and promised that Yucca would survive.
After Wednesday's hearing, the momentum seemed to teeter in the other direction.
"Observation from the hearing today: It was a different tone," Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada said. Exhibit A: When he testified that Yucca Mountain was dead, no one disagreed with him.
Ensign said he passed along that sentiment during his routine Republican leadership meeting with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both supporters of the nuclear industry , which needs a place to store its waste.
He said he made a point of talking about how much trouble Yucca Mountain is in. "I talked about it's time to start exploring other options."
Ensign, in a comment sure to cause head shakes among some of his Republican colleagues, added: "The fact the Democrats held this hearing is a very positive move in trying to get other alternatives on the table."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada by day's end waxed that Clinton did very well. "I admire and respect her outspokenness on this issue," he said.
So will Congress suddenly drop Yucca and perhaps embrace Reid and Ensign's bill to store waste where it now sits at nuclear power plants across the nation?
Probably not this week.
--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 01, 2007
Clinton strengthens Yucca stance at hearing
Anjeanette Damon
Reno Gazette-Journal
The grilling Bush administration officials took on the safety of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository before a national audience Wednesday will help opponents of the dump halt the project, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
She also said she hopes it will help her presidential campaign in Nevada.
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works enabled Clinton to air her anti-Yucca Mountain position that no other presidential candidate has. It also fulfilled a campaign promise she made to Nevadans this summer.
"The increasing doubts about Yucca among the industry members -- and this Senate hearing raised even more questions-- gives a lot of ammunition to those of us who are trying to stop it," Clinton told reporters after the hearing.
"It is clear we have reached the time when we must move on from Yucca Mountain," she said. "We must start over."
Other candidates
Not much differentiates the Democratic field of presidential candidates on Yucca Mountain. They've all said they oppose it.
But Clinton's hearing put the rest of the field on the defensive, political observers said.
"Now, they have to try and say, I'm on board, too," said Dave Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Democrat. "And they don't really have a platform like a senate committee to do something like that."
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, not on the committee, submitted written testimony opposing the dump.
"The selection of Yucca Mountain has failed, the time for debate on this site is over," Obama wrote. "It is time to start exploring new alternatives for safe, long-term solutions based on sound science."
Yucca Mountain has long been a hot-button political issue in Nevada, but it's unclear how much of a role it plays in voters' decisions on who should be president.
In 2004, a Reno Gazette-Journal poll found 53 percent of likely voters considered Yucca Mountain to be important in determining their vote for president.
But in an RGJ poll earlier this year asking readers which issue is most important in choosing a presidential candidate, none cited Yucca Mountain.
Damore said the issue is important to voters only if the candidate comes down on the wrong side of it.
"It's one of those things where the presumption is everybody will get on the right side of the issue and you're only in trouble if you're not," he said.
But that wasn't necessarily true in 2004.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry made his anti-Yucca Mountain stance a centerpiece of his Nevada campaign. He continually hammered President Bush for his support of the project and even sent former President Bill Clinton to Las Vegas in the final days of the campaign to deliver a speech on the topic.
Kerry lost Nevada by 21,500 votes.
While each of the Democratic candidates said they oppose Yucca Mountain now, their past records yield more nuances.
As a congressman, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson voted for the infamous 1987 "Screw Nevada Bill" which designated Nevada as the site for the dump. While energy secretary, Richardson stopped temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, but the project progressed under his administration.
Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards has voted both ways on the project.
Clinton was criticized for skipping two committee hearings on Yucca Mountain last year and has said she is "agnostic" about nuclear power.
Obama and U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd represent states relying heavily on nuclear power for electricity. Obama fought against his state, Illinois, becoming a regional site for storing waste.
Adam Bozzi, Edwards' Nevada spokesman, said Edwards is the only candidate to oppose additional nuclear plants until the question of the waste is resolved.
"It's an important distinction," he said. "For Senator Clinton to say she is agnostic on nuclear energy, she is hedging again."
Frederico Pena, a former energy secretary who is advising Obama on his energy policy, couldn't name anything to distinguish Obama from the field.
"My understanding is they are all generally opposed," he said. "Whether anyone is more firmly opposed than Senator Obama, I cannot tell you."
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Reno News and Review
Nuclear summer on its way?
Opposition to coal power plants is helping create interest in nuclear plants
By Dennis Myers
dennism@newsreview.com
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid may find that his opposition to coal fired power plants is working too well.
The nuclear power industry, always alert for an opening, is exploiting the declining fortunes of coal plants to call for new nuclear plants to take up the slack. A revival of nuclear power would bring renewed pressure for construction and opening of the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada's Nye County, which Reid and virtually all Nevada officials oppose.
It's not only the industry promoting nuclear power plants. Political leaders and major publications—and they include some surprising names—are urging a new look at nukes as an energy source.
Coal plants have been cancelled, delayed or otherwise suffered setbacks this year in Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and other states. In a single instance in Texas, an 11-plant deal was cut to a three-plant deal.
Reid's decision to oppose three coal plants in Nevada, and then to try to block all coal plants, has become a major hurdle for the coal industry because of his influential role in the Senate. But his opposition to coal is cited by supporters of nuclear plants as helping to drive a revival of nuclear power.
Three utility corporations have filed applications with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for new plants, the first such applications in more than a quarter of a century. Unusual figures like Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore have embraced nuclear power.
Critics of the Yucca Mountain project express doubt about a comeback for nuclear power plants.
"I don't think so," said Jan Gilbert of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. "There's so much going on in alternative energy. Why go to those two types of energy that are non-sustainable and unhealthy? If you put a solar power facility in a community, you'd probably get 100 percent support."
In the nation's capital, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Jon Wellinghoff said, "But I think if we're going to have fewer coal plants built—which I think we are going to have fewer coal plants built—it simply means we're going to have more natural gas plants built. ... One thing it may mean is that we may have to become much more serious about also sitting LNG [liquefied natural gas] facilities at strategic points around the country."
But energy development does not always flow in expected paths. In 2001, in the wake of the energy deregulation crisis in California, a new generation of coal-fired plants was almost universally predicted.
One laboratory where the nuclear experiment is playing out is Washington, where Gov. Christine Gregoire, like many governors, has launched a large scale effort to reduce the state's carbon footprint.
Washington has a long and troubled history with nuclear power that has given the state good reason to steer clear of nukes. Along the Columbia River at Richland, a massive decades-long cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a multi-reactor and dump facility, is going on. In 1982, the Washington Public Power Supply System, a private system which launched construction of five nuclear power plants, defaulted on $2.25 billion in loans ($4.8 billion in 2006 dollars), a default so huge that the state—which was not even associated with the project—lost bond rating points.
Yet Washington is taking a hard look at nuclear power and environmentalist leaders like Vancouver Sen. Craig Pride more and U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee are leading the way. Inslee told Seattle Times columnist Kate Riley, "Global warming is such a titanic challenge, all of us have to check our prejudices at the door."
In the financial world, bankers and investors who were once burned by the financial black hole of nuclear power are considering a second look. In April, Global Market Brief argued, "As coal plants continue to come under attack, nuclear energy will only grow more attractive." The Wall Street Journal reported, "If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8 percent this year."
The nuclear power industry is expected to make its most serious push for new sites in the Southeast, where consumer advocacy groups are weakest.
Those who oppose both coal and nuclear face some major obstacles. Many policy makers and investment sources believe that alternative sources of energy are not able to take up the slack if coal is deemphasized. Supporters of alternatives say that's a myth, but if so, it's a myth that commands widespread belief.
Natural gas plants run cleaner than coal plants and cost less to build and run. "They just keep finding more and more gas," Wellinghoff said. Natural gas supplies about 20 percent of power in the United States, about the same as nuclear, but the price of gas has been rising as demand grows, and production lags. Moreover, there is often resistance to LNG facilities from local communities, as there was in Lyon County in the 1990s.
Opponents of nuclear power frequently point out, first, that the industry must still solve the waste storage problem, and second, that Sen. Reid is the gatekeeper on issues in the Senate.
But the need to solve the waste problem is a double edged sword. If interest in nuclear power continues to grow, it will generate more and more pressure for the Yucca Mountain dump. And the protection that Reid offers against nuclear power assumes a number of things—that Reid will continue as majority leader, that the Democrats will continue with a majority, that the political dynamics will stay the same—an unpopular Republican president, for instance. A Republican president who achieves good working relationship with Congress would be a whole different matter.
"We're seeing all the [presidential] candidates come in here and say, no nuclear waste in Nevada," Gilbert notes.
Well, not exactly. All the Democratic candidates are saying that. And some of them supported waste in Nevada until running for president.
No nukes
Nevada has no nuclear power generating plants—the nearest is the mothballed Rancho Seco in Sacramento—but it was not for lack of trying:
1952 U.S. Sen. George Malone of Nevada announced formation of a committee, chaired by former state engineer Alfred Merritt Smith, to work for installation of the world's first atomic power plant to be located at Ruby Hill near Eureka.
1964 With the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Alan Bible of Nevada, Sierra Pacific Power Company had a proposal prepared for submission to the Atomic Energy Commission, seeking authority to construct a $3 million atomic power plant in Lyon County that would generate 100,000 kilowatts and employ 500 people. This effort continued for many years.
The lack of such plants is one of the state's arguments against construction of the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. It's the states that generate the waste that should host the dump, state officials say.
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The Atlantic
November 01, 2007
Marc Ambinder
Hillraising In The Hill: Two Stories, One Of Them Just A Story
Here at Reagan Airport, the print edition of The Hill has a front page story about on Hillary Clinton ... a reporter listened to an interesting conference call involving her senior advisers -- and on the third page along the right column, a second, would-be great story -- a blockbuster, in fact, with Alexander Bolton reporting that she did not attend a hearing she convened on the contentious Nevada issue of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
If true, it would be a major faux pas and not what the Clinton campaign needs to pivot away from a poorly-reviewed debate performance.
But Clinton did attend the hearing.
And Bolton's article is no longer online.
A copy was preserved on the 'winger site FreeRepublic:
The lede of the story reads: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) skipped an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday that she called for earlier this year." A withering quotation from enviro-critic and Yucca supporter Sen. James Inhofe is included.
Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton's Senate press secretary, told this column: "Her presence at EPW is very much like global warming: just because Sen. Inhofe and Alex Bolton deny it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. As everyone can watch on YouTube, she was very much there."
Indeed, a headline in the Reno Gazette-Journal suggests that the hearing was a political boon: Clinton strengthens Yucca stance at hearing.
Bolton said in an e-mail that the Hill would print a correction.
And Matthew Dempsey, Inhofe's spokesman on the committee, issued this clarification:
Today, The Hill newspaper ran an article with several inaccuracies regarding yesterday's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing focusing on Yucca Mountain. The article, Clinton Skips Senate Hearing She Called For, wrongfully states that Senator Clinton "skipped" the hearing. Senator Clinton did in fact attend the hearing as evident by the press release released by her Senate office that includes video they posted on You Tube.
In addition, The Hill wrongfully reported that Senator Inhofe criticized Senator Clinton for not attending. The Hill mistakenly reported Clinton's supposed absence "drew a strong rebuke from Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee."
In fact, the comments made by Senator Inhofe included in the article actually came from a July 24, 2007 press release from Senator Inhofe's EPW Committee office titled, Senator Clinton Fails To Ask ‘Hard Questions' About Yucca Mountain.
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Contra Costa Times
November 01, 2007
Candidates oppose nuclear waste site
By David Whitney
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday declared themselves flatly opposed to building a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a clear indication that the 2008 presidential election could end a 25-year effort to build the controversial dump.
Clinton delivered her opposition in person and Obama by letter as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held its first hearing on Yucca Mountain since Democrats took over Congress in January.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel's chairwoman, said she had scheduled the hearing at the request of Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, who has been campaigning in Nevada on the issue. The caucuses in that state are Jan. 19.
Congress has been planning for an underground repository to hold spent fuel from commercial power plants and waste from defense plants since 1982. Yucca Mountain was selected as the site, and Congress voted to reaffirm that as recently as 2002, over the objections of Nevada residents.
Critics charge that moving spent fuel from more than 100 commercial nuclear plants to Yucca Mountain -- 100 miles from Las Vegas -- would be a huge health and safety risk.
They charge that the site leaks, is in an active earthquake zone and is being proposed for licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year when its design is only 35 percent complete.
"You can't go ahead and build a house when its design is only 35 percent complete," Boxer charged at the hearing.
But witnesses for the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that submission of an application for a construction license does not require that every detail be mapped out.
Michael Weber, head of the commission's nuclear material safety unit, said the process for Yucca Mountain is about the same as the one the agency followed in licensing nuclear power plants.
About the only agreement among witnesses and senators was that it is safe to keep spent fuel in storage at the power plants for a century or longer.
The federal government was supposed to start accepting the waste at Yucca Mountain in 1998. But when that deadline passed with the repository in doubt, the nuclear commission ordered plants to construct areas to hold the waste in dry casks.
Federal taxpayers are picking up the tab for that, at a cost of about $7 billion through 2017 -- the best guess for when the repository might start accepting waste.
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NEI Nuclear Notes
November 01, 2007
NEI Statement on Senate EPW Hearing on Yucca Mountain
The following statement comes from NEI's Media Relations Department:
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works held a hearing today on the federal government’s program to dispose of used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs at a geologic repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Energy Institute’s chief nuclear officer, Marvin Fertel, made the following comments about the program.
“As the Department of Energy moves steadily closer to the submission of a license application for the planned Yucca Mountain repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, today’s hearing was an opportune time to note that there is some 20 years of solid science undergirding this program. Over the past two decades, billions of dollars have been spent on analyses of the repository site by many of our nation’s leading scientific experts. This analysis will continue during construction and operation of the repository so that public health and safety of future generations will be protected.
“Today’s hearing also was an appropriate time to note that, as early as 1957, the National Academy of Sciences recommended disposing radioactive waste in geologic formations. This is a project in which our nation can take great pride, because it is all about environmental stewardship. Through its hard work at this barren ridge in the Nevada desert, the United States is leading the worldwide efforts to develop geologic disposal facilities for high-level radioactive waste. This is literally the most studied site of its kind in the world.
“It is dismaying that today’s hearing was marred by factual inaccuracies that fly in the face of scientifically provable and measurable facts. It is fact, for example, that background radiation levels in Denver are well above the U.S. average of 300 millirem per year. It is not true that the Yucca Mountain project would lead to uncontrolled radiation exposures. And it is not true that the science at the project site has been manipulated. The nuclear industry believes it is important that these issues be settled based on a fair, thorough, impartial and open consideration of the facts. The Yucca Mountain licensing process will provide a rigorous and transparent examination of the scientific and technical facts in which opinions will be aired, vetted and accorded a full adjudicatory hearing.
“Ultimately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will judge whether to approve the Department of Energy’s project. The key role for Congress to play – implementing its endorsement of the site’s suitability in 2002 – is to ensure that funds are available and appropriated in sufficient amounts for the Department of Energy to complete the work that it needs to in a timely fashion, and for the NRC to fulfill its safety mission. It is also appropriate for Congress to provide oversight at key points in the Yucca Mountain project development.
“Current national policy with regard to management of high-level radioactive waste was formulated in 1982 with enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This policy has been reaffirmed on several occasions since. Even under an integrated used nuclear fuel management approach that in the future may involve advanced reprocessing technologies, there always will be byproducts that require geologic disposal.”
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New West
November 01, 2007
Candidates Take on Yucca Mountain—and Each Other
By David Frey
Who says presidential candidates don’t care about the West? With Nevada hosting an early caucus, suddenly Western issues (or at least Nevada issues) are starting to rank right up their with ethanol in Iowa.
And what could be more controversial in Nevada than the nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain? Sen. Hillary Clinton got her jabs in on Wednesday during a Senate hearing on the issue. That is, a Senate hearing that she called for.
“I believe we need to start over,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
Clinton sits on the Senate environment committee, and she used her position to trash the dump, nail government witnesses, then chat with Nevada reporters.
Enter presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama, who issued a written statement opposing the dump, and held his own conference call. And former Sen. John Edwards, tossed out a statement the day before opposing the dump and taking shots at Clinton for “trying to have it both ways” by opposing the dump but saying she is “agnostic” on nuclear energy.
Even before the hearing, Clinton was firing back at Edwards, lambasting him for voting for Bush’s measure to make it a nuclear waste site.
“Rather than merely talking about Yucca Mountain, Senator Clinton is taking action,” Clinton spokeswoman Hilarie Grey told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The West’s public lands were at issue elsewhere in the halls of Congress, too. Ninety-three House members fired off a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne calling for the government to an off-highway vehicles in Utah’s desert lands. That’s one out of five members of Congress, notesthe Salt Lake Tribune. Against all odds, none of them happened to be from Utah.
“I don’t presume to set transportation policy for Chicago or New York,” Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, told the paper. “So I would appreciate my colleagues - none of whom are from Utah - not trying to protect Utah from Utahns.”
The letter comes as the Bureau of Land Management is working out a travel management plan for millions of acres of remote lands in Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is backing the letter. It’s worried about impacts on the land and cultural resources that could come from motors and knobby tires in the backcountry.
Environmentalists and local communities have scored another victory in taking on gas leasing on Colorado federal land. The BLM has pulled over 58,000 acres planned to be leased in its Nov. 8 auction, reports the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
The site removed included all the land in Grand County, plus some parcels in Moffat and San Miguel counties. Protestors included the town of Granby, which worried about economic and environmental impacts, environmentalists who worried about wildlife impacts, and the state Division of Wildlife, which worried about impacts to sage grouse and other species.
The protesters were pleased, of course. But BLM officials caution they shouldn’t get too optimistic. Those parcels could end up on the auction block again.
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Minneapolis Star Tribune
November 01, 2007
Prairie Island Indians seek removal of nuclear waste
WASHINGTON - A representative from the Prairie Island Indian Community was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday urging legislators to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain a permanent nuclear waste repository.
By Nina Petersen-Perlman
Star Tribune
WASHINGTON - A representative from the Prairie Island Indian Community was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday urging legislators to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain a permanent nuclear waste repository.
Prairie Island, about 50 miles downstream from Minneapolis on the Mississippi River, is situated 600 yards away from a nuclear waste storage site owned by Xcel Energy. Tribal Council member Ron Johnson said the waste needs to be moved to a safe facility that can be monitored.
Currently, no one from the Department of Homeland Security guards the site, which could be a terror target, he told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
"Developing a safe, permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel is critical to the health and welfare of the millions of Americans who currently live near temporary nuclear waste storage sites," the tribe said in a statement.
Johnson met with staff members of Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman, and Rep. John Kline, who represents the Prairie Island community.
"The Yucca Mountain storage facility is a permanent solution to the nuclear waste storage problem facing Minnesota communities," Kline said. "I remain committed to removing this dangerous nuclear waste from Prairie Island and the Red Wing community."
Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 and voted to make Yucca Mountain the site, overruling objections from Nevada voters as recently as 2002. The U.S. Department of Energy has been studying the site to determine if it would be suitable for the nation's first geologic repository for the 72,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste currently stored at more than 120 sites nationwide.
Democrats on the Senate committee came out strongly against using Yucca Mountain as a definitive solution, noting that the site is in an earthquake-prone area. And both Nevada senators testified against the plan.
Kline, a Republican, said he was "dismayed that [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.] and others continue to obstruct completion of the project."
If the Yucca Mountain project continues to face strong opposition, Prairie Island could continue to host nuclear waste for decades to come.
--Nina Petersen-Perlman • 202-408-2723, nperlman@startribune.com
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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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