Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, December 31, 2007
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 01, 2008
Editorial: Nuclear power on the comeback trail
Which will put the focus on Yucca Mountain
If it's leap year and scarf-wrapped candidates are crunching the new-plowed snows in an attempt to shake the hand of every Dunkin' Donuts patron in New Hampshire, then the season of the caucus and primary is upon us.
By this arcane if time-honored process of direct democracy, the field of presidential hopefuls will soon be narrowed from a dozen to perhaps three or four.
And the Nuclear Energy Institute -- the trade association for those who make their livings peddling nuclear power -- is capering like a race track patron who's managed to get odds on every horse but one.
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina -- generally perceived to be running third in the Democratic field, even as the race tightens -- has come out flatly opposed to the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Otherwise, an industry that has seen no new domestic power plants ordered since the near-meltdown of Pennsylvania's Three Mile island plant in 1979, followed by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, has started to tentatively tune up for a rousing chorus of "Everything's Coming Up Roses."
The reason is the intersection of two potent political currents -- the attempt to wean America from partial dependence on imported foreign oil, and the perceived necessity of seeking power sources that don't contribute to global warming by generating "greenhouse gases."
Whether radical environmentalists like it or not, nuclear power fills both bills.
"If we're serious about making sure we grow our economy and deal with greenhouse gases," President Bush declared as he signed the latest energy bill into law last month, "we have got to expand nuclear power."
And it's not just talk. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission received three new applications for nuclear power plants in 2007, and expects to see at least 15 more by the end of 2009.
On the Democratic side, presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to make politically correct noises about promoting windmills and solar panels, of course. Both also endorse motherhood. But neither will rule out more nukes.
"I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution," Sen. Clinton said at a recent campaign rally in South Carolina. "I don't think we can take nuclear power off the table," agreed Sen. Obama in a recent swing through New Hampshire.
And on the Republican side, the chorus for developing nuclear power "more aggressively" is virtually unanimous.
As it grows obvious that wind and solar and geothermal are unlikely to provide as much as 20 percent of our energy needs in the near future -- even if the greens were to surprise everyone by withholding their lawsuits against the environmentally unpleasant new transmission lines and battery farms that must come in the train of such projects -- more nuclear power plants will be built. They will generate more nuclear waste. And that will in turn shift the politicians' attention right back to Nevada, and the planned Yucca Mountain waste depository.
In a recent visit to the Review-Journal, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney noted that fast-growing Las Vegas needs more water. Perhaps it's time for the federal government to offer more Colorado River water in exchange for Nevadans' acceptance of the nation's spent nuclear fuel, suggested the former governor of Massachusetts, in heavily nuclear dependent New England.
Other offers -- less insulting than the paltry payoff of several million dollars per year floated in 2006 by the Nuclear Energy Institute -- will doubtless follow.
None will change the fact that the so-called "science" that declares entombment of waste at Yucca Mountain safe for eternity -- or until the Democrats next change their stance on Iraq, whichever comes first -- has been fatally politicized, from the outset.
Spent fuel rods have proved to be perfectly safe when stored on site, where they were first used, for decades. On the other hand, it's clear that -- at the very least -- shipping all the stuff to Nevada will be massively expensive, with the risk of loss to hijackers or simple accident remaining unknown.
In case some of that waste does finally end up here, candidates now hoping for Nevada votes should at least be asked whether it might make more sense to store that spent fuel above ground, where it can be easily accessed once reprocessing technology inevitably improves, rather than entombing the stuff in a vain hope it will never find its way into the groundwater.
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Censored
December 31, 2007
Most censored in 2007: Silencing of traditional Indigenous People
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
The most censored issue of Indigenous Peoples by the media in 2007 was the “Silencing of traditional and grassroots’ voices by those in power,” according to readers voting on a poll at the Censored Blog.
The elected councils in the United States and band councils in Canada attempted to silence Indian spiritual leaders and traditional people by way of silencing and distorting the news in 2007. Elected leaders also threatened and oppressed Indians speaking out in their own communities. Tailgating by tribal police, threats of harm and threats of membership removal increased for Indian activists, according to reports from across North America.
“Nuclear, uranium and coal genocide on Indigenous lands,” was the second most censored issue. Throughout the Americas, Indigenous lands and people are targeted by coal, uranium, copper and gold mining and toxic dumping that will poison their air, water and land.
Navajos are fighting the new proposed power plant, Desert Rock, in New Mexico. While the power plants on the Navajo Nation continue to send electricity to non-Indian communities, many Navajos do not have electricity and their children must study by dim lantern light at night. Still, Navajos live with the pollution and sickness of unreclaimed uranium mines, power plants, coal mining and hundreds of oil and gas wells in the Four Corners area alone. The 88-member Navajo Nation Council, which enters into energy leases, relies on the revenues of polluting development to pay their salaries and travel expenses. While Navajos in local communities fight the power plants and mining, they battle the Navajo government and the Navajo president’s highly-paid press officer.
The Algonquin, Pueblos, Navajo, Lakota and others are also battling new uranium mining, while Goshute and Western Shoshone fight nuclear dumping on their lands which will be detrimental to future generations.
Yaqui in Sonora are opposing the use of pesticides in agricultural fields which are banned in the United States, but are still produced in the US and exported to other countries. These pesticides are causing deaths and “jelly babies,” Yaqui babies born without bones. O’odham are fighting a proposed waste dump in Sonora in their ceremonial community of Quitovac. Indigenous Peoples from Guatemala and Peru, now fighting copper, gold and coal mining in their communities, met with Navajos, Acoma Pueblo, Western Shoshone and others to create solidarity in action in 2007. As efforts intensified in the Americas, nuclear and mining corporations began targeting more communities in Africa.
“Where are the warriors?” asked Janice Gardipe, Paiute-Shoshone, during the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November, urging a new wave of resistance to Yucca Mountain nuclear dumping and the gold mining that is now coring out the mountains and poisoning the water on Western Shoshone lands.
As the pollution from power plants increases and the black carbons are carried by the winds to the north, the Arctic ice melts and destroys the homeland and lives of polar bears, walrus and seals. Ultimately, it will kill the birds and fishes. Even there, the Bush administration rushed to capitalize on the misfortune and the deaths of endangered species. The Bush administration rushed to claim the thawing Northwest Passage for oil and gas drilling.
“Border deaths, abuse of Indigenous Peoples at the border and racism in border news,” was the third most censored issue. As television news increased the racism and xenophobia toward migrants, the Bush administration and Congress layered on millions of dollars for private prisons to incarcerate migrants, with millions of fresh dollars for Texas and private border prisons. These included the T. Don Hutto prison for migrant and refugee infants and children in Taylor, Texas.
In Arizona, Mohawks joined Tohono O’odham at the US/Mexico border on Tohono O’odham land in November. Mohawks rushed to intervene in the arrests of Mayans on O’odham land as the US Border Patrol sped quickly away.
“These are your people,” Mohawk Kahentinetha Horn said, igniting a new wave of thought at the southern border. “As the Great Law says, you don’t ask for permission to save someone’s life,” Kahentinetha said of the large number of people, including Indigenous Peoples, dying each year on O’odham land.
Mike Wilson, Tohono O’odham, continued to put out water for migrants, and search for bodies, including those of Mayan women who died walking to a better life with their children.
“No one should die for want of a drink of water,” Wilson said.
The most censored news articles at the border included the digging up of the O’odham ancestors’ graves for the border wall on Tohono O’odham land, the spy federal spy towers in border communities and the corporate profiteering by US corporations and foreign corporations. The foreign corporations benefitting from the new border hysteria include the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems subcontracted by Boeing under the Secure Border Fence contract. Another is Wackenhut, whose buses wait at the border to be filled with migrants. The Wackenhut buses are owned by G4S in England and Denmark. (Earlier, Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown and Root received a $385 million contract from Homeland Security for migrant prisons in 2006.)
In 2007, the majority of the media censored the fact that all environmental laws, and federal laws protecting American Indian remains, were waived by Homeland Security to build the US/Mexico border wall. Dozens of endangered species are at risk as Homeland Security voids court orders, citing national security.
Already, the building of the wall at the Arizona border has been detrimental to the endangered jaguar which migrates between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The Sonoran pronghorn, which does not jump fences or anything else, will also be affected. Only a few dozen Sonoran pronghorns remain in the US, while several hundred are found to the south in Sonora, Mexico. A new barbed wire fence was recently added alongside the border wall on O’odham land which will harm the jaguars, pronghorns and other endangered species. Destruction of the habitat, particularly in the San Pedro area of Arizona where Homeland Security voided all laws, will destroy fish and migrating birds.
“Leonard Peltier,” was the fourth most censored issue. As Peltier’s legal challenges continued and censorship increased, there was a theater production of his life in Boulder, Colorado. Another censored issue was the efforts made on behalf of all American Indians inmates’ religious and ceremonial rights.
Further, the censorship of the injustice by police and courts was widespread. The arrests and racism of police in border towns around Indian communities continued. With the oppression of Indian youths by police and prosecutors, pushing them into rage, prisons continued to be filled with America Indians. The US military recruiters continued to target American Indian youths, considering them as “expendables,” to fight and die in Iraq.
The “American Indian delegations in Venezuela,” was the fifth most censored issue according to Censored Blog readers. Indian delegations from North America met with Indigenous leaders in Venezuela to form solidarity in action. The effort by Vernon Bellecourt, attending in a wheelchair and in frail health, was his last. He died after returning to the United States.
The sixth most censored issue was the “Zapatistas meetings at the US/Mexico border.” Subcomandante Marcos and the Mayan Comandantes held meetings near the US border as part of the Other Campaign, beginning in April of 2007. Just two hours’ drive south of the Arizona border, Marcos and the Comandantes met several times with O’odham, upheld the fishing rights of the Cucapa in Baja, Mexico, and met with Yaqui, Mayo, Seri and other Indigenous communities in northern Mexico, culminating in the International Intercontinental Encuentro in the Yaqui Pueblo of Vicam in the state of Sonora, Mexico.
While the media in the United States increased its censorship of these issues in 2007, the alternative national media and international online media continued to provide coverage.
It was the international online media that covered the Indigenous Peoples’ Border Summit of the Americas 2007. While upholding the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely pass in their ancestral territories, they opposed the US/Mexico border wall, militarization of border lands and new passport requirements. They opposed the corporate profiteering at the border for the border wall, private prisons and private security firms such as Blackwater now planning a border training camp in Kumeyaay territory at the California border.
Mike Flores, Tohono O’odham organizer of the summit, told the gathering, “The United States is going to continue to build walls and close us all in, or close us all out, and privatize our lives.”
The international media, from China to Taiwan, Russia to Belgium, extensively covered the Lakota Freedom Delegation’s announcement of withdrawing from the treaties and declaring sovereignty on Dakota lands.
The Mohawk warriors responded in support of the Lakota Freedom Delegation. Then, Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, responded to readers’ who said she should tell both sides of the story.
“I am not neutral. I am on the side of the traditional Indigenous people, not tribal council sell-outs and those who get a government ‘handout’ and do the bidding of their ‘masters.’ I am not objective. I am for Indigenous law, international law and human rights. For me, there is only one side to this -- the side of right which is being exercised by those who have no fear of doing so. The rest have been scared into fear of changing a life deforming colonial system. Yes, I am very subjective on the issue of Indigenous sovereignty. I will never support illegal and genocidal federal Indian law. I will never be on the side of promoting colonial lies. I will not give them the time of day!" Kahentinetha said.
While the media in the United States continued its pathetic and manipulated news coverage, the international media covered the fact that four countries voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The countries are the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand followed by arresting Maoris in the sovereignty movement. The United Nations declaration upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their aboriginal lands. Both New Zealand and Australia’s mainstream media continued biased and racist coverage.
More recently, a new censored topic has emerged: the seizure of private lands of Apaches and other residents in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, using the law of eminent domain. Since Homeland Security has issued a 30-day notice, Texas mayors and residents are now mobilizing to stop the border wall, militarization and occupation of the Texas border.
Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, spoke of the fire of resistance and resilience at the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November.
"We consider it relighting the fire of Indian survival, Indian resistance here in this hemisphere. To remind people that first of all, John Wayne didn't kill us all. That we're still alive, distinct cultures that are thriving here in America."
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Nevada Appeal
December 30, 2007
Reid, Congress deserves praise for keeping Yucca nuke dump at bay
Guy Farmer
Congress, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., gave Nevada a most welcome Christmas present earlier this month by slashing the budget for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump by more than 12 percent to its lowest level in several years. Although I disagree with Sen. Reid on many issues, including illegal immigration and Iraq, we owe him and Congress a vote of thanks for keeping nearly 80 million tons of highly toxic nuclear waste out of the Silver State.
"I'm proud that I was successful in cutting $104.5 million from Yucca's budget," Reid told the Associated Press. "It's clear that the Yucca Mountain project is a dying beast, and I hope this cut in funding will help drive the final nail into its coffin." The Bush administration requested $494 million for Yucca Mountain for the next fiscal year, but Congress appropriated only $390 million, which is about $50 million less than the current operating budget. Project Director Ward Sproat called the budget cut "very serious." Too bad about that.
I'm pleased to note that all of the Democratic presidential candidates - even those who supported it in the past - have announced their opposition to Yucca Mountain. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is against the project even though her husband, Bill, allowed it to go forward when he was president. And New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who went along with it when he was President Clinton's Energy Secretary, now opposes the toxic waste dump. How times change!
I haven't heard a clear statement of opposition to the Yucca Mountain project from any of the Republican candidates except for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a Libertarian who is against virtually everything that the federal government does. I'm unaware that any of the GOP front-runners have opposed Yucca Mountain; please correct me if I'm wrong.
President Bush betrayed Nevada in 2002 when he approved the project despite promising to base his decision on "sound science" when he was running for president. He based his decision on junk science, however, and bought into the "Nevada is a desert and no one lives there" argument of his wealthy friends from the nuclear power industry.
There are a handful of short-sighted Nevadans, including former Gov. Bob List and my friends and fellow Appeal columnists Maizie Harris Jesse and Carolyn Tate, who argue that we should sell out to the Feds. "Nevada could solve all of its infrastructure woes ... by going along with this (Yucca) and taxing every entity that 'dumps on us,'" they wrote in a recent column. Sorry ladies, but when it comes to nuclear waste in our backyard, let's think about our children and grandchildren.
Reprocess the waste
Whenever I oppose Yucca Mountain, some of my more scientific friends ask me what I'd do with the nation's nuclear waste. Well, I'd leave it right where it's generated - none of it is generated in Nevada - and work diligently to develop a waste reprocessing program, as they do in France and other countries. Or is it that France is more technologically advanced than we are? I don't think so. And besides, I think the dump issue is political rather than scientific, and reject the spurious idea that the project is "safe." If it's so safe, why don't our politicians put the dump on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.?
I recently attended a Reno lecture on the nation's energy crisis during which a very well-informed speaker advocated an increase in nuclear power along with a waste reprocessing program. That plan makes sense to me and I hope it will be included in any future energy legislation considered by Congress.
In the meantime, I'm pleased that our state's efforts to slow down or kill Yucca Mountain are succeeding against an arrogant federal bureaucracy that wants to jam the nuclear waste down our throats. Earlier this year, the U.S. Energy Department (DOE) defied a federal court order banning the use of state water for the project and announced plans to double the size of the "repository" - their word, although I think "suppository" (thanks to the late Nevada Sen. Chic Hecht) is more accurate.
Originally, DOE planned to open the toxic dump by 1998 but the timetable has been pushed back to 2017 at the earliest, thanks to successful lawsuits by opponents, quality control concerns and funding shortfalls. With luck, however, it will never open and Nevada won't become the nation's nuclear waste dump. Clearly, the project is on life support and it's time to pull the plug.
--Guy W. Farmer, of Carson City, is a semi-retired journalist who has been an adopted Nevadan since 1962.
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Nevada Appeal
December 30, 2007
It's time for Carson residents to stand up to outsiders
Saul Singer
Most people who choose to move to western Nevada do so because of the lifestyle advantages we offer. It is a pretty easy life whether you are a senior citizen or a family raising children. We have low taxes, a good economy, a civil society, a college, a new hospital campus, clean air, four moderate seasons and exceptional recreational activities. In addition, Carson City enjoys some of the finer amenities, usually not found in cities of 57,000 people, because we are the state capital.
When I moved to Nevada, 35 years ago, Carson City was often described as wholesome 1950s Middle America because of the small town layout and cohesive population. Carson City did not become a desirable place to live by accident. Credit the people with values, ideals and a vision who worked hard to build this community. Thank those born here or those who moved here many years ago for our high well-being index! Sure we are not without problems, but anybody who has cable or satellite television can attest that news from other areas of the country depict nightly horrors and issues from which we have been mostly immune.
If you love Carson City and the lifestyle here, pay close attention to the rest of this article. Not everyone has moved here simply to enjoy the western Nevada lifestyle; regrettably, there are those who have motives of greed and power who are trying to impose their ideas and take over our community. Our values and history of political independence are being threatened, and unless the silent majority speaks out and takes action, we will lose many of the comforts and advantages that make us what we are as a community.
The invasion began about 10 years ago and gained a momentum over the last several years. Political extremists, lobbyists, ideologues and those frustrated with a lack of personal political power in their home communities began to move here. Their activism often begins with unrelenting criticism of our local organizations, public employees, boards and institutions, in order to manipulate public opinion and gain a foothold. Next, they offer up one of their own for the board or political office that they have targeted.
After all, we are an attractive takeover target as a state capital with a relatively small voter population. It is not difficult to win an election for your candidate in a small district when you have a lot of money, outside lobbyists and vendors, and a strong, dedicated organization with newsletters and sophisticated letter writers. And it does not hurt to use popular political slogans such as smaller government, lower taxes and accountability.
Take, for example, Chuck Muth's organization, Citizen Outreach, which reported a 2006 tax return income of $965,000 from donations and "public service revenue" that was substantially generated by a fundraising firm in Virginia, with his company's records in Florida, and his address listed as Washington, D.C. Examples of "donors" include UPS: $70,000; AT&T: $10,000; Verizon: $10,000; and, Rogish Communications Group: $25,000. He files as an organization that is exempt from income taxes. Does this sound like political lobbying, or a citizen's group looking out for the best interest of Carson City? (Editor's note: Chuck Muth writes a column for the Appeal Opinion page every Friday, and he operates the Web site www.muthstruths.com.)
Let's not be fooled. The lobbyists and ideologues spin a good tale but would sell us out in a minute. Take a look at Muth's position on Yucca Mountain. He is proposing to ask the federal government for money in exchange for the nuclear dump. The pipe dream is that we would never have to pay taxes if the money is enough. Longtime Nevadans understand that this idea is ludicrous and a betrayal of our values.
The feds own 87 percent of the land in our state and we have never been able to collect revenue from them. In the 1950s and 1960s, they undertook a nuclear testing program that was guaranteed to be safe. Our neighbors in eastern Nevada and Utah developed a variety of health concerns - including cancer -and over the years, many have had to undergo regular thyroid and other testing because of the effects of the radiation.
In 1982, Congress promised to provide a national storage site for nuclear waste. The premise was that it would not be forced on anybody and the location would be based on good science. Following a non-related political scuffle with the Nevada delegation, in 1987 Sen. Bennett Johnston, of Louisiana, got his revenge by ramming the "screw Nevada bill" through Congress. This conveniently eliminated his state - as well as 48 others - from consideration and left Nevada as the only state available for the nuclear dumping site.
Every governor and every legislature in Nevada has opposed the Yucca Mountain site. State money has been appropriated and spent for challenges and lawsuits during the past 20 years. "Nevada is not a Wasteland" advertising attempted to bring attention to the issue. The feds again promised that the location of the site would be based on science, yet standards and measures have been changed during the years to guarantee that Yucca would meet tests and challenges. In spite of earthquake, groundwater and other concerns, the Department of Energy has held firm.
So with a history of broken promises and mishaps from the feds, and in this age of bogus Internet rumors and terrorism, are you sure you want this site to be 90 miles from Las Vegas? All it would take is an event at the site or in transport, or an Internet rumor of contamination in Las Vegas, to disrupt tourism and the state's economy. What then do you suppose would happen to our easy life in Carson City?
This fight is for our integrity, independence, well-being and safety. Carson City citizens need to stand up to the outsiders, lobbyists and carpetbaggers who threaten our community. Write letters, talk to your neighbors, and show the invaders that we are not going to be taken over.
--Saul Singer is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a licensed alcohol and drug abuse counselor, and the owner of Counseling, Consultation and Training, a technical resource agency for child welfare and family mental health. Previously, he has taught college, worked in management for private industry, and for government in Human Resources and Law Enforcement.
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Los Angeles Times
December 30, 2007
Nuclear power gets boost from candidates
Except for Edwards, top contenders in the GOP and Democratic races consider it a possible energy solution.
Judy Pasternak
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- On the brink of a nuclear power resurgence in America, the once-vilified industry is buoyed by a slate of presidential candidates who seem ready to embrace -- or at least consider -- a nuclear energy future.
Already enjoying strong support in the White House, nuclear-fueled electricity is championed by all of the Republican front-runners. And, while the top contenders on the Democratic side cite serious concerns about safety, waste disposal and plant security, only former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina flatly opposes construction of new nuclear plants.
The Republicans tend to frame their interest in terms of energy independence, as a means of weaning the U.S. off natural gas -- which is subject to price spikes and shortages. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona joins the Democrats in emphasizing climate change as the prime reason for pushing nuclear power, which does not emit greenhouse gases.
"We don't really care how we get there," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association. "We're dancing with different partners, but it doesn't matter what music is played."
The near-meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island in 1979 and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine brought a dramatic halt to the nuclear industry's expansion plans in the United States. More than 100 nuclear reactors generate 20% of the nation's electricity, and the last completed plant was ordered in 1973.
American nuclear power got a boost in 2001 when Vice President Dick Cheney's energy plan called for it to become "a major component" of the nation's electricity supply -- as it is in France and Japan. When President Bush signed the latest energy bill into law this month, he said: "If we're serious about making sure we grow our economy and deal with greenhouse gases, we have got to expand nuclear power."
This fiscal year alone, more than $1 billion in federal research and development spending was devoted to nuclear-power research, far more than any other source of electricity.
The new approach has borne fruit: This year, three applications for nuclear power plants landed at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Keeley said his group expected at least 15 more proposals to be launched by the end of 2009.
Among the leading Democratic candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois hold similar positions. Though they have voted for legislation that includes loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, both say that federal subsidies have been tilted for too long toward fossil fuels and nuclear power and should focus on renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Yet both say that new nuclear power cannot be ruled out.
At a South Carolina rally, Clinton said: "I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution. . . . I don't have any preconceived opposition; I just want to be sure that we do it right, as carefully as we can."
Obama, whose home state has 11 nuclear power plants, the biggest concentration in the country, said while campaigning in New Hampshire: "I don't think we can take nuclear power off the table." If the nation can resolve the waste and safety issues, he said, "then we should pursue it, and if we can't, we should not."
The three top Democratic candidates all oppose creating a repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas in the early-caucus state of Nevada.
Edwards voted for the proposal in 2002, but switched his position in 2004 to match John F. Kerry's when he joined the Democratic ticket as the vice presidential nominee. Campaign officials said Edwards changed his mind after coming to believe that faulty science underlay assurances that the dump would not contaminate nearby water.
Now Edwards says that concerns about safety in disposing radioactive waste form the heart of his rejection of new nuclear plants. He is unequivocal. "Would you be in favor of developing more nuclear power here in the United States?" someone asked him in Hanover, N.H. "No," Edwards answered. "Period?" the man persisted. "No," Edwards repeated.
Republican candidates, by contrast, urge a speedup and play down concerns.
"There's been a real bias against nuclear energy in the United States, going all the way back to Three Mile Island in 1979, but I think most of it is unfounded," said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, in an interview with the environmental website Grist. "I mean, we've been running nuclear submarines for 60 years without accidents."
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has said that his work as a private consultant for Entergy Corp.'s Indian Point nuclear power plant convinced him that such facilities can be made secure.
In 2005, two years after Giuliani's firm was hired, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to give extra scrutiny to the plant because of technical problems preventing the operation of the plant's new emergency siren, as well as a small leak of spent fuel at its site on the Hudson River north of New York City. The commission announced Thursday that the added monitoring would continue into 2008.
As a lobbyist during the 1970s, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson represented Westinghouse Electric Co. in its bid to build a federally subsidized nuclear plant. The project was killed in 1984.
And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called for developing nuclear power "in a more aggressive way" during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, N.H., adding that this country can learn to reprocess the spent fuel, as the French do.
--judy.pasternak@latimes.com
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Nevada Appeal
December 28, 2007
Some end-of-the-year drive-by Muthings
Chuck Muth
In response to my column last week suggesting that the debate over potential financial benefits from Yucca Mountain be opened to the public, Bob Loux inked a column yesterday calling the notion "nonsensical." He also launched into his patented anti-Yucca "Chicken Little" routine, breathlessly pleading, "What's the going price these days for an ecosystem contaminated by radioactivity?"
Oh, puh-lease. This is exactly the kind of radioactive (pun intended) rhetoric which has been used to stifle debate and public discussion of this issue for over two decades now. I'm surprised Mr. Loux didn't warn that flashlights would become obsolete once our kids begin glowing in the dark.
I guess I should note that other than a box lunch provided me when I toured the Yucca Mountain facility a decade ago, neither I nor my organization has ever received a dime from pro-Yucca interests. Wish it were otherwise. Kids' shoes ain't cheap. On the other hand, Mr. Loux has been getting paid rather handsomely to dump on the dump for over 20 years now. So consider the source.
• By the way, as I submitted this column to my editors yesterday morning, the Appeal's online question, "Would you favor the Yucca nuclear dump if it could solve the state's economic woes?" showed that almost half of respondents answered "Yes." And more people had responded to this poll question than all but one of the last 50. Which tells me the public desperately wants and needs to have this debate despite the sky-is-falling hysterics of the anti-nuclear energy crowd. Happy New Year!
--Chuck Muth, of Carson City, is president and CEO of Citizen Outreach and a political blogger. Read his views Fridays on the Appeal Opinion page or visit www.muthstruths0.com.
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Nevada Appeal
December 28, 2007
Letters to the editor
Nevadans shouldn't belab rats for Yucca
Yucca Mountain is still discussed quite prevalently within the news, especially with the upcoming presidential election. It seems that the government and some of the country do not realize the destruction it will cause and do not seem to care how the residents of Nevada feel about the radioactive materials.
Scientists have proven that the tanks will fail in less time than planned for, and the material will leak into the groundwater. The water that goes through Yucca Mountain will be tampered with whether or not the casks leak since the casks would be close to where the water naturally runs. The transportation to Yucca Mountain will be risky, seeing that any accident could put millions of not only Nevada residents, but the residents of other states, in jeopardy.
Yet the government ignores it and tries to move the waste across the country. They seem to think that since that area is less populated, it is the perfect place to dump major amounts of deadly substances. The government is also contradicting themselves. They want to move the material because it is harmful to societies across the country, so they decide on Nevada. Yet, the location they are arranging to put it in has several geographical characteristics that will, in turn, hurt the Nevadans threefold, not to mention the enormous, tourist-attracting metropolis about 90 miles away - Las Vegas.
The government has hushed the voices of residents of the area and ignored their protests. But for how much longer they will stand for this injustice, we do not know. We have seen what the atomic bomb can do and how the exposure can kill; we do not want to be the lab rats that will suffer.
Annika Chryssos
Carson City
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Las Vegas SUN
December 28, 2007
Hillary Clinton TV ad makes case to Nevada voters
By The Associated Press
TITLE: "Stand By Us"
LENGTH: 30 seconds
AIRING: Nevada
SCRIPT: Announcer: "Hillary stood up for universal health care when almost no one else would, and kept standing until 6 million kids had coverage. She stood up to Congress to get working families a break, and kept standing until the minimum wage was raised. She stood by our National Guard and Reserve, and kept standing until every member had access to the health care they deserve. Now Hillary's standing up to stop the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. As president, she'll always stand up for us.
Hillary Rodham Clinton: "I'm Hillary Clinton and I approve this message."
KEY IMAGES: Still photos of Clinton from the campaign trail, including a shot of her holding a small child. That shot is followed by a close-up of a young black girl with text that reads, "health care for 6 million kids, 30,000 in Nevada alone." Clinton also poses with a prominent Hispanic Nevada lawmaker and a Hispanic family, and is shown hugging a military veteran. There also are shots of a man on crutches in what appears to be a hospital hallway, a metal worker on the job and the Yucca Mountain site.
ANALYSIS: The ad is a Nevada-version of one airing in South Carolina. It plays to three voting blocs expected to be key to winning the state's Jan. 19 caucus - the elderly, union members and Hispanics.
The ad notes Clinton's support for a recent increase to the minimum wage, a move supported in Nevada. It does not mention that the New York senator also wants to raise it even higher. Challenged by rival John Edwards, Clinton proposed legislation earlier this month that would boost the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011, and link the minimum wage to congressional pay raises after that.
The ad closes with a reference to Clinton's opposition to the federal government's plans to store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Clinton has voted against the project and promised to cut its funding if elected.
She has not gone as far as some anti-dump activists and Edwards, by opposing the expansion of nuclear power.
--On the Net: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/93.aspx
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 28, 2007
Unconcerned with cutbacks, County OKs $2.3 million
By Mark Waite
PVT
The approval of 17 contracts worth $2.3 million to oversee the Yucca Mountain project was so routine, Nye County commissioners approved it last week as part of the ho-hum consent agenda.
Under the consent agenda commissioners can vote on a number of items with one motion. All contracts were bundled under item (n), part of 17 items from (a) through (q) up for approval.
Darrell Lacy, director of the Nye County nuclear waste project office, wasn't worried about cuts in the Yucca Mountain program.
President Bush asked for $494.5 million to fund the program in fiscal year 2008, ending next Sept. 30, but Congress allocated only $386.5 million. It will mean cuts to the county well drilling program, Lacy said.
Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said last week a $100 million reduction in the program "would be very serious" but didn't detail what that would mean.
"We're making contingency plans to keep our funding, our expenditures, within what our funding is. At this point in time I think we're in pretty good shape," Lacy said.
Some of the contracts run from April to April, he said.
"These are probably covered, but there are some discretionary projects within these contracts that we may hold back on, just to conserve funding," Lacy said.
The Nye County well drilling program, part of the Yucca Mountain oversight, tends to form "large chunks" of the funding, Lacy said. They are often part of cooperative agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy, he said.
Lacy said Nye County actually receives a total of about $4 million between Section 117 funding under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, specifically to Nye County, and a third of the Section 116 funding provided to the affected units of local government, the 10 counties surrounding Yucca Mountain.
In November the 10 counties reached an agreement to distribute $9 million in oversight funding for fiscal year 2008. They range from $3 million Nye County will receive, to $315,000 for the smaller counties like Churchill, Eureka, Lander, Mineral and White Pine.
In an Aug. 2 letter to Sproat, Nye County said the U.S. Department of Energy request for oversight funding doesn't reflect the requirements needed by the counties.
In the coming year Nye County says the counties may need to participate in the licensing process of the nuclear waste repository; study the new TAD canisters proposed for shipping the nuclear waste; examine the concept of interim storage at locations yet to be determined and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which would involve recycling waste.
The DOE expects to submit the license application for the repository next June.
"We would like to request that more realistic numbers be submitted by the administration on our behalf," states the letter, signed by Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis.
A statement accompanying the request to approve the 17 contracts at the last county commissioners meeting mentions 2008 will be a year of dramatic and rapidly changing events associated with Yucca Mountain.
There is debate in Congress regarding the project's fate, the environmental impact studies for the railroad, and the repository and DOE are encouraging Nye County to become more involved in public safety.
"It is proposed to award these contracts without competition. The justification for this award is based on previously demonstrated technical expertise and years of successful experience," Lacy states in his memo. "On average these contractors have worked for Nye County for at least seven years facilitating program continuity, stability and the accumulation of a large bod of interdisciplinary knowledge regarding Yucca Mountain performance and its potential impacts on the county."
The 17 contracts include:
Mary Ellen Giampaoli, Blue Diamond, Nev., environmental compliance and land use contractor, $150,000;
Mal Murphy, Sun River, Ore., regulatory and licensing contractor, $300,000;
Cash Jaszczak, Las Vegas, policy and planning support, $200,000;
Wilbur Smith Associates, San Francisco, Calif., Nevada rail impact contractor, $150,000;
BEC Environmental Inc., of Las Vegas, infrastructure planning and public safety, $200,000;
Joseph Ziegler, Aiken, S.C., regulatory, policy and planning support, $200,000;
NERMI LLC, Las Vegas, repository ancillary facilities evaluation, $200,000;
TerraSpectra Geomatics, Las Vegas, graphics support, Web site management, GIS maintenance, $150,000;
Tom Buqo, Blue Diamond, hydro-geologic evaluations, $200,000;
Anita Johnson, of Hydrogeologica Inc. of Golden, Colo., hydro-geologic evaluations, $75,000;
Thomas Anderson, Pittsburgh, Pa., hydro-geologic evaluations, $55,000;
Jamieson Walker, Henderson, hydro-geologic evaluations, $75,000;
Richard Reinke, Norwest, Golden, Colo., hydro-geologic evaluations, $150,000;
Frank D'Agnese, Earth Knowledge Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., hydro-geologic evaluations, $100,000;
John Walton, professor of the department of civil engineering at the University of Texas-El Paso, hydro-geologic evaluations, $100,000;
William Belke, Las Vegas, quality assurance, $10,000;
Ken Hooks, Caruthers and Associates Inc., Denver, Colo., quality assurance, $10,000.
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 28, 2007
Back Then: 20 years ago this week
Opponents of building the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain won't find much support from the Pahrump Town Board. None of the five members of the board oppose the repository.
"I think it's a good idea," said board member Chuck Connely. "They had all those shots and they didn't hurt a thing. I think finding a site has been political."
Connely feels Nevada could have made out better, "I think we should have told them, sure, we'll take it -- but we want some of the good projects, too."
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CounterPunch
December 28, 2007
Send Back Those Christmas Presents!
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
By Russell Hoffman
Toshiba, famous for electronics products around the world, plans to build "small" (room-sized) fully-automated nuclear reactors.
These new reactors are just 1/5000th the size of today's old, massive, deteriorating (and did I mention unsafe?) boiling water reactors (BWRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs). But, each new reactor will still contain enough lethal poison to wipe out a city.
Today's reactors are operated by about eight hundred to a thousand people each, and produce an average of about one megawatt of electricity per employee.
Toshiba's proposed new reactors are completely automatic -- NOBODY operates them. Nobody guards them. Nobody even watches them.
An apartment complex for the rich can guarantee itself steady power "for up to 40 years" according to the (optimistic) manufacturer. The cost is rumored to be about $3.5 million. After the 40 years are up, not only will the fuel need to be stored for millions of years, but the entire reactor will have to be isolated from humanity on a finite planet with limited resources. WHO will pay for THAT? Whose land will Toshiba take to store the waste?
Even after 60 years, tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of the world's best scientists working on it, NOBODY knows what to do with radioactive waste BECAUSE IT DESTROYS ANY CONTAINER YOU PUT IT IN.
Toshiba hasn't solved THAT problem because they can't perform miracles. The nuclear waste problem is unsolvable at the atomic level -- but the nuclear industry continues to create more waste, on the fallacy (and false promise) that a solution is just around the corner. It isn't. (Yucca Mountain isn't a safe and proper solution, and nothing else is even being considered.)
Toshiba plans to bring the first of the new reactors online in 2008 in Japan, and in Europe and America in 2009. They are that close to production of these awful things.
So boycott Toshiba. Let them know that pocket nukes are a bad idea.
The energy source used in the new Toshiba reactors is the same uranium-based fuel used by just about every other nuclear power plant, which, of course, should also all be closed down in favor of alternative energy sources. Renewable energy solutions are available, affordable, and effective today, but they don't make millions of dollars for large utilities. They make it for the average citizen who invests in solar panels, wind turbines, and such.
So I say: Break up the utilities! It should be illegal to make electricity AND be in control of the distribution grid. It should be illegal for utilities to refuse to purchase renewable energy at fair prices.
A properly-thought-out renewable energy system would have thousands of small sources, and could therefore be very reliable even if some of those sources shut off for parts of every day.
The Toshiba baby-nukes will rely on a closed-loop sodium primary coolant system, instead of water. Reservoirs of Lithium-6 are designed to serve as a moderator to stop the reactor if necessary, the manufacturer claims.
Firefighters will have to treat a Toshiba pocket-reactor fire completely differently from what they are equipped for, trained for, or capable of handling.
Worse, the Toshiba reactors can be blown up by a bomb, which means: Osama will love them. He would love Toshiba to sell thousands of these "dirty bombs" throughout America.
But even worse is the terrorist lurking in the structural quality of the materials used in these petite power generators, which contain enough radioactive uranium and various fission products and transuranics to cause cancer to tens of thousands of people, even millions, if the radioactive material were to be released for any reason: Earthquake, tornado, tsunami, terrorist, poor workmanship, poor materials, poor design, etc.
In addition to these "baby nukes," Toshiba also wants to introduce a line of midsize nukes, called the 4S series ("Super, Safe, Small, Simple" they say), with fuel enriched to 19.9 percent U-235. (Highly Enriched Uranium, by convention, is enriched to 20.0% or more U-235.) The new 200-kilowatt nukes are said to be small versions of the 4S design -- just what Osama is looking for!
Techno-nerd's reactions to the new reactors on the Internet would make you think these were puppy-dog-friendly, never-could-harm-a-flea energy sources. But the articles are being written by geeks who know nothing about nuclear waste issues, or terrorism, or economics. They just love the idea of "unlimited" cheap power. Well, they should all look under the hood a little harder before they endorse these things.
Toshiba is also involved (with General Electric) in large BWRs. And in October 2006 Toshiba purchased what used to be called Westinghouse from British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) for about 5.4 billion dollars, adding PWR manufacturing and support to their portfolio. Toshiba's purchase of Westinghouse, of which only the nuclear division existed anymore, possibly prevented a perfectly appropriate bankruptcy of BNFL, who had bought the ailing Westinghouse in 1999 for about 1.1 billion dollars.
Mainly through its new Westinghouse subsidiary, Toshiba now has half a dozen different reactor designs they are certifying with nuclear agencies around the world -- with almost ZERO public scrutiny!
The purchase of Westinghouse seems to have invigorated Toshiba to be completely arrogant about nuclear energy at all levels. Nuclear reactors and equipment for those reactors (and for other reactors) accounts for about 25% of Toshiba's business.
Completing the cycle of greed, Toshiba's nuclear ambitions will ultimately mean more business for Toshiba's Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) machines, which they sell to hospitals and which are used to diagnose (NOT cure!) the very diseases Toshiba's new nuclear reactors will cause.
So boycott Toshiba. Boycott Toshiba laptops. Boycott Toshiba camcorders. Boycott Toshiba hard drives. Boycott Toshiba telephone systems. Boycott Toshiba DVD players.
Boycott Toshiba. Return Toshiba gifts you received for Christmas. Remove Toshiba stock from your portfolio. Bankrupt them, if necessary -- anything to stop their ability to support nuclear power.
--Russell D. Hoffman, a computer programmer in Carlsbad, California, has written extensively about nuclear power. His essays have been translated into several different languages and published in more than a dozen countries. He can be reached at: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
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Fox News
December 28, 2007
Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Can’t Oui?
By Jack Spencer
What if the government allowed you to burn only 25 percent of every tank of gas? Or if Washington made you pour half of every gallon of milk down the drain?
What if lawmakers forced us to bury 95 percent of our energy resources?
That is exactly what Washington does when it comes to safe, affordable and CO2-free nuclear energy. Indeed, 95 percent of the used fuel from America’s 104 power reactors, which provide about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, could be recycled for future use.
To create power, reactor fuel must contain 3-5 percent burnable uranium. Once the burnable uranium falls below that level, the fuel must be replaced. But this “spent” fuel generally retains about 95 percent of the uranium it started with, and that uranium can be recycled.
Over the past four decades, America’s reactors have produced about 56,000 tons of used fuel. That “waste” contains roughly enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years. And it’s just sitting there, piling up at power plant storage facilities. Talk about waste!
The sad thing is, the United States developed the technology to recapture that energy decades ago, then barred its commercial use in 1977. We have practiced a virtual moratorium ever since.
Other countries have not taken such a backward approach to nuclear power. France, whose 59 reactors generate 80 percent of its electricity, has safely recycled nuclear fuel for decades. They turned to nuclear power in the 1970s to limit their dependence on foreign energy. And, from the beginning, they made recycling used fuel central to their program.
Upon its removal from French reactors, used fuel is packed in containers and safely shipped via train and road to a facility in La Hague. There, the energy producing uranium and plutonium are removed and separated from the other waste and made into new fuel that can be used again. The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.
Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferaton, and o accidental explosions.
France meets all of its recycling needs with one facility. Indeed, domestic French reprocessing only takes about half of La Hague’s capacity. The other half is used to recycle other countries’ spent nuclear fuel.
Since beginning operations, France’s La Hague plant has safely processed over 23,000 tones of used fuel—enough to power France for fourteen years.
Their success has sparked plenty of interest abroad. The French company AREVA has already helped Japan with its reprocessing facility and is currently looking at the feasibility of building a similar plant in China.
The British, Japanese, Indians, and Russians all engage in some level of reprocessing.
Of course, there is still waste involved. But recycling produces much lower volumes of highly radioactive waste, and the French deal with it effectively—placing some waste in short-term, interim storage or preparing the rest for long-term storage in their version of Yucca Mountain.
All is not perfect in France. They are still working to open a permanent geologic storage facility. But the critical issue is that they have an organization to handle used nuclear fuel that allows their program to advance without being held hostage to the politics of geologic storage.
If the United States is serious about reducing CO2 and energy dependence, it must get serious about nuclear power and begin recycling used nuclear fuel.
A viable reprocessing capability not only would give the United States a valuable energy resource, it would reduce the amount of material going to Yucca Mountain. The U.S. has already produced enough waste to nearly fill Yucca’s legal limit of 70,000 metric tons—subsequent studies estimate that its actual capacity is about double that amount and some believe that it is even greater.
It would also put the United States back on the map as a leader in commercial nuclear technology, which today it is not.
Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a safe activity that should be part of America’s nuclear energy program. It can be affordable and is technologically feasible. The French are proving that on a daily basis. The question is: Why can’t oui?
--Jack Spencer is a research fellow for nuclear energy policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.
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Ottawa Recorder
December 28, 2007
Dems force fund cuts to Yucca waste dump
By Erica Werner
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats are forcing the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get by on its lowest annual budget in years, likely causing yet more delays in opening the first national repository for radioactive waste.
Edward F. "Ward" Sproat, the Energy Department official in charge of the planned dump, warned last week that such a cut would be "very serious" and could push back the date when the Energy Department can submit a required construction license application for the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The ultimate fate of the planned dump, meant to contain 77,000 tons of radioactive waste piling up in 39 states, is growing increasingly cloudy. The leading Democratic presidential candidates all oppose it.
Yucca Mountain was originally supposed to open in 1998 and taxpayers are facing legal liability expected to exceed $7 billion because the government contracted to begin accepting spent fuel from nuclear plants that year.
Last year the dump‘s budget was $444.5 million. It hasn‘t been below that since 2002, the year Congress approved the site.
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Infoshop News
December 28, 2007
Department of Energy Moves Forward With Yucca Mountain Plans
Public hearings have not been well attended, statements mostly in favor of the plan to put all of the nuclear waste in the country in this one sacred place. Activists were told that if we do not go on record with a statement, we will have no legal recourse later on. Local papers & media spin have recently stated that opposition to the nuke dump had dropped of since the passing of Corbin Harney. The nuclear reps are confident to the point of acting like it's a done deal.
URGENT ACTION ALERT!! DEADLINE APPROACHING! YUCCA MOUNTAIN, SACRED TO THE SHOSHONE & MAJOR FAULT ZONE, IN IMMINENT DANGER! DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY MOVES PLANS FORWARD TO TURN YUCCA MOUNTAIN INTO NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY.
PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD DEADLINE JANUARY 10, 2008.
Public hearings have not been well attended, statements mostly in favor of the plan to put all of the nuclear waste in the country in this one sacred place. Activists were told that if we do not go on record with a statement, we will have no legal recourse later on.
Local papers & media spin have recently stated that opposition to the nuke dump had dropped of since the passing of Corbin Harney. The nuclear reps are confident to the point of acting like it's a done deal.
WE KNOW THAT'S NOT TRUE! LETS PROVE THEM WRONG! TAKE ACTION & MAKE YOUR COMMENT NOW!!
Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Shoshone as an herb gathering site, for rituals, and as a part of their stories. Yucca Mountain is known in Shoshone language as Snake Mountain. Indeed it looks like a snake. It is said that the snake was headed north when it froze where it is. Further more it is said that it will move again and "flip around". Geologists say that there are thirteen different fault lines running through it.
Citizens can make an oral statement at the scheduled public hearings or fill out a form and mail it in to EIS Office U.S. Department of Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Mgmt, 1551 Hillshire dr. Las Vegas, NV, 89195-7308 or by e-mail at EIS_Office@ymp.gov.
HERE ARE TALKING POINTS: http://www.h-o-m-e.org/Yucca/index.htm
"The eyes of the elders are on us. The fate of the unborn is rolling toward the cliff, the voice of Corbin Harney is ringing in my ears, "It's on your shoulders now...". Info from Bear Dyken.
mdyken@goldrush.com.
YUCCA MOUNTAIN FACT SHEET, TALKING POINTS, & MORE INFO: Healing Ourselves & Mother Earth http://www.h-o-m-e.org/
The DOE released two Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statements related to repository changes and rail transportation of high-level waste in Nevada.
Inyo County CA- Excellent Draft Impacts Assessment Report Comments due by 1/10/08
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Nevada Appeal
December 27, 2007
Separating Yucca Mountain facts from fiction
Bob Loux
As someone who has been intimately involved with the Yucca Mountain project and Nevada's role in it since 1984, I am compelled to comment on Chuck Muth's recent article, "Should we allow Yucca for a mountain of cash?"
The simple, unglamorous truth is that there have never been any large sums of money or outlandish benefits to be had for going along with Yucca Mountain. You've heard about "urban legends" - fictitious stories that float around on the Internet and develop whole cadres of gullible believers? Well, these stories about all of the great things Nevada has been offered to quit fighting Yucca Mountain are nuclear industry "urban legends."
It's the U.S. Congress that would have to pay for any benefits awarded to Nevada for the repository, and in the over 20 years I've been involved in the issue, there has never been any money. Even if there were (and assuming Nevada were in a position to bargain for it - meaning that the Yucca site was really a safe one, which it isn't), there is no way to hold future Congresses and future Administrations to whatever deal might be cut.
The reality is that promises of largesse and pie-in-the-sky benefits serve only one purpose - to get Nevada to drop its opposition to Yucca Mountain and agree to negotiate. Once that happens, the state will have forfeited any chance it has to stop this dangerous project.
That's exactly the situation the nuclear industry and Congress would like to put Nevada in: Get the state to blink and agree to negotiate, recognizing that once Nevada makes such a concession, the ball game is over.
But the most important reason why Nevada can never negotiate for Yucca Mountain is the fact that the proposed repository site cannot and will not isolate deadly nuclear waste from people and the environment for the time required. From the very beginning of this project back in the early 1980s, Nevada has consistently set forth one condition for DOE and the feds to meet in selecting a repository location: It must be demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the chosen site would be able to isolate the waste and be benign in its effects on people and the environment.
DOE's own data shows that Yucca Mountain site is so porous that the mountain contributes almost nothing to waste isolation. DOE relies almost exclusively on a system of 'Rube Goldberg' engineering fixes, the most outlandish of which are waste disposal containers that must last for at least 1,000,000 years! Never mind that Nevada and independent scientists who have studied the material these magic containers are to be made from have shown conclusively that they will corrode in a matter of just a few hundred years, or less.
The question that should be asked is not why Nevada hasn't fallen for nonsensical proposals like Mr. Muth's, but just what price can and should Nevada's leaders put on agreeing to accept a facility that they know will fail and eventually cause great damage to the environment and to public health and safety for future generations of Nevadans and Californians. What's the going price these days for an ecosystem contaminated by radioactivity? What price compensates future residents, farmers and others in Amargosa Valley for a contaminated aquifer that will make the area unlivable? The answer, of course, is that no amount of so-called benefits could ever compensate for such folly.
--Robert Loux is executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state agency responsible for overseeing the Yucca Mountain project.
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Santa Cruz Indymedia
December 27, 2007
Yucca Mountain Urgent Action Alert - Public Comment Period Deadline January 10, 2008
Karen Kaplan
Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Sacred to the Shoshone & Major Fault Zone is in Imminent Danger of Becoming a Nuclear Waste Dumping Site!
I Oppose The Department of Energy Plans to Turn Yucca Mountain into a Nuclear Waste Repository.
Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Shoshone as an herb gathering site, for rituals, and as a part of their stories. Yucca Mountain is known in Shoshone language as Snake Mountain because it looks like a snake. As the story is told, the snake was headed north when it froze where it is. It is said that it will move again and "flip around."
Geologists report that there are thirteen different fault lines running through it and it is therefore an unsafe site for nuclear waste dumping!
Thank you for your urgent consideration.
Sincerely,
Karen Kaplan
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Trading Markets
December 27, 2007
Cox Las Vegas to Supply Live Broadcast, Sat Feed and Webcast of Nevada's Challenge to DOE Document Certification for Yucca Mountain
Cox Communications, Las Vegas will broadcast the oral arguments on Nevada's challenge to the Department of Energy's certification of its document collection on the Licensing Support Network (LSN) for the Yucca Mountain proceeding on Cox Cable Channel 96, a local access channel for customers with basic cable service.
Cox is also providing a no-cost, live satellite feed to local, state and national news media. In addition, a live webcast of the proceeding will be available at cox96.net. The hearing is scheduled to begin in Las Vegas on Dec. 5 at 9 a.m. PST and continue until approximately 1 p.m. PST.
The company noted that the hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Pre-Application Presiding Officer (PAPO) Board is an important milestone preceding DOE's application for an NRC license to construct and operate the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas. DOE expects to submit the application in mid-2008.
"Cox Las Vegas creates, produces and broadcasts exclusive content for our Southern Nevada customers on our local origination channel Cox 96 as a continuing public service," notes Leo Brennan, region vice president and general manager. "We're committed to providing our customers the widest array of content for the widest array of audiences, and we're offering this live feed of the NRC proceeding to broadcast partners as well as streaming video over the Internet so that the widest audience possible can have access to this important content."
Steve Schorr, vice president of public and government affairs for Cox Las Vegas, said about the multi-pronged delivery of the proceeding, "The storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is an issue that concerns not only the citizens of our state but our entire country, and as such the ability of our cable system to provide interested parties on both sides of this issue with access to this critical hearing is exceedingly important."
Cox Las Vegas is providing a no-cost, live satellite feed from the NRC's Las Vegas Hearing Facility on Dec. 5 from 9 a.m. PST until the expected close of the proceeding at 1 p.m. PST. A satellite test signal will be broadcast on Tuesday, Dec. 4 from 10:30 a.m. PST until 11:30 a.m. PST. T
Cox Las Vegas will provide one rebroadcast of the entire proceeding on Cox Cable Channel 96 on Sunday, Dec. 16, from 2 p.m. PST until 6 p.m. PST. The rebroadcast will also be simultaneously webcast on www.cox96.net.
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TIME
December 27, 2007
Making Nevada's Caucus Count
By Stacy Willis
Las Vegas
"Wanna Caucus?" asks a hand-made banner laying on a table in the Coronado High School cafeteria in Henderson, Nevada, on a recent Tuesday night. It's six weeks before Nevada becomes the first western state, and fifth state overall, to vote in the 2008 presidential race. More than a hundred suburban Las Vegans have shown up here to "learn how to caucus" after receiving a flier in the mail from the state's Young Democrats organization.
The gathering is just one of hundreds of mock caucus training programs in the state being put on by the parties and candidates' camps. All the players in Nevada know that getting people to go the precincts on January 19 is only half the battle — though not a small one, since the caucus will be held on a holiday (Martin Luther King Jr.) weekend, and many workers in the state's large hospitality industry could potentially have trouble having time off to caucus. In a state that came in 42nd in voter turnout in 2004, getting voters to understand what to do once they find their way to a caucus will also be a major challenge.
Under the guidance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Nevada's caucus was moved up in the hope that this booming part of the country would finally have a say in the presidential nominating process. But until recently, the plan appeared to many to be wishful thinking. Though Republicans followed suit in moving their caucus up as well, the corresponding decisions by Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to schedule their primaries or caucuses even earlier in the 2008 calendar — not to mention the choice by such crucial states as California, Arizona and Colorado to join the flood of states holding their primary on February 5 — stole most of the thunder from Nevada.
The dynamic state of both parties' races, however, has helped give Nevada a boost of late, and residents are starting to believe their caucus might matter after all. "Nevada is sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of national politics," says Ted Jelen, political science professor at UNLV. "I'm not sure how much the national media is taking it seriously, and I'm not sure how many Nevada voters are taking it seriously, but the candidates are taking it seriously."
The fluid nature of the races are mirrored in Nevada, where Clinton leads Obama by 8 points in a recent poll, while Giuliani holds a slight lead over Romney and Huckabee. "Now that it appears nothing will be settled after Iowa and New Hampshire, we could be seen as a tie-breaking momentum-builder," says Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston. "And the calendar changes give us 10 straight days of attention."
Nevada may play a more important role in the Democratic race. That's partly because the Republicans have their all important South Carolina primary on the very same day (the Dems' is a week later, on the 26th). But it's also because of the demographics of the fast-growing state, which is a sharp contrast to Iowa and New Hampshire. One third of Nevada's 2.5 million people are Hispanics, Asian-Americans and blacks, according to 2004 census figures. Unions — particularly Culinary 226, which includes Strip hospitality workers — have a huge presence here. Culinary alone has some 60,000 members. Even when Hillary Clinton campaigned in Pahrump, a small town outside of Vegas known for its anti-government leanings and several well-known brothels, more than 2,500 people showed up, forcing Clinton organizers, who had only been expecting about 300, to rent a skating rink to accommodate the overflow.
"By any measure Nevada's caucus is significant," says Rory Reid, the Senator's son who is a Clark County (Las Vegas) Commissioner and head of the Nevada Clinton campaign. "It's the first time [in the campaign] a presidential candidate has to stand before a crowd that looks like America."
Reid says that candidates learned to speak Nevadan long before they took the stage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for a CNN Democratic debate in November. (All of the candidates mastered the local pronunciation of Nevada, which is Nevaaada, not Nevah-da.) In addition to addressing Nevada-specific issues like the controversial proposed nuclear dump Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, they've spent the better part of the year speaking to western, Hispanic and labor issues.
"There are issues that are transcendent in the west — water, public resources, public land-83 percent of Nevada land is public," Reid says. "As political messages are developed here, those messages will be used throughout the primaries and general elections."
Back in the high school cafeteria in Henderson where the caucus training is taking place, the trickle-down significance of Nevada's caucus is palpable. "We want to do Nevada proud," Democratic mock caucus organizer Samantha Steelman tells the crowd before starting. In 2004 Kerry won in Clark County 51 percent to 46 percent, but lost the state."I'm telling you we are going to turn Nevada blue at the election!"
Steelman explains caucusing by having the group decide what their favorite movie is. Placards with movie names such as "Star Wars" and "Grease" are placed around the cafeteria, and people are told to stand by their favorite. "This is what you'll do on caucus day," she tells them. ("The Godfather" wins this mock caucus.)
The group — inordinately white and gray-headed, but peppered with young and minorities — is laughing, having fun. Regional field director Robert Disney tells them, "A caucus is a party building activity. Iowa is blue because they've been doing this for so long. This is our chance. We are a purple state. We are going to be blue state. It's a pain to go through, but it's worth it."
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Nichi Bei Times
December 27, 2007
A Blast From The Past
By The Kaeru Kid
A-Blast (nuclear weapons testing) was started out in the desert at the Las Vegas Test Site on Jan. 27, 1951 and ended in the fall of 1992 when a moratorium on all explosive nuclear testing by the United States began. A total of 928 tests were conducted during that time, 100 of them above ground.
These events were popular tourist attractions and you can relive those days of yesteryear if you can tear yourselves away from the casinos for a short while and visit the Atomic Testing Museum at 755 East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89119-5151, telephone (702) 794-5151. Their Website is www.atomictestingmuseum.org. Adult entrance fee is $10 and seniors and youth under 17 is $7.
Allocate a minimum of two hours to absorb all the displays showing the activities taking place at the Atomic Testing Museum. An absolute must-see is the Ground Zero Theater where one can experience watching a nuclear explosion as VIPs did. The sound and the shaking of the structure will impress everyone. There are usually volunteer docents at the museum now retired from their jobs at the test site. Engage them in conversation and your tour will be much more interesting as they will give you insight not always available from reading the signs.
I'm going to tell you about a little-known but the best FREE fun and educational tour in Las Vegas. The Department of Energy (DOE) gives tours every month out to the actual test site and they even provide the transportation. Go to: www.nv.doe.gov and check the box for Nevada Test Site to view the dates of the public tours. Applications are required beforehand so they can do a background check. Foreigners are welcome. A group can also ask for a private tour so maybe some of the reunion committees might consider adding a tour to their program. A great idea is to visit the Atomic Test Museum the day before the scheduled tour as a preview of what to look for.
The tour I took started from the North Las Vegas DOE headquarters and traveled about 65 miles northwest past Nellis Air Force Base. You might be lucky enough to see pilotless drones and perhaps fighter jets maneuvering overhead.
We entered the town of Mercury that is the headquarters for the test site area and the largest town in Nye County. Most workers live in Pahrump, Las Vegas, or a trailer park a short distance away. The test site encompasses over a thousand square miles and presently is actively studying chemical and low-level radioactive waste disposal. Many homeland security forces and first responders practice their techniques in case of chemical or radioactive attack at this locale.
Mrs. KK and I saw where newsmen and dignitaries sat at what is called News Nob to watch the blasts. Test structures made of different materials and shapes and located at varying distances from the explosions revealed how well or poorly they could withstand these terrifying forces.
I call my favorite area the monster doodlebug range. Large and small craters pockmark the area as if a giant doodlebug lived there. This was where many underground explosions were set off. One of the largest is called Sedan Crater and the tour makes a stop there.
Yucca Mountain, the proposed area to store nuclear waste, is not far away and free tours there can also be requested by going to http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/contact/tours.shtml. This tour would have to be on another day because a different agency manages that tour.
Another informative site to learn about radioactive waste is http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html. Among the many interesting questions posed is why we don't reprocess the nuclear waste since it would save money and also result in a smaller amount of waste.
I also visited Trinity Site in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was exploded. It is open to the public only on the first Saturday in April and the first Saturday in October.
I suggest going in October and arriving a day earlier and staying overnight in Socorro to get in line early. No prior clearance is required. Another spectacular site close to Socorro is the Very Large Array of Radio Tracking site. These are gigantic antennas aimed at outer space to gather valuable scientific data. Is that ET calling?
The Albuquerque Balloon Festival is held on the same weekend so one should attend this world famous event, too.
Las Vegas tidbit: If you want to learn how to win at Videopoker, there will be free lessons given on Thursdays starting in January by one of the truly great players. For full details call me at (714) 809-3229 or e-mail KaeruKid@yahoo.com.
Another LV tidbit: Here is an activity for those of you who complain that there is nothing to do in Las Vegas besides gambling. From now until the beginning of March, the da Vinci experience is being shown near the Henderson city hall. This is an outstanding display of the accomplishments of the truly great renaissance genius, Leonardo da Vinci. He not only painted the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and a score of other masterpieces whose reproductions are exhibited but he invented many engineering products still in use today such as the differential gear, pulley systems, and envisioned underwater diving, helicopters, hang gliding, mountain climbing, warfare arsenal (projectile designs, mortars, tanks, etc) and others too numerous to mention. This is a fun and educational experience for your children and is being shown only in smaller towns so Los Angeles and San Francisco are excluded. What a great excuse to visit Las Vegas and stay at my favorite close by casino, Fiesta Henderson.
--The Kaeru Kid writes about his various adventure travels. He lives in Las Vegas and includes tidbits about the city at the end of each article. He can be reached at KaeruKid -at- yahoo -dot- com.
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Ely Daily Times
December 26, 2007
Ensign wants to know if Reid's request for GAO air quality study at GBNP could effect mining
By John Plestina
Ely Times reporter
Tightening the federal, air-quality ranking of Great Basin National Park could effect more than proposed, coal-fired power plants.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, attempted to change the park's air quality standards to the toughest allowed under federal law with language included in Congress' end-of-year, omnibus spending bill. But the language was striken from the bill to ease its passage.
As a compromise, the bill calls for the General Accountability Office to evaluate air quality at the national park and recommend if the stricter designation is warranted.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, said he is requesting legal research to determine if copper mining could be in jeopardy if the park were given a Class 1 air quality designation.
“It might not just shut down the coal plants. It might do some other damage there (White Pine County),” Ensign told The Ely Times Thursday during a telephone press conference.
“We do have concerns there. I'm not an expert at environmental law,” Ensign said. He added that he will have the Congressional Research Service look into legal ramifications for the mining industry in White Pine County.
A Class 1 environmental designation could permanently halt construction of the two plants.
Ensign and Representatives Dean Heller and Jon Porter, both R-Nevada, led the charge for GOP opposition to Reid's original amendment to the spending bill.
The senator was responding to a question of a possible domino effect by Reid's latest tactic to halt construction of the coal-fired power plants. Of the several questions Ensign responded to during the press conference, one addressed the second most emotionally charged issue for White Pine County. That is the Southern Nevada Water Authority's proposed $2 billion project that many people fear could deplete Eastern Nevada's groundwater resources by piping water from White Pine County to Las Vegas.
“The fact is we're in a draught in the West. Fighting over water is nothing new in the West,” said Ensign who is from Las Vegas. He added that state water rights should remain state water rights.
Another hot-bed of controversy Ensign addressed is the federal proposal to transport nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain underground storage facility in Nye County. Some of the 77 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste the facility could accommodate might pass through Ely, according to past media reports.
The Senator said it is not likely to happen.
“I do not think that Yucca Mountain will ever open and receive this tremendous amount of nuclear waste,” Ensign said, adding that a federal plan for a rail line that would pass through parts of Lincoln and Nye counties en route to Yucca Mountain probably would never be built.
Ensign is on record as consistently opposing Yucca Mountain. He voted to slash funding for the nuclear waste facility in half in a Department of Defense authorization bill. Ensign also fought efforts to increase the annual funding level for the project in the Budget Committee, which hs is a member of.
Ensign responded to a question about the Hard Rock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, which he is opposed to. “First, the House bill is dead on arrival,” Ensign said, adding that he sees no chance for its passage in the Senate. The House of Representatives passed the measure earlier this year.
That legislation would toughen federal environmental regulations for mining copper, gold, silver and other metals on public lands and impose a federal 8 percent gross royalty. It would also allow county, state and tribal governments to petition the federal government to withdraw lands within their jurisdictions from eligibility for new mining claims. It's support comes from Western communities that oppose mining near water supplies and scenic areas. All of the sponsors are Democrats.
Ensign praised the $555 billion federal budget that was approved 76-17 in the Senate last week.
The House OK'd the spending bill 272-142.
The Senator said Nevada got a fair share. “I've never asked for anything I couldn't defend on the Senate floor,” Ensign said.
He said this was the first time in his 11 years in Congress that the Republicans won a budget battle over the Democrats.
The budget includes passage of a Senate amendment increasing defense funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by $70 million.
Ensign briefly addressed the farm bill, which he voted against. He said he believes in a free market for farming and hopes that will one day be achieved in the United States.
Ensign serves on the Budget, Commerce, Science and Transportation, Finance and Veterans Affairs committees. He is currently chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and is a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness of the Commerce Committee.
Ensign, 49, was born in California and raised in northern Nevada and Las Vegas. He was a veterinarian in Las Vegas for more than a decade before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999. Ensign was elected to the Senate in 2000 and reelected in 2006. While the Senate is in session, he returns to Las Vegas most weekends to spend time with his wife and three children.
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Aiken Standard
December 26, 2007
TalkBack for Wednesday, Dec. 26
We can't be new Yucca Mountain
The editorial about Yucca Mountain never accepting the nuclear waste was a wake-up call. Hopefully our politicians will take steps to ensure the same thing doesn't happen here.
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Nevada Appeal
December 25, 2007
Christmas thoughts
Maizie Harris Jesse or Carolyn Tate
Chuck Muth mentioned in his column that Nevadans should be heard on Yucca Mountain, not just politicians. We would like to add a few things: Not only would we never be taxed again, we could tax those who send it to us, then recycle it (like many countries already do) and SELL it back to those who sent it to us in the first place. He was wrong about one thing though. If the politicians get $2 million to spend, he said they'd spend two million. Naaaah, they'd spend three. Isn't that how it works? (Thanks to a "friend" for picking up on that). So, he's right about putting restrictions on this "cash cow." Everyone in Nevada, BEFORE they make up their minds, should take a tour of Yucca Mountain and get more facts before they dis it out of hand.
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Baltimore Sun
December 25, 2007
Nuclear power has new shape
Proposed reactor at Calvert Cliffs would recycle water, draw 98% less from bay
By Tom Pelton
A doughnut-shaped building that looks like a sports arena may soon rise beside the Chesapeake Bay - a cooling tower for a huge new nuclear reactor proposed at the Calvert Cliffs power plant in Southern Maryland.
The state-of-the-art cooling system would enable the new reactor to recycle water, thus drawing 98 percent less from the bay than the two existing reactors, which opened in 1975 and 1977.
The low and wide circular structure would look different from the tall, hourglass-shaped cooling towers that have become an iconic symbol of nuclear power - as featured, for example, in the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where the cartoon character Homer Simpson works.
"We are using a new technology - a hybrid cooling tower - instead of drawing large amounts of water out of the Chesapeake Bay," said George Vanderheyden, a vice president at Constellation Energy and president of a joint venture called UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC that has proposed the $4 billion reactor in partnership with a French company, Electricite de France.
Some environmentalists praise the idea of using less bay water but still question the safety and cost of nuclear power.
If the project wins federal and state approvals, and Constellation decides to proceed, the reactor could be the first started in the United States since the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.
The "evolutionary power reactor," targeted for opening in 2015, would be among a class of eight generators proposed around the world that would be larger than any operating today. The new Calvert Cliffs reactor would boost the amount of electricity that Maryland gets from nuclear power from 20 percent to 35 percent.
The Calvert Cliffs plant does not have cooling towers today. Instead, its two reactors draw 2.4 million gallons of water per minute out of the Chesapeake to cool the steam that spins electric turbines, with the water returned to the bay about 10 degrees warmer.
One drawback to the current system is that it kills about 69,000 fish a year that get trapped by the plant's intake filters, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 require new power plants to use advanced technology to avoid killing fish.
"Power plants that don't have cooling towers slaughter fish by the millions - they kill fish eggs and microscopic organisms that are an intricate part of an ecosystem like the Chesapeake Bay," said Reed Super, senior staff attorney for the Columbia University Environmental Law Clinic, which represented the Hudson Riverkeeper, an advocacy group, in a lawsuit that forced the new regulations.
"So, reducing the intake of water by 95 percent or more is going to reduce the fish kills by an equivalent percentage," Super said.
Richard McLean, a manager at the DNR's power plant research project, said the federal regulations would prohibit a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs from using the Chesapeake Bay as its primary cooling system.
"There was no way they could withdraw water from the bay and meet the new EPA regulations," said McLean. "So they have to do something else - essentially a cooling tower operation."
The two old reactors will keep sucking in and spitting out about 3.4 billion gallons of bay water a day as they continue running at least through 2034 and 2036, when their licenses expire.
A tiny amount of radioactive material escapes. But the levels are so low - .03 percent of the natural background radioactivity from the Earth - that they do not pose any significant threat to human health or the environment, according to a report by the Department of Natural Resources.
Johanna Neumann, policy advocate for the Maryland Public Interest Research Group, which has been protesting the Calvert Cliffs expansion, said it's good that the new reactor would use less water. But she said that is overshadowed by other "significant disadvantages" of nuclear power, for example the cost of construction and the lack of a long-term plan for storing spent fuel rods.
"The highly toxic radioactive waste that comes out of Calvert Cliffs lasts for tens of thousands of years," Neumann said.
The two reactors in the 1,829 megawatt plant produce enough electricity for about 1.3 million homes and use about 44 tons of enriched uranium a year. For more than a decade, the plant has been storing thousands of spent fuel rods in concrete vaults surrounded by barbed-wire fences on its guarded 2,057-acre site.
The new 1,600 megawatt reactor would have pools of water large enough to store spent fuel rods for 10 to 20 years. After that, the plant might put them in concrete bunkers similar to those the old plant uses, according to Constellation officials. The long-term plan, they said, would be to move all the waste to a federal repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., whose opening has been delayed for decades.
Wilson Parran, president of the Calvert County Commission, said he's not worried about the safety of spent fuel rods or the new reactor.
"I feel that the waste is safely contained," said Parran, whose board has endorsed the project and encouraged it through millions of dollars in tax breaks. "There is no real danger of it being broken open and contaminating the bay," he said.
The new reactor's short, squat cooling tower - about 165 feet tall and 530 feet wide - would be visible to boaters on the bay, but not to neighbors.
A more conventional cooling tower would have been about 600 feet tall and would have been seen from the road and nearby homes. It would have cost about $55 million less than the planned $125 million hybrid tower, which costs more because it uses fans to cool water instead of using a chimney shape to draw water vapor into the sky, according to Constellation.
A similar hybrid cooling tower was built in 1988 at the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant in West Germany. Another French company that Constellation is working with, Areva, is planning the same type of towers for four new reactors it is proposing in the United States, including in Missouri, Pennsylvania and upstate New York, said Ray Ganthner, an Areva vice president.
These low-slung, fan-driven cooling systems work more efficiently in hot weather than tall cooling towers, meaning that the plants can generate more electricity in summer, when it's needed most, he said.
Areva's design of 1,600 megawatt reactors is also different from older reactors in that the generator would be more powerful (the largest in the United States today is 1,335 megawatts) and surrounded by two containment buildings, each made of 5-foot-thick reinforced concrete, Ganthner said. By contrast, most of the 104 reactors now operating in the United States have one containment building. The Chernobyl reactor that melted down in the Soviet Union in 1986 had no containment structure.
The double shields are designed to protect the reactors even from direct hits by commercial airliners.
"They are a rugged design," Ganthner said.
--tom.pelton@baltsun.com
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Longview Daily News
December 24, 2007
Global warming consensus doesn't equal science
By Allan Schdwindt
An emerging political consensus on the need to address global warming and the rising cost of crude oil on the world market have prompted Congress and the administration to give nuclear power a new look. President Bush has made the construction of new nuclear plants a priority in the final years of his second term, and several congressional initiatives to spur development of nuclear power have been offered in recent months. One of those initiatives -- legislation providing more than $970 million for various nuclear energy programs -- won approval just before Congress adjourned for the holidays last week and soon will become law.
Greater reliance on nuclear-generated power would seem a logical response to the growing public concern about both greenhouse gas emissions and the nation's increasing dependence of high-priced, foreign oil. That logic is not lost on many environmental activists, who've come to view nuclear energy as a clean substitute for fossil fuels. Almost three decades after the partial meltdown of the Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant, popular fears have eased and the American public appears ready to embrace this energy source.
But don't look for commercial utilities to rush to apply for the government-back loan guarantees and other help the recently approved Next Generation Nuclear Plant initiative will provide. There likely will be no "next generation" plant construction until the federal government honors its promise to take possession of the more than 77,000 tons of radioactive waste left over from the previous generation of nuclear plants. And that won't be happening for some time.
At the same time members of Congress were completing work on the nuclear energy initiative, they were moving to cut more than $100 million from the administration's proposed $500 million budget for construction of the national waste repository near Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has vowed to keep the waste dump out of his home state, expressed the hope "that this cut in funding will help drive the final nail into (the project's) coffin."
It just might. At the very least, it will further delay the opening of the repository, which was supposed to accepting delivery of commercial waste piling up at utilities around the nation in 1998. The last date of completion forecast by Energy Department officials was 2017, and that was before Reid and other congressional opponents managed to cut project funding for fiscal 2008.
It's difficult to remain optimistic about the prospects of completing this national repository within the next 20 or 30 years, given the project's frustrating history and the proven ability of opponents to throw up roadblocks. But, as a practical matter, there is no good alternative. No Plan B exists for taking possession of this commercial wastes. Accordingly, there will be next generation of nuclear power for the foreseeable future without the Yucca Mountain facility.
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ZNet
December 23, 2007
Japan as a Plutonium Superpower
Gavan McCormack
Introduction
For 60 years the world has faced no greater threat than nuclear weapons. Japan, as a nuclear victim country, with "three non-nuclear principles" (non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan) and its "Peace Constitution," had unique credentials to play a positive role in helping the world find a solution, yet its record has been consistently pro-nuclear, that is to say, pro-nuclear energy, pro-the nuclear cycle, and, pro-nuclear weapons. This paper elaborates on Japan's aspiration to become a nuclear state, arguing that attention should be paid to Rokkasho, Tsuruga, and Hamaoka, the places at the heart of Japan's present and future nuclear plans, no less than to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose names represent the horror of its nuclear past.[1]
The nuclear question in relation to Japan is commonly understood in the narrow sense of whether Japan might one day opt to produce its own nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Kishi, in 1957, is known to have favored nuclear weapons. In 1961, Prime Minister Ikeda told US Secretary of State Dean Rusk that there were proponents of nuclear weapons in his cabinet, and his successor, Sato Eisaku, in December 1964 (two months after the first Chinese nuclear test) told Ambassador Reischauer that "it stands to reason that, if others have nuclear weapons, we should have them too." US anxiety led to the specific agreement the following year on Japan's inclusion within the US "umbrella."[2] Prime Ministers Ohira, in 1979, and Nakasone, in 1984, both subsequently stated that acquiring nuclear weapons would not be prohibited by Japan's peace constitution -- provided they were used for defense, not offence.[3] In the late 1990s, and with North Korea clearly in mind, the Chief of the Defence Agency, Norota Hosei, announced that in certain circumstances Japan enjoyed the right of "pre-emptive attack."[4] In other words, if the government so chose it could invoke the principle of self-defence to launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korean missile or nuclear or related facilities.
The former Defence Agency's then parliamentary Vice-Minister, Nishimura Shingo, carried this even further by then putting the case for Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons.[5] Trial balloons about Japan developing its own nuclear weapons have been floated from time to time. Abe Shinzo, at the time Deputy Chief Cabinet secretary, remarked in May 2002 that the constitution would not block Japan's prevention of nuclear weapons provided they were small.[6] North Korea's declaration of itself as a nuclear power in 2005 and its 2006 launch of missiles into the East Sea (Japan Sea) further stirred these calls. Should the North Korean crisis defy diplomatic resolution, and North Korea's position as a nuclear weapon country be confirmed, such pressures would become almost irresistible. Even with that crisis resolved, as now seems increasingly possible, the attraction for Japanese politicians of nuclear weapons as symbol of great power status has an ominous aspect.
However, I argue that a much broader construction of nuclear threat should be adopted. Japan is simultaneously unique nuclear victim country and one of the world's most nuclear committed -- one might almost say nuclear obsessed -- countries. Protected and privileged within the American embrace, it has evolved into a nuclear-cycle country and plutonium super-power. Plutonium is the chosen material on which the future of the Japanese economy is to rest -- a material that only came to exist because of its destructive potential and that is so dangerous to humanity that a teaspoon-sized cube of it would suffice to kill 10 million people: today Japan contemplates with apparent equanimity a future in which it accumulates virtual mountains of the stuff.
Criticism of Japan tends, in general, to concentrate on its past crimes and present cover ups, i.e. on past history. Yet the bureaucratic project to convert Japan into a plutonium-dependent superpower surely concerns the region and the world. And where Japan goes, Asia and the world commonly follow.
Weapons
So far as defense policy is concerned, Japan is unequivocal: the core of its defense policy is nuclear weapons. To be sure, the weapons are American rather than Japanese, but their nationality is immaterial to their function, the defense of Japan. The nuclear basis of defense policy has been spelt out in many government statements, from the National Defense Program Outline (1976) and "Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation (1997) to the 2005-6 agreements on "U.S.-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future."[7]
So supportive has Japan been of American nuclear militarism that in 1969 it entered secret clauses into its agreement with the United States so that the "principles" could be bypassed and a Japanese "blind eye" turned towards American vessels carrying nuclear weapons docking in or transiting Japan, an arrangement that lasted until 1992.[8] Thereafter, nuclear weapons continued to form the kernel of US security policy, without Japanese demur, but there was no longer any need to stock them in Japan or Korea since they could be launched at any potential target, such as North Korea, from submarines, long-range bombers, or missiles. In 2002, the US articulated the doctrine of preemptive nuclear attack, under Conplan 8022. Conplan 8022-02, completed in 2003, spelled out the specific direction of preemption against Iran and North Korea.[9] By embracing an "alliance" with the US, Japan also embraces nuclear weapons and nuclear preemption.
Japan's position in denouncing the nuclear program of North Korea rests on the distinction between its "own," i.e. American nuclear weapons, which are "defensive" and therefore virtuous, and North Korea's, which constitute a "threat" and must be eliminated. Yet logically, if Japan's security -- and the security of the nuclear powers themselves -- can only be assured by nuclear weapons, the same should apply to North Korea, whose case for needing a deterrent must anyway be stronger than Japan's. Mohammed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), criticizes as "unworkable" precisely such an attempt to separate the "morally acceptable" case of reliance on nuclear weapons for security (as in the case of the US and Japan) and the "morally reprehensible" case of other countries seeking to develop such weapons (Iran and North Korea)."[10]
The moral and political coherence of Japan's Cold War nuclear policy depended on the one hand on reliance on the US "Umbrella" and on the other on support for non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but as the US, and indeed other nuclear club powers (Britain, Russia, France, China) made clear their determination to ignore the obligation they entered under Article 6 of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, and reaffirmed in 2000 as an "unequivocal undertaking," for "the elimination of their nuclear arsenals," the policy was steadily hollowed out. As the dominant Western powers turn a blind eye to the secret accumulation of a huge nuclear arsenal on the part of a favored state (Israel) that refuses to join the NPT, so they tend to treat Japan too as a special case, extending it nuclear privileges for reprocessing partly because of its nuclear victim credentials and partly because they are well aware that it is Washington's favorite son. Partly, too, perhaps because of its pacifist constitution.
Over time, like the nuclear powers themselves, once having embraced the weapons Japan paid less and less attention to getting rid of them. Its cooperation in the projection of nuclear intimidation against North Korea contributed to proliferation and brought closer the time when Japan itself might decide to possess its own weapons. Should it make such a decision, Japan already possesses a prototype intercontinental ballistic missile, in the form of its H2A rocket capable of lifting a five-tonne payload into space, huge stores of plutonium and high levels of nuclear scientific and technical expertise.[11] No country could match Japan as a potential member of the nuclear weapon club.
Needless to say, countries such as Japan that choose to base their national policy on "shelter" beneath the US umbrella identify themselves with that umbrella's threatening as well as its defensive function. It is a system within which Japan is steadily incorporated, despite the almost total absence of public debate. Japan's leaders appear to embrace their compliant nuclear status without apparent qualm.
While Japan seems to have no qualms about the nature of the "umbrella" under which it shelters, the US has been plainspoken on its determination not to rule out first use of its nuclear force. The Pentagon's "Global Strike Plan," drawn up in response to a January 2003 classified directive from the President, integrated nuclear weapons with "conventional" war fighting capacity and made clear the reservation of right of preemption.[12] What that might mean for Korea (and for the region) beggars the imagination. According to a 2005 study by the South Korean government, the use of US nuclear weapons in a "surgical" strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities would, in a worst case scenario, make the whole of Korea uninhabitable for a decade, and if things worked out somewhat better, kill 80 per cent of those living within a ten to fifteen kilometer radius in the first two months and spread radiation over an area stretching as far as 1,400 kilometers, including Seoul.[13]
The US, that with Japan's support in March 2003 launched a devastating war on Iraq based on a groundless charge that that country was engaged in nuclear weapons production, maintains its own arsenal of around 7,500 warheads, most of them "strategic" and more powerful than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It now works on a replacement schedule to produce 250 new "reliable replacement warheads" per year, makes great efforts to develop a new generation of "low yield" small nuclear warheads, known as "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators" or "bunker busters" specially tailored to attack Iranian or North Korean underground complexes, deploys shells tipped with depleted uranium that spread deadly radioactive pollution likely to persist for centuries, has withdrawn from the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and declared its intent not to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and promises to extend its nuclear hegemony over the earth to space.
Robert McNamara, who used to run the American system, in March 2005 described it as "illegal and immoral."[14] Even though civil nuclear energy cooperation with a non-signatory (especially a nuclear weapons country) contravenes the very essence of the NPT, in 2005 the US also lifted a thirty-year ban on sales of civilian nuclear technology to India, describing it as "a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology." It roundly denounces Iran and North Korea, on the other hand, for their insistence on a right guaranteed for them in Article 4 of the NPT.
Like the US, Japan's non-proliferation policy is contradictory: turning a blind eye to US-favored countries who ignore or break the rules, such as Israel and India, while taking a hard line on countries not favored by the US, such as Iran and North Korea. It is also passive on disarmament, i.e., specifically downplaying the obligations of the US and other superpowers, and because its own defense policy rests on nuclear weapons it is unenthusiastic about the idea of a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.[15]
For the past decade the idea of Japan becoming the Great Britain of the Far East has been eagerly promoted on both sides of the Pacific. The nuclear implications of this are rarely addressed, but Britain has long seen nuclear weapons as crucial to its power and prestige. In 2006 the British government declared the intention to renew its Trident fleet, i.e. to rest its defence on nuclear weapons into the foreseeable future. The Japan of Koizumi and Abe sets great store too on the paraphernalia of great power status and for sure it has given consideration to this, as to other aspects of the British model
Energy
So much for weapons, what of energy?
The Japan of "non-nuclear principles" is also in process of becoming a nuclear superpower, the sole "non-nuclear" state that is committed to possessing both enrichment and reprocessing facilities, as well as to developing a fast-breeder reactor.
Japan's Atomic Energy Commission drew up its first plans as early as 1956, and the fuel cycle and fast breeder program were already incorporated in the 1967 Long-Term Nuclear Program. The dream of energy self-sufficiency has fired the imagination of successive governments and generations of national bureaucrats. Trillions of yen have been channeled into nuclear research and development programs. The lion's share of national energy Research and Development (64 per cent) goes on a regular basis to the nuclear sector and additional vast sums, already well in excess of two trillion yen, have been appropriated to construct and run major centers such as the Rokkasho nuclear complex.[16]
Nuclear power at present makes a modest and declining contribution to world energy needs, 17 per cent in 1993 declining to 16 per cent by 2003. Just to maintain existing nuclear generation capacity globally, it would be necessary to commission about 80 new reactors over the next ten years (one every six weeks) and a further 200 over the decade that followed.[17] To double the nuclear contribution to the global energy, bringing it to about one-third of the total, a new reactor would have to be built each week from now to 2075.[18] The head of the French government's nuclear energy division, speaking to the April 2006 Congress of the Japan Nuclear Industry Association at Yokohama, estimated that in order to raise global reliance on nuclear power from its present six per cent to 20 per cent by mid-century (i.e., a modest increase) it would be necessary to construct between 1,500 and 2,000 new reactors globally.[19] Even such a mammoth undertaking, trebling current nuclear capacity, would still constitute only a modest contribution to solving global energy problems.
Of that sort of commitment, there is at present virtually no sign. Of leading nuclear countries, for example, the United Kingdom had more than 40 reactors, but closures were set to cut that to a single one by the mid-2020s, and the US, though it had 100 reactors, was also expected to decommission many of them during the 2020s.[20] The Bush administration has opened a determined push to reverse this trend, of which more later. At present, there are 440 reactors operating worldwide, with 28 more under construction and 30 more promised by 2030 in China.[21] The US has 103, France 59, Japan 55 (29% of its power). Despite the near catastrophes at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), not to mention Japan's own series of serious incidents, Japan alone has steadily stepped up its nuclear commitment, increasing is number of reactors from 32 in 1987 to 55 now with 10 more planned.
Japan, nevertheless, is intent on playing a leading role in pioneering a hitherto unprecedented level of nuclear commitment. Central to the Japanese vision of a nuclear future is the village of Rokkasho in Aomori prefecture. Rokkasho encapsulates perhaps more than anywhere Japan's transition over the past century from agricultural and fishing tradition, via a traumatic burst of construction state excesses to the full embrace of the nuclear state. Initially a remote provincial community, a vast stretch of land, over 5,000 hectares and still at that time relatively untouched by industrialization, was set aside in 1971 under the Shinzenso or Comprehensive National Development Plan as one of eleven gigantic development sites, designated host to petrochemical, petroleum refining, electricity generation and non-ferrous metal smelting on a scale exceeding anything then known in Japan. In due course, the oil shocks and consequent industrial restructuring saw the fading of the dream of an industrial complex idea, and instead large-scale oil storage facilities were set up on part of the site from 1979, and the Rokkasho nuclear enrichment, reprocessing and waste facilities, which took up about one-third of the original site, from 1985. Local government officials had no enthusiasm for the nuclear course, but the deeper they sank into financial dependence the more difficult they found it to oppose plans generated in Tokyo. A 240 billion yen accumulated debt was written off with an infusion of taxpayer money in 2000. Until 2005, hopes were high that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) might be built there, but that hope too in time collapsed when the project was allocated to France.[22] The prospect in the early 21s century was one that nobody in the village dreamed of in 1971 -- of becoming a center of the global nuclear industry.
Despite the early 21st century Japanese government's mantra of privatization and deregulation, huge sums were poured into nuclear projects which would never have started, much less been sustained, by market forces. While public and political attention focused in 2005 on the privatization of the Post Office, bureaucrats far removed from public scrutiny, accounting or debate were taking decisions of enormous import for Japan's future, cosseting the nuclear industry and giving it trillions.
Japan's renewable energy sector (solar, wind, wave, biomass, and geothermal, excluding large-scale hydropower), constitutes a miserable 0.3 per cent of its energy generation, planned to rise over the next ten years to 1.35 but then to decline slightly by 2030. By contrast, even China plans to double its natural energy output to 10 per cent by 2010 and the EU has a target of 20 per cent by 2020.[23] In short, Japan stands out as a country following a course radically at odds with the international community, driven by bureaucratic direction rather than market forces, much less democratic consensus.
The Nuclear State – Waste, Fast Breeding, and the Magic Cycle
By 2006, the objective set out in the Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI)'s "New National Energy Policy" was to turn Japan into a "nuclear state" (genshiryoku rikkoku), with the level of nuclear-generated electricity to be steadily raised, to "between 30 to 40 per cent" by 2030 (as against 80 per cent in France as of 2006, the world's No 1 nuclear country).[24] Other reports suggest the goal of 60 per cent by 2050.[25] In August 2006, METI's Advisory Committee on Energy Policy produced its draft "Report on Nuclear Energy Policy: Nuclear Power Nation Plan."[26] Its "Hiroshima Syndrome" would be put behind it, and inhibitions about safety, radiation, waste disposal, and cost cast to the wind as Japan the once nuclear victim sets out to become a nuclear super-state.
Japan's nuclear energy commitment currently does not particularly stand out in terms of its scale, but among non-nuclear weapon states, it alone pursues the full nuclear cycle, in which plutonium would be used as fuel after the reprocessing of spent reactor waste. It is this bid for plutonium super-power status that distinguishes it. Already with stocks of plutonium amounting to more than 45 tonnes,[27] almost one fifth of the global stock of civil plutonium of 230 tonnes [28] and the equivalent of 5,000 Nagasaki-type weapons, it has become "the world's largest holder of weapons-usable plutonium,"[29] and its stockpile grows steadily. Barnaby and Burnie estimated in 2005 that Japan's stockpile on current trends would reach 145 tonnes by 2020, in excess of the plutonium in the US nuclear arsenal.[30] Japan therefore ignored the February 2005 appeal from the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for a five-year freeze on all enrichment and reprocessing works, arguing that such a moratorium was applicable only to "new" project, not ones such as Japan's that had been under way for decades.[31]
Currently (2007), Japan is commencing full commercial reprocessing at Rokkasho. It undertakes with impunity what ElBaradei sees as highly dangerous activity that should be placed under international supervision and strictly limited, doing so in defiance of the international community but with the positive blessing of the US. Countries such as Iran and North Korea are told they must absolutely be stopped from doing the same thing (and indeed countries such as South Korea are also blocked from following Japan down the enrichment and recycling path). If Iran and North Korea are a threat to global non-proliferation, then so is Japan. Its forty-five tonnes of plutonium may be compared with the 10 to 15 kilograms of fissile material that North Korea was accused of illicit diversion in the 1994 crisis (or the maximum of around 60 kilograms it might possess in 2007).[32]
The Federation of Electric Power Companies puts the figure of 19 trillion yen on the cost of the Rokkasho facility over the projected forty-year term of its use.[33] That would make it certainly Japan's, if not the world's, most expensive facility in modern history. Experts point out that it would cost very much less to bury the wastes, unprocessed (provided, that is, there is some place to bury them…), and fear that the actual cost might climb to several times the official estimate.[34] Rokkasho's reprocessing unit is supposedly capable of reprocessing eight hundred tons of spent fuel per annum, yielding each year about eight more tons (1,000 warheads-worth) of pure, weapons-usable plutonium.[35] Even such a plant, however, though it would be the only one in Asia, would make little more than a small dint in Japan's accumulated and accumulating wastes, estimated at approximately 12,600 tonnes as of 2006,[36] let alone the 40,000 tonnes of toxic nuclear spent fuel wastes so far accumulated throughout Asia.[37]
As it gets going, Rokkasho is about to release the equivalent of the nuclear wastes of 1,300 power stations.[38] The tritium discharge level will be 7.2 times that of Sellafield in Northern England, recently closed by the British Government. The operation of the Sellafield plant, and the wastes it poured into supposedly deep sea currents for dispersal, led over decades to fish devastation across much of the Irish Sea and leukemia levels in children 42 times the national average as far away as Carnarvon in Wales.[39] In Rokkasho, the plant operators have secured a permitted level of tritium release at 2,800 times that permitted for conventional reactors, essential to the plant's economic viability, and although said to be dispersing its wastes into deep ocean currents, an opposition group scattered postcards into the Rokkasho sea which later turned up right along the Japanese coast, through Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima to Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures.[40]
What then will Japan do with its plutonium mountain? To address the general perception that it is the most dangerous substance known to mankind, in the 1990s it undertook two steps. First, it issued an assurance that it would neither stockpile nor hold more than was necessary for commercial use. From the beginning that pledge was empty. The stockpile grew steadily because of the many delays to the plans, due largely to the many accidents (including those causing fatalities),[41] cover-ups[42] and continual budget over-runs that galvanized public opposition to proposed projects.[43] Even if Rokkasho was to function for forty years, without delays and technical problems, processing without hitch 800 tonnes of spent fuel per year, spent fuel volumes will continue to grow. Japan's nuclear reactors are currently discharging each year 900 tonnes of waste, about 100 more than can be reprocessed by a fully functioning Rokkasho reprocessing plant. This figure is set to reach between 1,200-1,400 tonnes by 2015 as more reactors are commissioned that will mean the accumulation of 400-600 tonnes over and above what can be reprocessed, most of which will remain stored at reactor sites or at proposed regional interim storage sites.[44] That would be added to the current global stockpile of separated plutonium (ca 250 tonnes)[45] with the gap widening further if, or as, more reactors are built.[46]
Second, the government launched a campaign to persuade the public that there was no need to worry about plutonium. The Japanese Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Corporation issued an informational video featuring a character, Mr Pluto, who declared that plutonium was safe enough to drink, which he demonstrates, and that there was little risk of it being turned into bombs.[47] When the US Energy Secretary, among others, protested at the video's inaccuracies, it was withdrawn, but the advertising campaign continued.
Till 1995, the plan was to operate fast-breeder reactors, which "breed" (i.e. produce more than they start with) plutonium of very pure, "super-grade" plutonium. Such programs make little economic sense, since they cost four to five times as much as conventional power plants, and most projects around the world, including the US and UK, have been abandoned on grounds of either safety or cost.[48] The Japanese Citizens' Nuclear Information Center judges that they are "completely incompatible with non-proliferation."[49] Japanese plans were thrown into disarray by the shut-down of the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor (at Tsuruga, in Fukui Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast) after a sodium leak and fire in December 1995, followed by evidence of negligence and cover-up and the project was suspended for almost ten years. Opponents of the project after years of protest won a court victory upholding their stance that the design of the reactor was flawed. In May 2005, however, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling and upheld the government's decision to proceed. By then, over 30 years the project had cost already 600 billion yen while not having lit a single light bulb. Under current government plans, the fast breeder is to be commercialized by 2050, a remarkable 70 years behind its original schedule.[50]
Undaunted, the JAEA has set up in Tsuruga something called an Aquatom – science museum, theme park, community centre – designed to brush off the near disaster and persuade people that this is the future. Display panels explain to visitors that the world has only 40 years of oil left, 65 of natural gas, 155 of coal, and only 85 of uranium for conventional nuclear plants.
"Japan is a poor country in natural resources … therefore Monju, a plutonium burning reactor, is necessary because plutonium can be used for thousands of years."[51]
Money continues to flow into Tsuruga local projects, including those in welfare and tourism promotion. The spirit of Mr Pluto is alive and well in Aquatom.
Not only is Monju itself to be resuscitated, but a second reactor is also to be built, at a cost of "about 1 trillion yen," to replace it by around 2030.[52] The bureaucratic dream of energy security for the 21st century operates on a higher plane of logic than economics.
Whatever the outcome of the fast-breeder project, the government also adopted a plan to burn recycled plutonium in conventional light-water reactors in the form of a plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX) fuel.[53] This process is also several times more expensive than low-enriched uranium fuel and it involves much higher risk.
Earlier efforts to start plutonium MOX use in the late 1990's failed. On current plans, Japan's utilities would begin to load plutonium fuel from around 2007-8, but on past record it is likely to take longer, and the gap between the production of plutonium (from both European based stocks belonging to Japan and that coming out of Rokkasho) and the ability to load it into reactors will widen further.
The bottom line is that wastes continue to accumulate. Low-level wastes – basically comprising contaminated clothing, tools, filters etc -- are held in over one million 200-liter drums both at nation-wide reactor sites and at Rokkasho's repository, whose projected eventual capacity is for three million drums.[54] Forty vast repositories are planned, each 6 meters high and 24 by 24 meters and containing 10,000 drums, destined, eventually, to be covered in soil, with something like a mountain built over them, after which they must be closely guarded for at least 300 years, slowly spreading, like giant, poisonous mushrooms or the mausolea of ancient Japanese aristocrats, across the Rokkasho site. Meanwhile, fluids containing low levels of radiation are being piped several kilometers out into the Pacific Ocean for discharge, the standards for effluent control in place at reactor sites around the country drastically raised (i.e. relaxed) in order to make regular discharges possible.[55]
High level toxic wastes, basically spent fuel, have since 1992 been regularly shipped across vast stretches of ocean to reprocessing plants at Sellafield in the north of England and la Hague, Normandy, in France, each shipment equivalent to about seventeen atomic bombs-worth of plutonium, despite the protests of countries en route and the risks of piracy or hijacking.[56] Once processed, the liquid high level waste is vitrified and put in canisters, each 1.3 by 0.43 meters, which are returned to the Rokkasho site, where they are to be stored initially for 30 to 50 years while their surface temperature slowly declines from around 500 degrees centigrade to 200 degrees centigrade, at which point it is planned to bury them in 300 meter deep underground caverns where their radiation will further dissipate over millennia. These canisters already more than half-fi