Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, January 7, 2008
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Nevada Appeal
January 05, 2008
Past pages
by Sue Ballew
10 YEARS AGO
The state Agency for Nuclear Projects has protested the applications of the U.S. Department of Energy to permanently use 430 acre-feet of water at the proposed high level nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain from the Forty Mile Canyon-Jackass Flat basin in Nye County. These rights expire in the year 2002. The energy department has asked the state Division of Water Resources to make them permanent.
--Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.
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Morris Daily Herald
January 05, 2008
Recycling decision delayed, not dead
DOE needs to study more before making decisions on nuclear recycling site
By Jo Ann Hustis
Herald Writer
ARGONNE- Although the decision-making process is changing, Morris remains in the running for a proposed nuclear fuel recycling facility.
“We have not canceled the program,” Brian Quirke, of the U.S. Department of Energy, noted Thurs-day. “We're moving ahead with the Pro-grammatic Environmental Impact Statement.”
His statement follows a posting on the DOE Web site that seemed to indicate otherwise.
The posted, noted as an update, read, in part, “As a result, DOE has eliminated the project-specific proposals for the siting, construction, and operation of a nuclear fuel recycling center and an advanced recycling reactor from the GNEP PEIS. DOE will not make any decision based on this PEIS regarding sites for these facilities.”
In the PEIS, the DOE is attempting to decide a major public policy issue - whether the nation should recycle spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors.
The PEIS identifies a series of 13 sites in several different states being eyed for three different nuclear waste reprocessing facilities. The GE Morris Oper-ation spent nuclear fuel storage facility on East Pine Bluff Road is included, and is under consideration for a recycle-reactor facility.
Argonne National Laboratories is being studied for a laboratory facility.
One, two, or all three facilities can be built at a single or multiple sites.
A recycling center and advanced reactor would separate spent nuclear fuel into two different streams. The 95 percent stream is enriched uranium for fuel rods. The 5 percent stream is plutonium, curium, neptunium, and americium to burn in the reactor.
The remaining waste would be stored in geological depositories such as Yucca Mountain.
The site selection process was expected to take about a year, concluding in 2008.
Now, however, the DOE is reconsidering its options in light of about 14,000 comments received during public meetings last year, and will not decide on siting of the three facilities under the current PEIS document.
“This is a minor redirection of our path forward - in our progress forward,” Quirke said.
Which does not mean the end of the proposal, though.
The environmental statement has a multitude of decisions to be made within it, in addition to whether to site one or two of the facilities at the GE spent fuel storage location at Morris, Quirke indicated.
The federal government makes decisions in several ways, including executive decision and congressional funding.
Quirke said decisions stemming from the PEIS are clearly those of the executive branch of government.
“So, the DOE and current administration of the United States are trying to carry out a decision-making process nationally and internationally about whether we should recycle spent fuel from commercial reactors,” he noted.
The issue has several hurdles to cross and questions to be answered. Primary among them is the benefit to recycling spent nuclear fuel, and its potential impact to the environmental.
Quirke noted the issue did not result from the 14,000 comments.
“The decision whether we should recycle has always been the most important decision being made, and the PEIS is part of that process, not the entirety of it,” he said.
In the Morris area, the public focused on the local impacts of a recycling-reactor facility at the GE spent fuel storage location.
“But, this decision about whether to recycle has always been the premiere decision we're trying to make,” he said.
Also to be decided is the methods the DOE will use if the nation decides on recycling spent nuclear fuel.
The DOE plans to make these decisions by summer - about six months away, said Quirke.
“If we decide to go forward, then we will be conducting another environmental process to take a much closer look at specific sites to determine the potential environmental impact at each of those sites,” he noted.
“If we decide not to go forward, then the status quo will exist.”
Portions of the program may still continue, should that happen, such as the international aspects and further development of recycling technologies. These portions, however, will have little or nothing to do with Morris.
As part of the PEIS, the agency will look into possibly siting the lab facility at Argonne, or at one of six to seven other sites under consideration.
Public hearings will be scheduled soon on the siting. One hearing will be in Illinois, closer to the Argonne site, and further from the Morris site.
The focus will be on comments aimed at whether the United States should recycle spent nuclear fuel.
“We will not really be focusing on comments that are site specific,” he said. “But, we may make some decisions on Argonne, and we'll move the hearing closer to there.”
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Nevada Appeal
January 04, 2008
Letter:
Facts don't support Yucca Mtn. viability
Chuck Muth's ramblings about Yucca Mountain again show how well the nuclear industry has clouded many minds including Mr. Muth's. I testified at a significant number of hearings about statements made by the government that were supposed to show how safe the canisters were. They discussed the few tests that were made and showed how a railroad engine could not damage the canister. After questioning they admitted that the cask was too heavy to be transported on roads, bridges and in addition the majority of the rail beds could not take the weight. They also discussed how the government had tested the canister survivability against military weapons. When I asked what weapons were used, the government person would not tell me what weapons they used for the test. I then asked him if they used a depleted uranium war head. The response was NO because the American public did not have access to such a weapon.
This was the caliber of people who were defending the government position that Yucca Mountain was safe. If Mr. Muth had read the original specifications the government was using, he would have found that the natural barrier between the stored nuclear waste and the water table had to be no less than 90 percent. The final government design for Yucca Mountain resulted in the natural barrier being less than 10 percent. This means, in simple terms, that man-made barriers have to last more than 100,000 years. There is no man-made designs that have ever come close to this requirement. The government engineers are trying to emulate God and will always fail. Mr. Muth, I hope will get off the nuclear industry bandwagon and realize the folly of his previous statements.
Lou Debottari
Carson City
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Pahrump Valley Times
January 04, 2008
Back then
20 years ago this week
Yucca Mountain being all but named as the nation's high level repository site, continued growth in Pahrump Valley and funding for the Pahrump-Amargosa link road were the top local news stories in 1987.
The repository is still 10 years from construction; the results and completion of testing are expected to bring the multi-billion project to Yucca Mountain. Growth in Pahrump Valley in 1987 exceeded 10 percent. The residential telephone hook-up rate for the first six months was over 13 percent.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 04, 2008
Ensign says he'll work to keep federal legislation from harming Walker Basin
Nevada Senator John Ensign has confirmed in a recent conference call that he will strive to not allow harmful language for Mason and Smith Valleys be included into legislation dealing with the Walker River Basin, including a new "Farm Bill"
Ensign, speaking with rural media, also spoke strongly about mining reform efforts, saying he feels a House bill seeking reform, including an increase in royalties on mining use on public land, is "dead on arrival."
Asked about the Farm Bill, which includes additional funding ($200 million) for the desert terminal lakes program that allows for the purchase or lease of water rights, Ensign pointed out he had voted against the Senate version of the bill (it is now in conference with the House to resolves differences between the two bodies) because he opposes the subsidies it provides for, including subsidies to the richest farmers.
Ensign said he wants to be sure language harmful to Lyon County is not included in the any federal legislation, to ensure that quality of life is maintained in the Walker River area of the county. Otherwise "I won't sign off" on the federal legislation, he said.
Asked about the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, he said, "The House bill is dead on arrival; it has no chance in the Senate."
The Senator also said he isn't even sure if the issue would be addressed in 2008 and/or whether or not the Senate would hear it; but he did assert that the House version of the bill wouldn't be approved by the Senate.
Ensign said he would do all in his power to kill the mining bill in House's proposed form "if they can't change it to not hurt mining," a major industry in Nevada, which is the nation's largest gold producer.
Mining, which is planned for Mason Valley's future, is also the state's highest-paid employment sector.
The mining reform bill passed by the House would impose the first-ever federal royalties on gold, silver, copper, and other metals mined while beefing up environmental controls and giving federal agencies authority to turn down a mine deemed to ahve the potentital to irreparably harm the environment.
It also would allow local, state and tribal governments to petition the federal government to withdraw certain lands from the filing of new mining claims.
Those in the mining industry don't oppose some royalties, but do argue that the current House form of the bill is punitive.
Congressman Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican, proposed royalties on profits instead.
In another bold statement, Ensign also said he didn't see the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project advancing, suggested no high-level nuclear waste would ever be stored there and called the cut in funding for Yucca Mountain a sign that waste dump is doomed.
"I don't think Yucca Mountain will ever open and become a high-level nuclear waste (repository)," he said.
The repository, opposed by Nevada officials, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has been slowed by court fights and a judicial order for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to revise project radiation safety standards.
Located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it has been designed to entomb at least 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste in tunnels 1,000 feet below ground.
However the DOE recently proposed doubling the size to almost 150,000 tons, citing ongoing production of waste at nuclear power plants around the country.
Congress allocated just under $386.5 million last month for the Yucca Mountain project in fiscal 2008, $108 million less than President Bush sought.
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Times Herald-Record
January 04, 2008
Spent fuel rods relocated on-site
Entergy calls task 'tremendous achievement'
By Alexa James
BUCHANAN — As you read this, a team of roughly two dozen radiation protection technicians is meticulously shuffling hundreds of spent nuclear fuel rods at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan.
"This is a tremendous achievement and a historic day," said an announcement from the brass of Entergy Nuclear, the company that runs Indian Point's 2,100 megawatts of nuclear power.
For the first time in site history, giant spent fuel rods of plutonium and uranium are being plucked from the deep cooling pools where they've sat for decades.
Entergy technicians will dry and seal the rods inside massive casks and relocate them on-site, about a quarter of a mile away, on a steel and concrete pad roughly double the size of a basketball court.
"It is a huge task," said Entergy spokeswoman Robyn Bentley, "but this is something that we're going to continue doing through the life of the plant."
At a cost of more than $40 million, Bentley said this first phase — scheduled to conclude next week — will remove 96 spent fuel assemblies from one reactor's spent fuel pool. With approximately 10 spent fuel rods per assembly, that's 960 highly radioactive rods relocated to a safer place, and even the power plant's critics agree that's good news.
"Riverkeeper is pleased that (Entergy) is finally doing this," said Philip Musegaas, staff attorney for the Garrison-based environmental watchdog group.
Though Riverkeeper has joined New York State and a bevy of other factions fighting to close the power plant, Musegaas said nuclear waste stored in dry casks is significantly safer than waste sitting in a cooling pool. But, he cautions, Entergy isn't moving waste out of the goodness of its heart. "It's a business decision," he said.
Entergy is removing spent fuel from Unit 2, a reactor whose pool is nearing capacity, in order to make room for more.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that's Entergy's prerogative. "The companies that operate the reactors decide when the time is appropriate to go to an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation," said NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci.
There are 46 sites across the country similar to the new one at Indian Point, all designed as temporary holding facilities until a national repository is constructed. Screnci said the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to submit an application for a repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., by July 2008.
Play-by-play: Moving waste at Indian Point
Moving highly radioactive spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor's cooling pool to a dry cask storage system is no small feat. Here's a run-down of the process, which is happening now at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan:
1. Robust dry storage casks (20 feet high, 11 feet wide, with concrete walls two feet thick) are submerged in spent fuel pools and loaded with nuclear waste. A fully loaded cask holds 320 spent fuel rods and weighs 180 tons.
2. The waste is dried and sealed in the cask, then hoisted out of the pool using a 110-ton crane.
3. A tank-like transporter drives the loaded cask to an on-site Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation pad (100 feet wide, 200 feet long, with concrete walls 2.5 feet thick.) Under the pad is a six-foot-wide bed of compressed engineered fill to serve as a shock absorber during seismic activity.
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Palm Beach Post
January 04, 2008
Sunshine State must need star power
By Frank Cerabino
If you haven't seen the census figures, Florida's in trouble.
In an estimate measuring births, deaths and migrations from all 50 states, Florida finished a mediocre 19th last year. That's an annual growth rate of just 1.1 percent, which in raw numbers translated to 134,798 fewer people moving to Florida than in the previous year.
To show you just how miserable that is, we finished just below Oklahoma and just above South Dakota. We're in danger of becoming a second-tier relocation state, getting left in the dust by the likes of Georgia and the Carolinas - even the smaller, scarier one.
"If there's one state that's a little surprising, I would say it's Florida," Greg Harper, a census demographer, told The Associated Press.
New York's savior also ours?
Being "surprising" might work for the Spears sisters. But we need to get our paradise groove back.
It's getting so bad that the only person who wants to come to Florida these days is Rudy Giuliani. He skipped the Iowa caucuses Thursday night to spend the night in Hialeah.
Now that's a guy who likes Florida! I don't even like to stop in Hialeah for a traffic light.
In fact, I was thinking that, if it gets so bad that we need a brutal, take-no-prisoners campaign to scare people away from moving to other states, we ought to turn the job over to Giuliani.
The pitch probably could mirror his new TV ad, which began running Thursday in the state. If you haven't seen the ad yet, I recommend that you watch it on his Web site.
Use ad's scare tactics
If you wait to see it on TV, you might confuse it with a movie trailer for the next Bond movie, or maybe some kind of Bourne meets Syriana Ay-rab shoot-em-up. There are lots of explosions, fires, gun-waving mobs and an ominous voice-over that actually says, "In a world where the next crisis is just a moment away ..."
Aren't all mindless action movies sold this way? To his credit, the political ad ends before we get to see Rudy defusing the Evil Bomb as the digital countdown clock stops at 9.11 seconds.
Anyway, if this works in scaring Floridians into voting for Giuliani, we could borrow the same script (just change the images) to scare people from migrating to the increasingly popular Nevada.
"A people perverted (casino scene); a religion betrayed (quickie wedding chapel); a nuclear power in chaos (protesters decrying Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository)...."
"In a country where retirement is a downsize away. ..."
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San Francisco Bay Guardian
January 03, 2008
Yucca Mt. bitch deadline: Jan. 10
Sharpen your pencils, folks. Only one week left to tell the government what you think about the plan to bury 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste in a leaky tunnel in the middle of a sacred mountain in Nevada.
There are a number of frightening aspects to this plan, including the thirteen fault lines that run through the mountain, mounting evidence that radioactive waste in the repository could leak into the groundwater (only 90 miles northwest of Vegas,) and the fact that waste which is, for the most part, currently stored at the nuke plants where it's used, would now be transported by rail and truck all over the country. Twenty-car pile-ups? Train derailments? Bridges collapsing? Yes, these things still happen, and even the Dept. of Energy anticipates between 150-400 accidents during the 20-30 year shipping period. Cool. Awesome.
Nevada's citizens and leaders, native tribes and environmentalists, as well as the top three democratic party presidential candidates, have already expressed strong disapproval of the Yucca Mountain repository. And yet the project forges on. Send your thoughts to: EIS_Office@ymp.gov
or:
EIS Office U.S. Department of Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Mgmt
1551 Hillshire Dr.
Las Vegas, NV, 89195-7308
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Twin Cities Planet
January 03, 2008
EPA begins planning cleanup of Bush Administration
Rich Broderick
With a little more than a year left in the administration of George W. Bush, top officials of the Environmental Protection Agency have begun mapping out strategies for how to dispose of the toxic, in some cases highly lethal, waste produced by the Bush team over the last seven years, EPA insiders revealed today.
“At this point, we’re not sure how much, or how bad,” said a source who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. “We’re not going to be able to go in and do a full environmental assessment until the Administration has left the White House and other federal agencies.”
Although no department seems to have been unaffected by the unprecedented output of toxic materials, EPA officials express greatest concern over the state of the Department of Justice, the Executive Mansion – which houses the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney – and the White House itself.
“We’re not sure,” the same official said, “but we’re pretty certain that all three are going to qualify as Superfund sites.”
To date, no detailed plans have been finalized on how to undertake the extensive remediation the EPA expects will be needed in and around 2100 Pennsylvania Avenue, but already questions about how to transport and store toxic materials — much of it radioactive — from numerous sites around the federal government have stirred controversy. An early trial balloon sent up by the agency to ship the waste at the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada was effectively blocked when the proposal met stiff opposition on the part of every governor – Democrat and Republican – of the states lying in the path between Washington, D.C. and Nevada.
“Sure it was a setback,” admitted the anonymous EPA official, “but who can really blame them? Preliminary tests indicate that the materials generate by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove has a half-life of more than 10,000 years. This stuff’s going to be deadly for a long, long time. For example, we estimate that just one teaspoon of the waste from Cheney’s office would be enough to kill the population of a city, say, the size of Baghdad.”
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Lancaster Eagle Gazette
January 03, 2008
Nuclear industry needs other options
THE overdue budget bill that finally moved through Congress in December will add one more nail to the coffin of the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
It's past time that the U.S. Department of Energy and the nuclear power industry admit that their continued support of the project is only delaying the day when they will have to find a solution to the problem of radioactive waste piling up at the nation's nuclear power plants.
The spending bill that's resulted from a series of year-end compromises between Congress and the White House includes only $390 million for Yucca Mountain, $104 less than President George W. Bush had requested. If that number remains in the final bill, it will push back the date when the Energy Department can apply for a license for the facility, according to the official in charge.
The plan to bury the waste under Yucca Mountain is already 10 years behind schedule and will be too small to meet the industry's needs when it does open. DOE planned to file its application in 2008. That doesn't seem likely, however.
Yet, as long as there's even a little hope that Yucca Mountain eventually will open and tons of waste can start moving across the country, there's no urgency to the search for an alternative solution to the nuclear waste problem.
Nevadans have been making that argument since the dump was forced on it. Now other members of Congress (and all of the Democratic candidates for president) agree. The money due for Yucca Mountain can be better spent looking for a better solution.
- Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal
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Nevada Appeal
January 02, 2008
Looking back on 2007 and ahead to 2008
Sen. Harry Reid
The first session of the 110th Congress has been one of change, accountability, and numerous accomplishments for the people of Nevada and our country.
I began the year with the goal of changing the way business was conducted in Washington. We were successful in doing so with the first piece of legislation passed in the Senate this year. The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 implemented tough new restrictions on lobbyists and lawmakers, increased transparency and openness, and included the most sweeping ethics reform in our nation's history.
In addition to the ethics and lobbying reform, 2007 saw other significant accomplishments from this Congress. We gave hardworking Americans a raise by increasing the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years. We passed a budget that restored fiscal discipline, increased our investment in education, and kept our promises to veterans. We took important steps to make college more affordable and make America more competitive around the globe by passing the College Cost Reduction Act and the America COMPETES Act.
While these pieces of legislation benefit all Americans, Nevada always comes first for me, which is why I have leveraged my position as the Senate Majority Leader to bring vital Nevada-specific issues to the forefront in Washington.
One of those issues is the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program. I have made it a priority to increase funding for this program that provides major funding to all of our counties to help pay for essential services like schools, police, and roads. For years this program has been underfunded. But working with my Democratic colleagues I was able to pass legislation through the Senate this year that would have delivered more than $30 million in new money to Nevada's counties. Part of this funding would come from a program known as Secure Rural Schools through which Nevada was set to receive a 1,500 percent increase over past funding levels. Unfortunately, like so many things that would have helped the people of Nevada, this effort was blocked first by the president and then later by partisan Republicans who were more focused on defending subsidies for multinational oil companies than delivering results for the American people.
To help prevent the occurrence, spread of, and dangers caused by wildfires to rangeland, Senator Ensign and I introduced the Wildfire Presuppression Fuels Management Act of 2007. This bill would provide annual incentive payments to private land owners that implement innovative conservation practices on rangeland threatened or damaged by wildfires.
In my ongoing battle to keep Yucca Mountain from becoming the dumping ground for nuclear waste, I joined with Senator Ensign to introduce legislation requiring that spent nuclear fuel be transferred from spent fuel pools to secure dry storage casks licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and located on site at nuclear power plants. Additionally, this bill would eliminate the very dangerous prospect of transporting the most dangerous substance known to man through Las Vegas and past our nation's schools, neighborhoods, and businesses. I also cut $108.5 million dollars in funding to the dump - over 22 percent of its budget - to ensure that Nevada never becomes the nation's nuclear dumping ground.
The Farm Bill recently passed by the Senate will benefit Nevada by protecting farm and ranch income threatened by natural disasters like drought and wildfire; encouraging on-farm renewable energy production through cost share assistance; and bringing healthy foods into our schools through the Fresh Fruits and Vegetable Program.
The passage of the Energy Bill will save Nevadans hundreds of millions of dollars at the pump by making cars and trucks more fuel efficient, create thousands of new jobs, reducing our dependence on oil, and help solidify Nevada's standing as the nation's renewable energy leader.
Through the passage of the Omnibus Spending Bill Nevadans will see funding for many vital programs, including $1.125 million to deal with the impact of Mormon Crickets; language for the Nevada Rural Education Transportation Program; $740,000 for the California Trail Interpretive Center in Elko; $250,000 to increase populations of Lahontan Cutthroat Trout; $300,000 to improve fresh water drinking systems in Moapa Valley; $300,000 to preserve the Goldfield Historic District in Esmeralda County; and $500,000 for vital repairs to the Fallon Sewer System.
I am proud of the accomplishments Congress made this year, but I know there is so much more to do. As we look forward to 2008, I plan to use the lessons learned from 2007 to deliver even more results for Nevada's working families.
• Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.
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UN Observer
January 02, 2008
YUCCA MOUNTAIN ACTION ALERT
2008-01-02 | 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 off since the passing of Corbin Harney. The nuclear reps are confident to the point of acting like it's a done deal.
LETS PROVE THEM WRONG! MAKE YOUR COMMENT NOW & TAKE ACTION!! http://www.wsdp.org/alerts.htm#yucca123007
If we remain unable to imagine a world where love can be recognized as a unifying principle that can lead us to seek and use power wisely, then we will remain wedded to a culture of domination that requires us to choose power over love. ~ Bell Hooks
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Press & Sun-Bulletin
January 02, 2008
Climate change brings calls for new nuclear plants
By Jeff Montgomery
Gannett News Service
Patricia Anderson has spent years living with an up-close, backyard view of the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear plant across the Delaware River from her home in Bayview Beach, the Delaware neighborhood nearest to South Jersey's three nuclear reactors.
Now, Anderson wants a guarantee that everything -- including the public risk -- will be different if Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), a $28 billion energy and energy services company, seeks to add a fourth reactor on Artificial Island, some 2 1/2 miles across the water from her house.
"If they could build a newer and safer one and reuse the cooling water so they don't kill and waste so many fish, it might not bother me, because I live here already," Anderson said.
Views like hers have made this a defining moment for the nuclear industry and the nation.
Some say the nuclear energy industry is poised for a renaissance, triggered by recent congressional enactment of hefty nuclear industry subsidies, by advances in technology proponents say finally make nuclear power safe, and by demand for alternatives to fossil fuels that has softened public opinion about nuclear power. Nuclear plants generate electricity without releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide, which has been tied to rising global temperatures.
Dozens of utility companies, including PSEG at Salem/Hope Creek, are considering new facilities.
"If it weren't for climate change, I think the nuclear industry would probably be remaining pretty moribund," said Peter J. Wilcoxen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration at Syracuse University. "Now it's almost certainly going to be a bigger part of our energy mix than it has been in the past."
But the nuclear industry has some major hurdles to clear before utilities can make plans with confidence, said Paul G. Falkowski, a professor with the Rutgers Energy Institute at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"There are three problems," said Falkowski, a biochemist and biophysicist. "It's very expensive. Second, people believe there are major safety problems. Third, nuclear waste disposal remains an unsettled problem, even as waste stockpiles continue to increase."
Congress slashed funding in the proposed 2008 budget for the Yucca Mountain long-term nuclear waste storage complex in Nevada, despite Energy Department warnings that the cuts could delay the site's licensing schedule and scheduled 2017 opening date. Yucca Mountain is proposed as the final destination for 77,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste and spent fuel now accumulating in 39 states, but is nearly a decade overdue, billions of dollars over-budget and beset by critics who consider the site insufficiently stable. Nuclear accounts for 20 percent of the nation's electricity supply, said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chairs the Senate Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety subcommittee. He said he supports construction of new nuclear plants and said nuclear can help curb reliance on more-polluting energy sources. But he cautioned that safe operation and development of waste management and disposal are critical.
"If (a serious accident) happens because of negligence, a lack of attention to detail or inappropriate oversight or inspection, there won't be a nuclear renaissance," Carper said.
The nuclear industry views its record as safer than even real estate and banking, based on federal workplace safety studies. Workplace injuries and worker radiation exposures have fallen steadily, while safety systems have proved increasingly reliable.
"We've been working long and hard to improve performance at our existing reactors," said Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. "Among all the reactors we have now, we have 3,000-plus combined years of operating experience. The new designs will benefit from that operational experience and will have increased margins of safety."
Some still aren't comfortable with nuclear power. Although PSEG hasn't gotten further than studying whether to put a next-generation reactor on Artificial Island, Jane Nogaki, who represents the New Jersey Environmental Federation and Clean Water Action, already is mustering the opposition.
"The energy is very expensive, and the waste has significant disposal problems that will loom far into the future," Nogaki said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission received seven reactor license applications in 2007 -- the first since a partial meltdown in 1979 at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa., spoiled the nation's appetite for nuclear power.
Another 14 applications are expected this year, NRC officials say. More could follow if Congress expands the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a law that amounted to an industry lifeline. Lawmakers used the measure to deliver $13 billion in incentives for nuclear plant construction, including hefty tax breaks, liability caps on catastrophic accidents and insurance against losses caused by regulatory review delays.
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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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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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