Yucca Mountain News Clips - Monday, November 26, 2007

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, November 26, 2007
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Las Vegas SUN
November 25, 2007

WEEK IN REVIEW: WASHINGTON, D.C.

Senate's officially in session over break to prevent Bush from making unilateral appointments

Reid move might affect Yucca's fate

By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON - Nevadans may not be paying much attention to what's happening with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's unprecedented decision to keep the Senate in pro-forma sessions during the holiday break.

But they should.

Reid's move will ensure President Bush cannot make unilateral appointments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that will be making important decisions next year on the fate of Yucca Mountain.

The five-member commission that oversees nuclear plants is supposed to be made up of both Democratic and Republican nominees. But Bush and Senate Democrats are at a standstill over more than 100 executive nominations. Bush had signaled he would simply appoint his choices while the Senate was away.

Recess appointments are nothing new - historians tell us that George Washington made the first recess appointment in 1791, when he put Thomas Johnson on the Supreme Court.

Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie explains recess appointments began as a way to keep the government functioning during an era when Congress met for only part of the year. An appointment by a president during a Congressional recess expires at the end of the session - which in the current situation would be through the Bush presidency - unless the appointment is confirmed by Congress when it returns from its recess.

President Eisenhower appointed three Supreme Court justices during Congressional recesses - Earl Warren, William J. Brennan Jr. and Potter Stewart. They went on to hear cases before their credentials were reviewed by the Senate, a development that led senators to believe the process was "defective," according to a congressional report. Congress ended up confirming the justices.

Recess appointments have increasingly become an expression of the bad relations between the executive and legislative branches.

Nominees have been refused over the years, and both parties have held up appointments to extract concessions from the White House on other issues.

Tensions over recess appointments mounted during the Reagan and Clinton administrations, and when Bush appointed former U.N. ambassador John Bolton in 2005. Reid and the White House reached a truce during the recent August break, with the administration agreeing to make no recess appointments in exchange for Reid's promise that the Senate would move swiftly to act on them upon their return.

Not so this holiday period.

"It doesn't seem to be working right now," Ritchie said. "The Senate doesn't really trust the White House to honor that kind of arrangement."

Nationally, concerns have been raised that Bush would install his choice for surgeon general. But the problem is also logistical: Democrats lose the ability to cut deals with the president when he makes unilateral appointments during a recess.

Reid has recommended to Bush that he nominate two individuals for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - suggestions that Reid's office says are being held up by the White House.

The commission has two vacant positions, one Democratic and one Republican. Additionally, the term of another Democrat, former Reid nuclear science advisor Gregory B. Jaczko, is expiring.

Reid's office wants Bush to fill both the Republican and Democratic seats on the commission. "This isn't just concern about (Bush's) nominees, it's about making sure Democratic nominees are also moving forward," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said.

Reid's concern is that Bush could appoint his Republican choice for the commission during a recess without filling the Democratic seat, and the Senate would not be in session to object.

The appointment is critical because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide next year whether to accept the Energy Department's application to license the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Republicans have been inclined to support Yucca Mountain. In the past, many Democrats have also favored the dump; however, the party's presidential nominees now all oppose it.

The license review will be a critical stage for the long-fought repository, which polls show most Nevadans oppose. If the application is accepted, the commission will begin a multi-year review of the project to decide whether the waste dump could be licensed, a prerequisite to construction.

"There's a Nevada interest at stake here," Summers said.

And so every few days over the next week, a senator will be tasked with coming to the chamber to formally open and close the day's business - all in a matter of seconds.

Even though the Senate has held pro-forma sessions in the past, Ritchie said this is the first time a Senate Majority Leader has kept the chamber in session solely to prevent presidential appointments.

Republicans grumbled over the tactic. A spokesman for the minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Democrats would get as much done in the pro-forma "as they have all month - nothing."

--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 25, 2007

Editorial: Curbing president's power

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has good reason to employ rarely used procedural rule

Now midway through his fourth six-year term, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid knows all the Senate's rules, including the rarely used one that allows phantom sessions.

Reid declared this rule to be in effect over the Senate's two-week Thanksgiving holiday - and for good reason. It will prevent President Bush from making key federal appointments without Senate approval.

Phantom sessions, officially known as "pro forma" sessions, last a matter of seconds. They are gaveled open and quickly gaveled closed at least once every three days, with the only senator in the Capitol doing the gaveling.

There is a reason for this ritual. Pro forma sessions relieve the controlling party of having to declare a formal recess. Presidents can take advantage of Senate recesses by making high-ranking appointments that become effective immediately, without the nominees' having to stand for Senate confirmation.

Reid has explained why he did not allow the Senate to be officially adjourned. As the Democratic leader, he makes recommendations to the president on appointments to the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other top agencies, which, by law, must include Democrats.

Reid says President Bush has been stalling on his recommendations. Yet Reid has worked hard in recent months to move more than 40 of the administration's nominees through confirmation hearings, including Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Reid added that Bush administration officials told him the president was planning to make several appointments during the Senate's Thanksgiving break. Reid said he responded by asking that the president move on his agency recommendations, but received no commitment.

At that point, Reid said, he decided on the pro forma sessions.

We agree with Reid's strong move. It is important for Nevada and the whole country to have fair representation on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other federal agencies.

And even though all presidents have used recess appointments, Bush has used them excessively to push through his controversial nominees. Given Bush's extremely low approval rating among voters, his nominees are best vetted through the Senate.

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Bemidji Pioneer
November 25, 2007

Nuclear to remain part of Minnesota energy

Mike Longaecker
Bemidji Pioneer

RED WING. Minn. — Even as Minnesota becomes more reliant on renewable energy sources, the state will continue leaning heavily on nuclear power.

Industry officials and lawmakers say the state’s energy needs require a steady source of “baseload power” — constant output that doesn’t fluctuate. Wind turbines popping up across the state won’t take the place of that vital need.

“The industry as a whole in the U.S. does not feel threatened by emerging technologies,” said Mike Wadley, Nuclear Management Co.’s site vice president at the Prairie Island nuclear generating plant.

Renewable sources like wind, water and biomass produce energy, but remain at the mercy of weather and climate changes, he said. Droughts, Wadley said, affect hydroelectric and biomass power, and “wind generation is wonderful — when the wind is blowing.”

“It’s intermittent,” he said. “We can’t control it.”

But nuclear can be counted on, many say, despite concerns over waste storage. That is why Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest energy producer, is banking on nuclear well into the future.

Plans are in place to upgrade power output at both the Monticello and Prairie Island plants, said Charlie Bomberger, Xcel’s general manager of nuclear asset management. By investing about $270 million at each facility, he expects to increase the life of the plants by 20 years.

Monticello’s federal operating license was to expire in 2010, but it received a new license this year that reaches to 2030. Prairie Island’s licenses are to expire in 2013 and 2014. Xcel officials say they will seek 20-year extensions for the two reactors near Red Wing.

While those dates approach, others say it is time to look even further ahead — perhaps by expanding the number of Minnesota’s nuclear plants. Rep. Joyce Peppin, one of the Legislature’s leading nuclear power proponents, said the state must begin investigating that possibility by lifting its moratorium on new nuclear plants.

Provisions of the ban, she said, prohibit the state’s Public Utilities Commission from even discussing the matter. Peppin said she will continue pushing legislation in 2008 to lift the ban, so nuclear’s future in Minnesota can be explored.

Without that mapped out, the Rogers Republican fears Minnesota could be on a course for energy blackouts like those in California.

“You start getting to a point where you must make a decision of, ‘Are we going to be living in a cave?’” she said.

Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, wants no part of a push for more nuclear plants in the state, saying the moratorium was instituted for a reason.

Anderson said she’s willing to hear discussion on the topic, but said talks should be limited to lawmakers who create policy — not by the utility commission members who implement it.

“The Legislature needs to take the lead,” she said, adding that the joint Legislative Electric Energy Task Force would be the appropriate venue for such a discussion.

Anderson, who authored legislation establishing Minnesota’s renewable energy standard, said costs, security issues and questions of where to store nuclear waste stand in the way of new nuclear generation here.

“I don’t think there’s an appetite to do new nuclear power in Minnesota,” she said.

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty agreed.

“The future will be about more wind, more solar, more biomass, more biogas, hydrogen fuels cells, hopefully clean coal, maybe next generation nuclear in some parts of the country,” Pawlenty said in an interview. “I don’t think (more nuclear) will happen in Minnesota because of our political culture here.”

Nuclear makes up 25 percent to 30 percent of Xcel Energy’s Upper Midwest power.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to nuclear expansion is the question of waste storage. Plans to haul spent nuclear fuel to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain remain in limbo, with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., leading the charge against the project.

Opponents of the project claim the site — nestled about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, Nev. — and its geologic characteristics are unfit for a massive repository.

Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, scoffed at the notion, saying the repository could be open for business in less than a year.

“I think the risks are nominal at best,” the senator and Xcel employee said.

Wadley said he would like to see the repository used temporarily until a viable method of recycling spent fuel is rendered.

“But that’s not a technical decision,” he said. “It’s a political decision.”

While Peppin doesn’t think an expansion of nuclear would necessarily mean phasing out coal plants, that’s just what Murphy proposes.

Coal’s fossil-fueled plants don’t create a good energy mix as Minnesota heads toward a greener future, he said.

“If we’re serious about flipping the switch to ‘off’ on some of these coal plants...” Murphy said. “Then that’s where nuclear fits in.”

Eventually the state will need at least one other nuclear plant, said Murphy, who once worked at the Prairie Island facility.

Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon is one of two lawmakers heading up the Legislative Electric Energy Task Force. The Duluth Democrat said legislators must continue evaluating the role of different energy sources, including nuclear. That doesn’t mean nixing any particular option, she said, but added that nuclear’s reputation has improved since the 1970s.

“There’s more willingness to re-look at it among people in Minnesota,” Prettner Solon said.

--Mike Longaecker reports for the Red Wing Republican-Eagle, which with the Bemidji Pioneer is owned by Forum Communications.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
November 25, 2007

Road to the White House: Energy rises as primary issue

Democrats focus on global warming, Republicans zero in on independence

James O'Toole
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oil prices flirting with $100 a barrel, warnings of climate change and holiday road trips fueled by gas topping $3 a gallon are combining to give energy issues unprecedented prominence in the presidential campaign.

"The bottom line for us, we're happy everybody is talking about it," said David Willett, national press secretary for the Sierra Club. "Even in '04, while there was a clear difference between the candidates, it wasn't really a campaign issue."

The Republicans, with notable exceptions, have concentrated on the dangers to the nation's strategic and economic security of relying on energy from the Middle East.

The Democrats, while embracing those same arguments, have placed much greater emphasis on the threat of global warming.

"The positions the leading Democratic candidates have advanced are, for the most part, very thoughtful, very much at the strong end of realistic," said Manik Roy, director of congressional affairs for the Pew Center on Global Climate change. "I'm not seeing as much from the Republican candidates."

A New York Times survey of likely caucus and primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, found that Democrats were significantly more likely to cite the environment as a primary issue in choosing a candidate. Mr. Roy emphasized, however, that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona stood out from the GOP field in his emphasis on global warming.

Mr. Roy pointed to the senator's work with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., in pushing, unsuccessfully so far, for legislation that would cap the overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions in tandem with a system in which emitters could buy and sell permits authorizing the release of different levels of the targeted pollutants.

"He completely changed the dialogue in the Senate, and, to a certain, extent, in the House," Mr. Roy said.

Variations of the cap-and trade proposal are also central to the energy plans offered by the leading Democratic candidates. They also tend to favor greater or complete reliance on an auction system for distributing the emission permits, as opposed to one in which certain industries, such as existing coal-fired plants, are granted some level of emission allowance by the government.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. and Barack Obama, D-Ill. and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina would use part of the proceeds of the cap-and-trade auction to fund research on advances in renewable energy, clean-coal technology and similar efforts. The leading Democrats also propose to fund energy research by curtailing a variety of tax breaks for major oil companies.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., stands out among the candidates for his call for a broader carbon tax on corporations of all kinds. Despite their generalized calls for conservation, none of the candidates has supported significantly higher fuel taxes, along the European model, to hold down consumption.

Alternative energy

The politics of climate change have produced what once would have been considered strange bedfellows. With the exception of U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who calls for a gradual phase-out of both nuclear and coal-fired plants, all of the candidates at least acknowledge the need for nuclear power as part of the nation's energy future, a position that once would have been anathema to Democratic primary voters.

"When you look at their comments in general, particularly the leaders, they realize that nuclear has to play a significant role," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Power Institute, an industry lobbying group. "These are not dumb people. They are aware of the fact that the demand for energy is expected to grow by 40 percent by 2030."

The Democrats' difficulty with the implications of nuclear power generation were evident, however, at their debate in mid-month in Las Vegas. The candidates were united in their opposition to the opening of a federal facility for storing spent nuclear fuel at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, undeterred by the fact that several of them had supported the facility in the past. And despite their opposition to that site and their grudging support for expansion of the plants that produce the highly toxic waste, no Democrat has offered an alternative for the spent fuel storage.

Auto standards

For Detroit, the Democratic proposals include both carrots and sticks. There is general agreement on the need for mandating increases in fuel economy standards for automobiles. Mrs. Clinton, for example, has called for an increase to an average of 55 miles per gallon by 2030; Mr. Edwards, 40 miles-per-gallon by 2016.

But, along with other Democrats including Mr. Obama, they have also proposed multi-billion dollar aid packages for the auto industry to help it research new technologies and retool factories to produce cleaner cars. The auto industry is also one of the prime beneficiaries of a fund Mrs. Clinton has proposed separately to help pay for the "legacy costs" of retiree health care benefits.

As they troll for votes in Iowa, the candidates form a united chorus of support for the use of ethanol.

Most of the candidates of both parties have also called for spending on research for clean-coal technology, including the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide emissions. Mr. Edwards, for example, while the recipient of an enthusiastic endorsement of the United Mineworkers of America, has taken a hard line on new coal plants that do not capture greenhouse gases.

A UMW spokesman said the union's decision to back the ex-senator came in part because he has put forth what is, in the union's view, the most specific plans for research on coal's future.

Touting their foreign policy credentials, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., are among the Democrats calling for a renewed and more vigorous American role in international agreements to curb the release of greenhouse gases.

GOP cool on warming

Global warming in particular and energy in general have played a relatively less prominent role in the GOP nomination battle, a tendency reflected in the candidates' Web sites. While most of the Democratic candidates offer fairly detailed energy plans, the Republicans' debate, and their Web sites, have more abbreviated, broad-brush proposals.

In his standard stump speech, however, Mr. McCain regularly cites the "devastating" consequences of global warming and faults the Bush administration for being slow to respond to the issue. Some other Republican candidates, most notably former Sen. Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, have been skeptical about the science behind assertions of global warming.

Others, such as former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, are agnostic on the scientific debate, but support energy conservation and research for security reasons.

Mr. Huckabee pledges that his administration would achieve energy independence by the end of his second term. Mr. Romney offers a general everything-should-be-on-the table approach, endorsing research on a broad array of renewable energy, nuclear and fossil fuel sources. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York has similarly called for an "Apollo project" to diversify the nation's energy sources, including nuclear, renewable sources and clean coal technologies.

In keeping with his libertarian philosophy, Mr. Paul opposes any significant energy role for the government, arguing that free markets will find a better path to the nation's energy future.

--Post-Gazette politics editor James O'Toole can be reached at jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562.

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Pahrump Valley Times
November 24, 2007

DOE holds more Yucca hearings

By Mark Waite
PVT

AMARGOSA VALLEY -- It's been a little over a year since the U.S. Department of Energy held public hearings on Yucca Mountain, the last time to discuss the Mina train route.

That was a scoping meeting on the draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the repository and the rail route. Now that the EIS has been prepared, the DOE will hold a public hearing on those two draft documents from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at the LongStreet Inn and Casino in Amagosa Valley.

The DOE expects to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next June on licensing Yucca Mountain for the storage of nuclear waste. That licensing study is expected to take three years.

The first of the current round of public hearings was held Nov. 13 in Hawthorne and drew 18 people, Allen Benson, director of the DOE office of external affairs said. Another 41 people showed up for the hearing in Caliente Nov. 15, and 57 appeared in Reno Nov. 19. Other public hearings are scheduled Nov. 27 at the Goldfield School Gymnasium, Nov. 29 at Statham Hall in Lone Pine, Calif. and Dec. 3 at the Cashman Center in Las Vegas.

The new EIS details the rail route, including extensive detail on the Mina route and states the intention of the U.S. Department of Energy to allow dual use of the train route for use by commercial freight companies, a long-time goal of local officials in Nevada.

The Mina rail route is no longer the preferred alternative.

The draft EIS addresses the possibility of doubling the size of the nuclear waste repository to 130,000 tons, an action that would require an act of Congress, which previously authorized no more than 70,000 tons.

The DOE assumes Yucca Mountain would be ready to start accepting waste in 2017. Shipments would last until 2067.

The nuclear waste produced at 72 commercial and four DOE sites would arrive mostly by rail in a transportation, aging and disposal, or TAD, canister that will be loaded at the nuclear reactors and off-loaded at Yucca Mountain for storage without repackaging.

While the community protection plan prepared by Nye County asks the shipments to be by rail, the EIS forecasts shipping 9,500 casks by rail and 2,700 by truck. The rail casks would require 2,800 train shipments, an average of 17 trains per week.

The Caliente rail route would be 328 to 336 miles long at a cost of $2.2 billionn and would take four to 10 years to construct.

Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office Director Darrell Lacy said the shipments will be closely monitored. He said there won't be a situation such as happened recently in Las Vegas where a chlorine tanker accidentally rolled through the city before local emergency response officials were aware of it.

The DOE requested the withdrawal of 308,600 acres of public land to evaluate the rail line construction. A few different alternatives are being studied on the route through Goldfield historic mining districts, through Bonnie Claire and Oasis Valley. The Caliente corridor would cross 24 to 27 grazing allotments, at a loss of up to 1,083 animal unit months at a cost of $57,000. It would traverse through 32 to 37 un-patented mining claims.

Once at Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste would be placed in drifts 41 miles in length, 1,000 feet below the surface and about 1,000 feet above the water table.

The DOE assumes, based on past workforce patterns, 80 percent of the employees would live in Clark County. However, Nye County nuclear waste project officials point optimistically to the evaluation in the EIS of the potential environmental impacts if a higher percentage of the workforce lived in Nye County.

A summary of the EIS notes, "impacts to employment in Clark and Nye counties from repository-related construction and operations would be small. The number of jobs created directly and indirectly would peak in 2021 in both counties at around 1,300, an 0.09 percent increase above the projected employment baseline for that year."

DOE public affairs officer Gail Fisher said the first hour, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., will be an open house format during which the public can talk to experts, view displays and give their comments one-on-one to DOE court reporters. At 5 p.m. facilitators will announce a public comment period during which people can voice their opinions in front of the audience.

The Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office will have a display at all eight public hearings, with Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, consultants Mary Ellen Giampaoli and Cash Jaszczak, the project office director Darrell Lacy and Bob Gamble, Nye County's on-site representative at DOE, on hand.

Nye County issued a statement that direct and indirect impacts can be effectively mitigated. The county believes there is a mutual benefit for the federal and local government to evaluate the project in its policy of constructive engagement with the DOE.

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Pahrump Valley Times
November 24, 2007

Yucca hearings lack vigor of earlier times

By Mark Waite
PVT

The Yucca Mountain scoping meeting put on by the U.S. Department of Energy in Amargosa Valley last year was sparsely attended, with DOE experts almost outnumbering the public.

There were 43 people who signed the register in the meeting room at the LongStreet Inn and Casino, of whom only 12 spoke.

That contrasts with the packed and hostile crowd during the Yucca Mountain site selection hearing in October 2001, when 61 people went up to the microphone at the Bob Ruud Community Center in Pahrump to use their allotted five minutes.

The political theater outside the 2001 hearing included a bus featuring a traveling museum against nuclear waste, sponsored by the group Shundahai, which had an office in Pahrump for a brief time. They also carried along a mock nuclear waste cask.

Shundahai was a group with the stated goal of breaking the nuclear chain by building alliances with indigenous communities and environmental, peace and human rights movements. It was formed by Western Shoshone elder Corbin Harney in 1995.

Former Pahrump Town Board Chairman Tim Leavitt read a statement from then Gov. Kenny Guinn that Yucca Mountain "is an issue that is paramount to the health and safety of Nevadans."

Doreen Hagen, a member of the Prairie Island Tribal Council, came all the way from southern Minnesota to push for transporting the nuclear waste from near their tribal reservation to a more secure site, like Yucca Mountain.

Pahrump resident Janet Toy noted Nevada has the third highest number of earthquakes in the country. Nevada Community Health Nurse Maureen Budahl called Nye County the frontier when it comes to federal standards relating to health care services.

Today, the hearings are much more subdued, even moribund.

Even long-time Yucca Mountain opponent Sally Devlin said she may not show up at the public hearing Monday in Amargosa Valley, unless she can find someone to give her a ride.

Allen Benson, director of the U.S. Department of Energy office of external affairs, said the public hearings are held in Amargosa Valley now instead of Pahrump because it lies closer to the Yucca Mountain site. The DOE has also gone to an open house format, where many people who want to speak can give their comments one-on-one to a court reporter, instead of standing in front of a room full of people.

Devlin said a lot of the drive behind the anti-nuclear movement locally lost momentum when Harney, the Western Shoshone spiritual elder, died earlier this year.

Devlin added of Yucca Mountain, "it's not going to happen. I want our money back."

Under the current system, Devlin said, "What happens is nobody comes. They (DOE officials) write down your thing, that's the end of it, then they go home."

Devlin, an avid student of the project, correctly reminded people back in 2001 there would be two Yucca Mountains. Nye County nuclear waste project office officials confirmed recently the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the DOE to come out with a recommendation for a second nuclear waste repository in the eastern U.S. by 2010.

Other groups who showed up to protest the Yucca Mountain project in past meetings in Pahrump included Las Vegas-based Citizen Alert, which is still active, and the Nevada Desert Experience.

John Pawlak, who formerly led tours of Yucca Mountain while working at the information office on Postal Road in Pahrump, said he researched the safety of Pahrump before moving here.

Pawlak said he became interested in the issue of nuclear waste when he lived near the Enrico Fermi nuclear lab in Chicago, where the atomic bomb was developed, and had to be cleaned up because of to its proximity to the Des Plaines River.

"Nobody really cares any more," Pawlak said.

The federal government is cutting jobs at projects like Yucca Mountain, he said, to funnel money into the war in Iraq. But Pawlak said the public should be a lot more concerned about the health effects of the 828 nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site than the storing of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Ed Hanson, a long time member of the Pahrump town nuclear waste and environmental advisory committee, said he doesn't expect members of his board will attend the hearings.

Sen. Harry Reid, D.-Nev., insists repeatedly the Yucca Mountain Project will never become a reality and is just a waste of money.

But when asked whether Nevada residents should then bother to attend the hearings, Reid said in a statement, "This is the most important issue facing our state. It's important that Nevadans attend these hearings so their concerns about this flawed project will be heard."

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DailyIndia
November 24, 2007

Las Vegas sitting on an explosive sleeping earthquake fault line

From our ANI Correspondent

Washington, November 24: A sleepy earthquake fault near Las Vegas may wake up someday, according to a report published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

The Stateline Fault runs within 30 miles of Las Vegas and the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, north of Vegas.

It also runs right through backyards in the fast-growing community of Pahrump, Nevada, to the west.

"Big faults, in between earthquakes, are generally very quiet," Discovery News quoted Caltech geophysicist Brian Wernicke, as saying.

The researchers said that the Stateline Fault could move more than previously reported.

He corroborated this with evidence that some debris from a small volcano along the fault had been shifted more than 20 miles away from the volcano over the last 13 million years, which suggested that the real rate of lateral "strike-slip" movement on the Stateline Fault could be twice the earlier estimates.

"The strike-slip story is just emerging," Wernicke said.

Geophysicist Terry Pavlis, from the University of Texas in El Paso, said: "Ninety-nine percent of the population of Pahrump has no idea that they're right on top of the fault. This is close enough (to Vegas) that you'd get a pretty good shaking if this thing were to go."

The report also refers to the historic measurements of slip along the Stateline Fault, which suggest that the fault was slipping laterally at a gentle rate of a millimetre or so per year.

According to the researchers, more data on the current movements along the faults are possible because of a recently installed GPS survey system for the Yucca Mountain Project.

However, funding for analysing data form the GPS system was recently cut by the Department of Energy, revealed Wernicke.

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Mansfield News Journal
November 24, 2007

We must find a safe site to dispose of our nuclear waste

The issue of a permanent disposal site for the nation's nuclear waste never seems to go away.

In one respect, that's fitting, considering the length of time it takes the material to lose its radioactive punch -- longer than recorded human history.

That is also the reason the issue is significant to us all.

The major Democratic presidential candidates are on record as opposing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Opposition to Yucca Mountain as a permanent disposal site is a popular position in Nevada, a state that has seen explosive population growth and thus a growing importance in presidential politics.

Unfortunately, this is not the kind of issue that should be subject to political whims. While it's understandable Nevadans do not want the country's nuclear waste dumped in their state, few reasonable alternatives exist.

While politicians debate the merits of the Yucca Mountain site, radioactive waste continues to build up at the individual power plants, including the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.

Chip Palazzo, a Davis-Besse spokesman, says the waste at the Ottawa County site is secure, but one central site, instead of 104 locations, for permanent waste disposal allows for better monitoring and security.

Palazzo says the Department of Energy must honor its commitment to build a permanent disposal site, a commitment he said predated the construction of commercial reactors in the United States.

While few would suggest any disposal solution is truly permanent, especially considering the length of time that nuclear waste remains dangerous, a more secure disposal system is needed soon. It's unlikely any site on the planet would be a perfect choice. Geological changes and a host of unforeseen events could lessen the safety of any waste repository.

Granted, the shipment of nuclear waste from the country's nuclear power plants to one site in Nevada will pose plenty of additional safety and security concerns.

The Nuclear Energy Institute says the earliest the site at Yucca Mountain could open is in 2020, 10 years later than originally planned.

It's not difficult to imagine that a concerted political effort to derail Yucca Mountain's opening could push that date further into the future. While that might make Nevadans happy, it should cause the rest of us a great deal of concern.

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Cherry Hill Courier Post
November 24, 2007

Reprocessing

Re: "State's energy plan must boost renewables" (editorial, Nov. 12).

I am a consultant to the nuclear energy industry. The editorial pertaining to the state's energy plan gives nuclear energy the short shrift and requires some clarification.

First, there is no need to point toward Europe as an example of the successful use of nuclear energy. The United States has safely operated more than 100 nuclear power plants for decades -- more than any other country -- and they provide 20 percent of our electrical energy with zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Second, Gov. Jon Corzine has no role to play in protecting nuclear plants from terrorism. Nuclear power plants are federally licensed facilities. Federal regulations have required these facilities to be heavily protected since well before 9/11; we don't need redundant state involvement.

Third, decades of scientific study and the U.S. Congress have determined the appropriate place to dispose of used nuclear fuel is Yucca Mountain, Nev. The so-called questions about its suitability come from political opponents and noncredible activist organizations.

What the United States needs to do is reprocess the spent fuel for reuse in other nuclear plants like the French and Japanese already do. Reprocessing has a side benefit of reducing the amount of waste that requires disposal.

Brian Gutherman
Shamong

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 23, 2007

Letters: Reid trying to protect Nevada, the nation

Your Monday editorial arguing that keeping the Senate in session during the holidays would accomplish little was dead wrong. Sen. Harry Reid's decision protects Nevada.

The law requires the president to nominate Democrats Sen. Reid recommended to boards such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ensuring bipartisan representation as review of the Yucca Mountain license application looms is critical to Nevada. Sen. Reid recommended two Democrats to the NRC, in April and September, yet the president has failed to nominate either.

Sen. Reid recently told the president he would confirm nominees he sought if Mr. Bush would commit to moving Democratic nominees forward. The president responded that he would recess appoint his nominees, rather than act on the Democrats. Keeping the Senate in session prevented the president from making his appointments and ignoring Democratic nominees.

It should help ensure that commissions such as the NRC have the bipartisan representation required by law.

That's good for Nevada and the nation.

Gary Myrick
Washington, D.C.
The Writer is Sen. Reid's Chief of Staff.

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Chillicothe Gazette
November 23, 2007

Nuclear waste disposal should not be up for political debate

The issue of a permanent disposal site for the nation's nuclear waste never seems to go away.

In one respect, that's fitting, considering the length of time it takes the material to lose its radioactive punch - longer than recorded human history.

That's also the reason the issue is significant.

The major Democratic presidential candidates are on record as opposing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Opposition to Yucca Mountain as a permanent disposal site is a popular position in Nevada, a state that has seen explosive population growth and thus a growing importance in presidential politics.

While politicians debate the merits of the Yucca Mountain site, radioactive waste continues to build up at the individual power plants, including the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.

Palazzo says the Department of Energy must honor its commitment to build a permanent disposal site, a commitment he said predated the construction of commercial reactors in the United States.

Granted, the shipment of nuclear waste from the country's nuclear power plants to one site in Nevada will pose plenty of additional safety and security concerns.

The Nuclear Energy Institute says the earliest the site at Yucca Mountain could open is in 2020, 10 years later than originally planned.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 22, 2007

Erin Neff: Thankful for a bountiful political season

As we all take pause today to share thanks with friends and family, I'm grateful that I can stuff myself with politics, thanks to Nevada's early presidential caucus.

Having an early caucus is a political journalist's dream, and Nevada's is playing out better than any fantasy I might have had a year ago when Sen. Harry Reid was simply trying to get us some early attention.

Now that it's rounding the bend, I'm giving thanks that so many candidates have spent meaningful time here, allowing Nevadans a chance to shake the hand of someone who may very well be the next president.

As we enter the holiday season, hundreds of volunteers are being trained to operate the Democratic and Republican caucuses on Jan. 19. The candidates continue to arrive -- and it's not just the Democrats, lured by last week's national cable television debate.

Republican Rep. Ron Paul brought his libertarian message to an enthusiastic crowd at UNLV this week, and Mitt Romney, who continues to battle for the GOP lead in polls, campaigned at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and at an event in Henderson last week.

Nevadans should be thankful they finally have a real say in the nomination process -- on both sides of the aisle. The candidates have a variety of things they, too, can give thanks for in the Silver State.

Sen. Hillary Clinton should give thanks today to Rory Reid. Not only did she get a senator's son to chair her campaign here, she got one who chairs the powerful Clark County Commission. Big labor groups that have yet to endorse will have a hard time going against Clinton, but will have a really hard time going against Reid.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama should be thankful Nevada is a quick drive from California, and that you can still sometimes find $200 round-trip fares on Southwest Airlines from Chicago-Midway. Who needs Nevada voters when you can truck in supporters?

Former Sen. John Edwards must be thankful Nevada has Elko and a labor presence. Major union endorsements have yet to be announced, and the former vice presidential nominee still holds out hope he can get them. Barring that, he can always hit the rurals with his small-town-boy-makes-it story.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson should give thanks that Nevadans don't really care about the Yucca Mountain Project, after all.

Sen. Joe Biden should be thankful for columnist Steve Sebelius. You can't buy the kind of endorsement Las Vegas CityLife gave him.

Sen. Chris Dodd must be thankful for the International Association of Firefighters, whose endorsement provides credibility even if it isn't helping him catch fire.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich should be thankful we have Yucca Mountain, which he has consistently voted against, and Area 51, which for UFO believers is out of this world.

On the Republican side of the aisle, there's also plenty of reason for candidates to give thanks.

Rudy Giuliani must praise Sheldon Adelson for letting him hitch a ride on the third-richest man's plane.

Romney should give thanks to local followers of the LDS faith for giving him the lead here.

John McCain should be thankful Nevada's such a short drive from Arizona.

Fred Thompson, of "Law & Order" fame, should give thanks that so many Nevadans see him on cable TV reruns.

Paul needs to praise CNN, which just polled him at 8 percent in Nevada. The most recent Review-Journal survey had him at 1 percent.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee should be thankful he's from Hope. Nevadans have twice elected a president from that hamlet.

Rep. Tom Tancredo should give thanks for English-only Pahrump. Then he should pick up his fork and try to take a bite of something an immigrant hasn't already touched.

The state Democratic Party should give thanks it has taken over the voter registration lead and is making a serious push in Republican Rep. Jon Porter's 3rd Congressional District.

The state Republican Party should be thankful Democrats have secured all those caucus sites. Not only have the Republicans taken the Dems' date, they've also latched on to about 180 of the Democratic caucus sites. (Thank goodness the caucus meetings are hours apart).

Both state parties should be thankful for Harry Reid, without whom neither party would have an early caucus. And without the Senate majority leader, the state Republican Party would have little to say.

--Contact Erin Neff at eneff@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2906.

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Reno News and Review
November 22, 2007

The raider returns

Ralph Nader takes another look at Nevada’s issues and finds the state is still being exploited

By Dennis Myers
dennism@newsreview.com

"How many of you have heard of Interface Corporation?" the speaker asked.

Four hands went up.

"And how many of you have heard of Halliburton?" he asked.

Every hand went up.

Ralph Nader had made his point—in journalism, bad news drives out bad. His audience knew all about the rogue corporation operating in Iraq but little of the Georgia carpet manufacturer that is a profitable success while still cleaning up after itself with a massive recycling program for its raw materials.

The hair that was jet black when General Motors was siccing private detectives on him is now salt and pepper, but the lanky, stooped-shoulder posture and dull black suit that bespeak his spartan lifestyle are the same. At 73, Nader still draws crowds, as he drew 234 people to an appearance that marking the opening of the new student union at the University of Nevada, Reno.

He praised the building in typical Nader fashion, not for its architecture or amenities but for its planned photovoltaic features and its pocketbook impact, praising the inclusion of a credit union instead of a bank. He delighted the audience by pronouncing Nevada correctly and by calling the campus by its original name—"You notice I say the University of Nevada. Enough of Las Vegas, huh? My only pandering tonight."

Outside, young Republican protestors objected to his presence. Inside, a Democratic audience member denounced Nader for running against Al Gore and taking away "his" votes.

If offending the two party system is a credential, Nader has something for everyone—harsh criticism of government to offend Democrats and harsh criticism of corporations to offend Republicans.

He isn't new either to UNR, where he has spoken before, or to Nevada, whose issues he has regularly dealt with. For years, Nader has had the nasty habit of being right too soon to suit Nevada politicians.

At a 1973 governor's conference, he denounced the Atomic Energy Commission, the agency that told the public that atomic testing in Nevada was not harmful. Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, a Democrat, bristled. He told Nader, "I've probably worked with the AEC more than any other governor... I've gone to them with some tough questions and they've always come up with the answers." Nader responded that he couldn't believe O'Callaghan's attitude "when the federal government is using his state as a guinea pig. Why doesn't the state of Nevada demand more public participation in the AEC's decision-making process?" Disclosures of the AEC's misconduct in Nevada were yet to come. (The AEC is now folded into the U.S. Department of Energy, which is trying to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump.)

In 2000, he incurred the wrath of Nevada's U.S. Sen. Harry Reid for running for president against Reid's pal Al Gore. But Nader has long since seen his work as moving beyond the political arena and seen politicians as part of the problem. After succeeding in getting numerous major pieces of legislation through Congress early in his career, Nader found that administrations of both parties were reluctant to enforce them and he turned his attention to more direct action through citizen groups and in local communities.

His remarks at UNR probably won't endear him to Nevada politicians, either, because they included condemnation of the Mining Law of 1872: "They [mining corporations] get free, virtually free ... your gold, your molybdenum, your silver."

Prodding politicians

His view of the foot dragging of the political process and the unwillingness of politics to enact sweeping changes to deal with great threats was one of his topics at the student union. One such sweeping change, he said, would have eliminated the need for the Yucca Mountain waste dump: Stop generating the waste.

"How do you deal with leaded gasoline? You get rid of it," he said. "You don't bring it down ten percent every year."

But usually it doesn't happen that way, Nader said. The politicians and regulators waver, unwilling to order such sweeping changes because they have "big fund raisers with the polluters in Washington and elsewhere" and the needed strict compliance standards are never issued. Thus, allowable levels of toxic pollution are permitted.

Using existing technology to enhance the energy derived from existing sources would solve much of the U.S. energy problem, he said, but timid politicians won't require it.

"Material science is so developed in our country and other countries that there are really vast, vast efficiencies possible where you can get 10 times more work out of a certain amount of natural resources, whether it's timber or whether it's oil or whether it's gas..."

Nader quoted two scientists: "Reducing waste represents a vast business economy. The U.S. economy is not even 10 percent as energy efficient as the laws of physics allow. Just the energy thrown off as waste heat by U.S. power stations equals the total energy use in Japan."

Most of the crowd was receptive to Nader, but during the question period one audience member denounced him for allegedly denying the presidency to Gore. "Haven't you any shame?" the man asked Nader. The normally imperturbable Nader flared, telling the man to stand to hear his answer.

"We are not second class citizens, sir, because we are third party or independent candidates. We have an equal right to run. ... Those are our First Amendment rights, the right to run as a candidate, the right to vote. ... If you're a Democrat, tell your fellow Democrats that they've become very good in recent decades at electing very bad Republicans because they whine, and they carp, and they sell out to the corporations."

The crowd cheered wildly at hearing the mild-mannered activist express outrage.

Nader said Harry Truman in 1948 also had a third-party opponent, Henry Wallace. "You know what Harry Truman did? He didn't whine, he didn't carp. He took the issues, domestic issues, away from Henry Wallace."

Dispelling apathy

Nader devoted the bulk of his remarks to trying to motivate the members of his audience, particularly the students. Never again in their lives, he said, will they have the freedom of action they have a students, much less the assets they have—student newspapers, meeting halls, laboratories.

Of his mixed audience of young and not so young, he asked, "How does the campus awaken on this? ... They've got 15,000 or so days before they turn 65, a little over 2,000 weeks. Did last week go quickly? You haven't seen anything yet. Ask your parents and grandparents. There's no time, you know, to spend 10 years to 'find yourself' in your 20s. You're adults. You've got high levels of idealism. You're not afraid of taking on new technology. You know how to use the internet. And you've got the students who came before you to stand on their shoulders, the students who did the civil rights struggles and the environmental... You've got to be less self-indulgent, less making excuses for yourself." Other groups with fewer numbers—abolitionists, suffrage workers, labor organizers—accomplished more with fewer numbers and at risk of life, he said.

He also said they have better prospects of success than they realize.

"Remember when they said the tobacco industry was invincible? ... There are dozens of examples like that. ... Why? Because a lot of people—like the Mississippi River, which starts with a few drops of water in northern Minnesota and becomes the rivulet and then the rivulets become brooks and the brooks become streams and the streams become rivers and the rivers become tributaries and then you've got the Mississippi River—because enough people objected to smokers blowing smoke in their face."

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Pahrump Valley Times
November 21, 2007

Against the Grain:

Watering down the Nevada debate

Dennis Myers

Last week's debate in Las Vegas among the Democratic presidential candidates ended on a particularly low note:

Cable News Network host Wolf Blitzer: "Maria, would you stand, please? Give us your full name."

Maria Parra Sandoval: "Maria Parra Sandoval, and I'm a UNLV student. And my question is for Senator Clinton. This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?"

Hillary Clinton: "Now, I know I'm sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice. I want both."

CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux: "Do we get to ask any of the other candidates or I supposed just Senator Clinton?"

Joseph Biden: "I'm for diamonds. Diamonds."

Sandoval: "It's the only thing -- it's the only thing shiny up there."

Malveaux: "OK. Thank you so much."

Blitzer: "All right. So on that note, diamonds and pearls, I want to thank all of the Democratic presidential candidates for joining us here this evening."

After the program ended, Sandoval found herself the target of harsh criticism over the frivolous exchange. As so often happens in these kinds of public controversies, it was not that simple. Sandoval had a hand in the writing of the question, but CNN had a larger role. She responded on her MySpace site (www.myspace.com/maria_luisa_rocks) that the network required her to ask the question as a condition of getting to ask a question at all. She wrote:

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN. I was asked to submit questions including 'lighthearted/fun' questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago... For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was approved by CNN days in advance."

It was not to be, she wrote: "CNN ran out of time and used me to 'close' the debate with the pearls/diamonds question."

CNN more or less confirmed Sandoval's account to newsman Greg Sargent.

First of all, Sandoval is new to public life and not particularly savvy in public controversies (she posted her supposedly public explanation on a page she has 'set to private'), so it's fair to cut her some slack.

As Sargent wrote, "[I]t's obvious that the girl was hardly 'forced' to ask this; rather, she was offered the opportunity and took it. The network wanted to close on a light question, and they chose this one. On the other hand, the network is confirming that it did in fact choose a question that quizzed the first credible female Presidential candidate on her taste in jewelry. That's confessing to some pretty questionable taste."

What is getting too little attention is the not the network's taste but its judgment. Why is a supposed news network screening questions in the first place? Questions that are held out as representing the public should be genuinely so. When I was in television news, it was a license violation to stage news to look like it was a live shot when it was actually taped. This is in the same dubious ethical territory. In this case, CNN had a responsibility to inform the public that it was orchestrating questions and failed to do so.

In addition, the network controlling questions in order to control the ebb and flow of the tone of the program - serious at some points, light at others - has no place on a "news" network.

Then, too, one has to wonder about the news judgment of whoever was acting on the network's behalf. Follow-up questions serve an important function in informing the public. CNN's executive producer of the debate, Sam Feist, told the New York Times that the candidates had already spent ten minutes on Yucca Mountain. That's true, but those candidates did a fuzzy job of answering. Feist should be in another line of work if that's typical of his news judgment. Sandoval, not Feist, was acting in the interest of news by wanting to raise Yucca again.

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Pahrump Valley Times
November 21, 2007

Back Then: 20 years ago this week

The U.S. Senate approved the bill this week that many believe virtually guarantees that Yucca Mountain will become the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

The bill calls for selection of a preferred site by January 1989, less than 14 months away. The measure now goes to the House, where a similar bill is being prepared.

Exceptions are that the House will also support the concept in which only one site is studied at a time, rather than three. If the first site studied is found suitable, no further studies would be required.

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Pahrump Valley Times
November 21, 2007

'EVOL' SPELLED BACKWARDS ...

Ron Paul makes a new midnight ride for revolution

By Mark Waite
PVT

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul looked out at the standing-room-only crowd at the Bob Ruud Community Center Monday night and exclaimed to loud cheers: "Looks like a lot of people care about freedom in this country. And the Constitution."

Paul talked of restoring the original American revolution, which reverberated deeply to a Pahrump crowd.

The Texas congressman, evoking his stance from his run as a Libertarian for president in 1988, advocated abolishing the income tax and the Federal Reserve System, bringing all the troops home and the re-institutionalization of liberty.

Paul said after the rally he is running as a Republican because the deck is stacked against third party candidates..

Paul said he reluctantly entered the campaign but has become energized by the support, particularly after Nov. 5, when he said his campaign raised $4.3 million in $100 donations and energized 20,000 new supporters.

"The Internet's been around for a while but it's never happened where all these things are coming together. First, the exasperation the American people are feeling about what's happening to our country, not only economically but in foreign policy and in monetary policy as well," Paul said.

Paul said he sees the desire to move from forced tyranny and violence into freedom and less choices. The one-day fundraising gave his campaign credibility, he said.

"The media may realize, wow, this is not just a couple people on the Internet, a couple fringe people," Paul said. "People in this state, they love liberty and limited government and have confidence in it. So a good showing here could be just as attention-getting as any single day of fundraising."

Paul drew one of his three-dozen rounds of applause when he noted his vote against sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

"I see no way the people in Texas have a right to put nuclear waste in your state without your permission," he said.

Paul drew more applause when he pointed out that Texas, unlike Nevada, has hardly any federally-owned property which he said is the way it should be.

Foreign policy is costing the U.S. a trillion dollars per year, Paul said. In one of his 10 references to the Constitution, Paul said the Constitution said America ought not to be involved in entangling alliances and the internal affairs of other countries.

"We could save hundreds of billions of dollars by bringing our troops home immediately," Paul said. "I don't think we should ever go to war without declaring it. If we declare war everybody should be behind it and fight it and get it over with, but not these undeclared wars that just go on and on and on and just drain ... us."

While Democratic presidential candidates talk about pulling troops out of Iraq, Paul went further. He advocated bringing troops back from South Korea.

"We've been in Japan and we've been in Germany since World War II. We're in 130 countries around the world. We have 700 bases overseas and the truth is, even if you like this idea and this it's important that we be over there, we don't have any money, we're broke. We can't even fight that war in the beginning and we can't pay our bills at home without borrowing money from a nation like China. They have become our bankers," Paul said.

The U.S., he charged, was further aggravating the Arab world by building 14 permanent bases in Iraq and an embassy bigger than the Vatican. By changing foreign policy, the government would have hundreds of billions to pay for social benefits at home, he said.

The excessive spending leads to taxes, then Washington still doesn't have enough money so they borrow, and when that still isn't enough, government prints more money, he said.

"I'd like to make sure the American people have sound money. Money that's backed by something, backed by something that the Constitution says and the Constitution also gives no authority to a central bank. It means that when we have our day in court and we have a sound monetary system and a sound economy, we won't have a Federal Reserve system," Paul said. He added to more applause, "to keep all the fruits of our labor we would not have the tax system we have now and we would not have an income tax."

Special interests which control things in Washington, D.C., like the corporations are making billions off medical care, Paul said. But Paul, a Texas obstetrician, said the solution isn't to go from corporate medicine to government medicine, but through changes in the tax code.

"The answer can be found in freedom. They're not difficult to find," he said.

The American people became fearful and trusted government to take care of them after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Paul said. Laws that were passed didn't address the problem like the Patriot Act, while foreign policy got worse.

"The odds of a foreign army coming in and invading this country are essentially zero. It's not going to happen," Paul said. He said the terrorists aren't a foreign army like the Chinese or Nazi Germany, only a small number of people so upset at America they are willing to become suicide bombers.

The U.S. shouldn't reward illegal immigrants with amnesty, Paul said. He charged there's talk about creating a North American union with a common currency.

"One thing we ought to do is protect our borders. We have border guards in Iraq. I think those border guards ought to be back here," Paul said to more applause.

Young people have become energized in his campaign, Paul said, and will unfortunately inherit a great deal of debt. They may pay into Social Security for 30 years without getting anything out of it, he said.

As he left the stage, the crowd chanted "Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!" A woman led the crowd singing "The Star Spangled Banner." He then shook hands with members of the audience in a back room at the community center.

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New York Times
November 21, 2007

Do Not Read This If You Are Anti-Nuclear Energy

By Stephen J. Dubner

There’s been a good bit of back-and-forthing on this blog about nuclear power, most notably regarding a Times Magazine column we wrote recently about the past and future of the nuclear industry.

In a nutshell, we posited that the U.S. anti-nuke revolt in the 1960s and 1970s may look misguided in retrospect since it helped thwart the proliferation of nuclear power (clean but risky) while encouraging coal-fired electricity (dirty and, with global warming in mind, perhaps even riskier).

There is by now a pretty long list of environmentalists who used to be anti-nuke and are now in favor of it. They include Stewart Brand, James Lovelock, and Patrick Moore. If a new book called Power to Save the World is half as good as this Wall Street Journal review says it is, expect that list to get much, much longer.

It is written by Gwyneth Cravens, a “novelist and former New Yorker magazine fiction editor … a sometime antinuclear activist … and a determined organic vegetable gardener who spent her childhood in 1950s New Mexico having atom-bomb nightmares.” Dr. Richard “Rip” Anderson is “another lifelong greenie, a man with a doctorate in organic chemistry who grew up on an Idaho ranch without electricity and whose day job, over the course of a long career, has included pioneering something called probabilistic risk assessment (the underpinnings of climate-change analysis, but that’s another story).”

Together they set off on “a grand tour of the nuclear-power world, from dust-blown uranium mines to the depths of a pilot facility for Uncle Sam’s waste deposit at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.” And they come back raving — in favor of nuclear power. The review’s author, Spencer Reiss, sums things up nicely here:

It’s hard not to read Ms. Cravens’s book as a 400-page indictment of the nuclear power industry’s tragicomic inability to tell its own story. Going all the way back to Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) — disasters that look a lot less disastrous in retrospect, as Ms. Cravens discovers — the industry has swapped missionary zeal for a hair shirt and a defensive crouch.

In other words, even if you end up pro-nuke, you can still find something to blame on nuclear industry. (I have always found this argument shaky, especially when put forth by journalists: that the nuclear industry didn’t tell its own story well. When a besieged industry does “tell its own story well,” it is said to be manipulating the media; and when it doesn’t, it’s not the media that’s at fault, but the industry itself.)

That said, it sure feels as if the tide is turning on nuclear power, at least in terms of the American public perception. And if you think public perception isn’t important, just think back to how severely the perception of the Three Mile Island accident changed nuclear power’s future.

Addendum: I received the following e-mail from Gwyneth Craven, correcting an error in the original post (now appended above) and offering some further insights:

I appreciate your good words about my book. I am wondering if you can fix one thing, though. Dr. Richard “Rip” Anderson, the chemist, oceanographer, and expert in risk assessment who took me on a tour of the nuclear world, is actually married to another environmental and community activist, Marcia Fernández. She came along on the Nuclear America Tour. (Together they saved an airstrip in Albuquerque from development and turned it into a sanctuary for migrating birds and other wildlife.) I am married to Henry Beard, the humor writer.

Good point about the media’s tendency to blame industry, one way or another. I did not intend the book to be an indictment of the nuclear industry, although I do criticize it for handling some matters clumsily, a history of lame P.R., and its partnership, through utilities, with the fossil fuel industry.

To me the book is about prejudice based on wrong assumptions and what Richard Rhodes calls “secondhand ignorance.” In the book (p.184) there is a graph based on a study by Bernard Cohen, Prof. Emeritus, U. of Pittsburgh, about stories by the New York Times of different types of accidents between 1974-78 (prior to Three Mile Island). He compared their frequency with the annual fatalities caused by these accidents. Cohen writes:

On an average, there were 120 entries per year on motor vehicle accidents, which kill 50,000 Americans each year; 50 entries per year on industrial accidents, which kill 12,000; and 20 entries per year on asphyxiation accidents, which kill 4,500; note that for these the number of entries, which represents roughly the amount of newspaper coverage, is approximately proportional to the death toll they cause. But for accidents involving radiation, there were something like 200 entries per year, in spite of there not having been a single fatality from a radiation accident for over a decade.

Another problem, especially in TV coverage, was use of inflammatory language. We often heard about “deadly radiation” or “lethal radioactivity,” referring to a hazard that hadn’t claimed a single victim for over a decade, and had caused less than five deaths in American history. But we never heard about “lethal electricity,” although 1,200 Americans were dying each year from electrocution; or about “lethal natural gas,” which was killing 500 annually with asphyxiation accidents. (Bernard Cohen, “The Nuclear Energy Option,” pp. 58-59.)

People may have skewed risk perceptions, as you have pointed out in your writings, but the media helps that process.

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The Nation
November 21, 2007

Debating for Dummies

Eric Alterman

I've seen debates on TV before, of course, and attended them from journalists' pens and spin rooms. But sitting in the audience of CNN's November 15 Democratic presidential debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focused my mind on the egregious manner in which our media dumb down the process by which we pick our Presidents.

It was less a debate than a two-hour advertisement; not only did viewers see CNN = Politics graphics everywhere but unbeknownst to the television audience a network producer ran around the stage, ginning up the crowd like a high school cheerleader. (This backfired when a group of rowdies--angered by the inanity of the questions--shouted down Wolf Blitzer and had to be removed from the auditorium.)

From the start it was obvious that Blitzer & Co. had little interest in illuminating the candidates' positions on actual issues; they sought merely to create controversy. The first part of the debate was given over to attacks on, and counterattacks from, Hillary Clinton--a surefire newsmaker that left the other candidates twiddling their thumbs. Next Blitzer went down the line, demanding to know whether the candidates supported driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, apparently unaware that licenses are the province of governors and state legislators, not Presidents. When Barack Obama tried to outline his overall approach to immigration in response, Blitzer repeatedly cut him off. ("Is that a yes or a no?" was a typical Blitzer interruption.)

Blitzer also demanded an up-or-down answer from members of the panel on the question of merit pay for teachers, another issue for which the Constitution gives the President no role whatsoever. What's more, Blitzer's reductive formulation--"What if there's an excellent teacher in that team and a crummy teacher?"--failed to define who would make the decision, what criteria would be used and how they might be implemented. This turned out to be the moderator's modus operandi. Discussing the future of Pakistan, for instance, Blitzer reduced the question to the purely theoretical and profoundly misleading "Is human rights more important than American national security?"--as if the two were somehow contradictory by definition and either answer might plot out a plan in Pakistan.

As is so often the case in MSM election coverage, CNN's hectoring of the Democratic candidates reflected an unconscious internalization of Republican Party talking points. As Michael Kinsley pointed out during the 2004 Democratic convention, "It's true enough that this is a moment when the Democrats are called upon to reject extreme liberalism (whatever that might be) and to embrace moderation. But that is only because every moment is such a moment." He termed this meme "one of the very safest in all of punditry," which, as the old song goes, is really saying something. So we heard Blitzer robotically repeating, "The teachers' union, very powerful--teachers' unions, very powerful" before inquiring of Dennis Kucinich, "Are there any issues with unions--teachers' unions, or other unions for that matter--with which you disagree?" (Leave aside the fact that Blitzer apparently believes that all unions agree with one another on everything; are Republican candidates routinely asked to disassociate themselves from conservative Christians or the Fortune 500?)

The same syndrome was evident when, after a woman in the audience posed a question about what qualities the candidates would seek in a Supreme Court Justice, Blitzer and Suzanne Malveaux reinterpreted her question to restrict its scope to whether each would "require" judges "to support abortion rights." Of course, the questioner might have been interested in FISA, rendition, torture or the Bush Administration's multipronged assault on our constitutional rights, but where's the buzz factor there? Not only did CNN's anchors deliberately distort the woman's question; they replaced it with one posed within a hostile linguistic framework. Democrats, as we are all aware, speak of the issue as one of "reproductive freedom," "choice" or, as it is defined in Roe v. Wade, Americans' "right to privacy." The way Blitzer rephrased Malveaux's original distortion--demanding to know whether the Democrats would "insist" that judicial nominees "support abortion"--he might as well have been addressing a right-to-life rally.

We saw a similar dynamic every time voters were invited to ask a question: their concerns were ignored as Blitzer and Malveaux twisted their inquiries into "gotcha" traps. When an Arab-American asked an impassioned question about airport racial profiling, Malveaux used his story to try to trip up John Edwards. "You obviously voted for the Patriot Act, which gives the government extended powers of surveillance," she explained. "What do you say to people like Mr. Khan, who says he's been abused by that power?" Yet Mr. Khan never mentioned the Patriot Act, which, as Joe Biden finally noted, has nothing to do with racial profiling.

The night's final absurdity came at the evening's close, when a UNLV student was given the microphone and asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred diamonds or pearls. Sitting in the audience, I was among those who thought her idiotic inquiry shamed both herself and her university. Yet it turns out I was being unfair. As she later explained on her MySpace page, she had been planning to ask a question about nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, but at the last minute she was instructed by a CNN producer to switch her question to diamonds and pearls, which she had submitted in advance when asked by the network to provide questions of a "lighthearted/fun" nature. The folks at CNN apparently considered this inquiry to be such a stroke of genius they chose it as their lead story for the website the following day, under the headline Diamonds or pearls: Clinton wants both.

Really, Democrats, there's gotta be a better way.

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The Examiner
November 21, 2007

Commentary - Ambrose: Obama unrealistically nods to Nevada on nuclear waste

by Jay Ambrose

SAN FRANCISCO - Yucca Mountain in Nevada, it has been written, is “the most studied real estate on the planet.” Scientists have been at it for three decades, and it’s reported that most have concluded it is a safe, appropriate place to store nuclear waste.

Sen. Barack Obama would rather travel the more dangerous, more expensive, wholly irrational route of letting the waste stay in states where it was generated.

Please, never let it be as much as whispered that this self-proclaimed exemplar of bold, new leadership was looking ahead to the Nevada presidential caucuses in voicing this position at a Las Vegas debate of Democrats seeking a home in the White House. Let’s assume instead that he has really thought this issue through with no trace of political consideration, and then let’s ponder his thinking processes.

For starters, he has to disregard the fact that literally billions of dollars have been spent and top scientists in a variety of fields employed in determining that Yucca is more than suitable for a national waste repository.

An advantage is that the site is arid, making it unlikely you’d get sufficient water to seep through 1,000 feet of rock and erode state-of-the-art canisters, allowing the waste inside to seep an equal distance further down to poison a water table. The waste will not retreat into harmlessness for as long as 10,000 years, but here is the good news: The canisters could be retrieved up to 300 years from now if some error in calculation or improved technology should be discovered.

Obama talks about his sure-fire ability as a future president to do the right thing against large odds, forgetting on this issue that it has in fact taken toughness and courage for the Bush administration and others to push ahead to establish a single site as a repository, something recommended by the National Academies of Science a half-century ago but opposed, naturally enough, by those who don’t want their state to be the chosen place. He talked instead about being “fair” to Nevada by having laboratories such as one in his state of Illinois develop techniques for storage of the waste that avoid the need of shipping it to “somebody else’s backyard.”

The idea that there are places in Illinois more secure and safer than Yucca Mountain is a stretch, and you wonder whether Obama is prepared to repeat what has already been done at Yucca: billions of dollars and years and years worth of investigation. He might avoid that pain with a cheap minute’s worth of contemplation informing him that continued storage in the states is an unneeded, costly burden to utility consumers and taxpayers.

Obama gets it that nuclear energy has to be at least part of “the mix” of this nation’s energy future. But he may not be wise enough to understand that the building of more nuclear plants to aid in various highly important objectives is made many times more problematic by a failure to get on with the Yucca project, which keeps getting expensively postponed.

Obama is hardly alone in his confusion. But what grates on one is that he embraces such muddy-headed positions while simultaneously telling us how he personifies a virtually unique reasonableness.

--Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former editor of two daily newspapers. He may be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.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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