Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, January 25, 2008

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, January 25, 2008
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Senator Harry Reid
January 24, 2008

Reid, Ensign Oppose Most Desperate Attempt Yet to Revive the Dump at Yucca Mountain

Bill attempts to remove all safety standards to accelerate licensing process

Washington, DC — Nevada Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign released the following statements about a bill being introduced in the Senate to speed up the licensing process to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. This irresponsible bill calls for nuclear waste to be shipped to Nevada and stored in Yucca Mountain for 300 years before any radiation standard whatsoever is applied to the dump.

“The Energy Department closed the doors to the tunnel at Yucca Mountain, sending a clear signal that the proposed dump is history. This is the most desperate attempt we’ve seen so far to try to bring Yucca back to life,” said Reid. “The Inhofe-DeMint pro-Yucca bill is not just dangerous, it’s ridiculous. The cosponsors practically go out of their way to make sure that Nevadans will be harmed by storing 77,000 tons of nuclear waste 90 miles outside of Las Vegas.”

"They're trying to fast forward a project that should be stopped," said Ensign. "Yucca Mountain is the wrong policy for America supported by flawed science and poor management. As a nation, we need to move in a different direction. Senator Reid and I have introduced a bill that provides a solution. It would require waste to be stored on-site and require the federal government to take responsibility for it, including maintenance. Yucca Mountain will never be built. Now is the time to start moving in a new direction."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 24, 2008

Reid wants to help displaced Yucca workers find new jobs

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- After promoting a deep budget cut to the Yucca Mountain Project that will push hundreds of Nevadans out of work, Sen. Harry Reid said he wants to cushion the blow.

Reid said helping laid off Yucca workers find new jobs will be a priority in 2008. Most of them are losing their old jobs after the Senate majority leader arranged for a $108 million slash through the Department of Energy nuclear waste program.

The job losses raise a potentially awkward situation for Reid and other Nevada leaders who have pledged to do whatever is necessary to kill the government's plan to bury highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel in the state.

Caught in the crossfire are roughly 1,500 Nevadans who collect paychecks from the Energy Department or its Yucca contractors. It is unusual for elected officials to seek the demise of a federal program that employs so many constituents.

Reid said Wednesday that he is taking steps to form a worker transition strategy as he continues to cut away at the project. The strategy also would cover workers at the Nevada Test Site.

"My staff and I are looking at all options," Reid said. "Killing Yucca is good news for Nevada, but the people who work there have families to feed, and I want to make sure they can do that.

"We're talking to the Energy Department, test site officials, and leaders in the community to come up with ways to ensure that people who have lost their jobs at Yucca can find other jobs, and mitigate the number of layoffs at the test site as a whole," Reid said.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the effort "is in the fairly early stages."

Reid aides and Energy Department officials were scheduled to meet today to discuss the impact of the budget cuts in the state.

"We are talking to DOE to get a better idea of the types of workers who are facing layoffs," Summers said. Reid also will meet with labor organizations to assess where new jobs might be found.

Reid similarly is monitoring the test site labor situation where about 200 positions were lost in the fall to cuts in the National Nuclear Security Administration, aides said. About half the Nevada reductions were attained through attrition and early retirements.

But Reid is paying particularly close attention to the workers who will lose their jobs at Yucca Mountain "since he is the one who is responsible for cutting so much funding," said a Senate aide familiar with the issue.

Reid and others who have fought Yucca Mountain for years justify their efforts. They say a nuclear waste repository could pose catastrophic health and safety threats to Nevadans and along shipping routes in other parts of the country. DOE officials maintain the program would be safe.

For the workers, the timing of layoffs is not great. They are being let go into the teeth of an economic downturn. Nevada's unemployment rate was 5.8 percent in December, the highest in more than five years and higher than the 5 percent national average.

In neighboring California, the jobless rate was 6.1 percent in December.

Bechtel SAIC Co., the Energy Department's managing contractor at Yucca Mountain, announced earlier this month it was laying off 63 workers. They include 27 union metalworkers, electricians, miners and pipefitters, and 36 people in administrative, environmental safety and health and property management positions.

The contractor, a partnership of two large engineering companies, is trying to place workers in divisions outside the state, spokesman Jason Bohne said.

"The people getting laid off are highly educated and highly skilled," Bohne said. "There is market demand for people willing to relocate. But some of these people are tied to Nevada and want to live in Nevada."

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a Nevada legislative committee last week that at least 500 people would be removed form the program in the next few months.

Most will be from Nevada, while others are employed in New Mexico by Sandia National Laboratories, another contractor.

Sproat said the Yucca program staffs about 2,400 full-time positions.

He said work toward a nuclear waste repository license would continue but at a reduced level of activity and under new schedules that have not yet been formed.

It was expected the estimated 22 percent budget cut would force more delays in the program already more than a decade behind schedule.

Gary Hollis, a Nye County commissioner who is supportive of the project, said he welcomed Reid's effort but wondered if Reid thought ahead when he took the axe to Yucca.

"I really hope that Senator Reid thought about this when he cut the funding, maybe he didn't," Hollis said. "I knew if we cut the program by $100 million that we wouldn't be able to keep the place open and work on the license at the same time."

Reid has suggested that Yucca workers, who include skilled technicians and engineers, could find new homes in the growing renewable energy field in Nevada.

Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, said his member companies are hiring.

"Everyone knows two or three companies advertising for skilled positions as well as lower skilled construction and trade jobs," Gawell said. "In Nevada right now you have a great resource and a lot of state support and a lot of federal support."

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

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 24, 2008

Criticism falls on DOE plan for rail line

Land sculpture is one concern

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Rural Lincoln County residents jokingly call it the "glow train" because, if built, it would haul highly radioactive waste to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But the Department of Energy's plans for a 319-mile rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain did not get glowing reviews at Wednesday's meeting of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects.

Katie Stone Sonnenborn, who represented the New York-based Dia Art Foundation, said that building and operating a nuclear waste rail line through remote Garden Valley would ruin a $30 million land sculpture project, spanning more than three decades, dubbed "City" by world-renowned artist Michael Heizer.

Heizer started his project in Lincoln County's Garden Valley in 1969, hoping the mile-long, 1,000-foot-wide work of soil, rock and concrete forever would keep its isolated ambience in a setting that conveys a sense of timelessness.

The Department of Energy's plans to build a rail line within a mile of Heizer's work "will have a devastating impact on 'City,'" Sonnenborn told the commission, led by former Sen. Richard Bryan.

The DOE's initial plans called for starting rail construction in 2009 with the line operating in 2014. Budget cuts have pushed the dates to 2011 and 2016, respectively.

Despite uncertainty that looms over the Yucca Mountain Project, Sonnenborn remains concerned that a rail line through the area will ruin the integrity of "City," which, she said, is nearing completion and is still off-limits to the public. With viewing points from the landscape of undisturbed mountains and high desert, the sculpture "is in complete harmony with its site," she said.

"For this reason, the project is internationally acclaimed even in its unfinished state," Sonnenborn said.

Heizer's neighbor, Gracian Uhalde, a sheep and cattle rancher whose heritage dates to his grandfather's arrival in Lincoln County in the 1880s, said he, too, is leery of DOE's plans for disposing nuclear waste and of the effect the rail line would have on grazing his sheep.

"We lasted through atomic testing and saw fallout come down like snow when I was 10 years old," Uhalde said, referring to the early days of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. "So when the government says, 'We're here to help,' it leaves a question mark in your mind."

--Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 24, 2008

Senators try to revive Yucca
By Lisa Mascaro

WASHINGTON — Six Republican senators today announced their support for a new Yucca Mountain bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed as a “desperate attempt” to bring the repository back to life.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe’s bill allows licensing of Yucca Mountain essentially as an interim dump site, a designation that would sidestep requirements for the permanent repository to protect Nevadans for 1 million years from potentially cancer-causing radiation exposure.

The bill would allow storage of waste at Yucca for up to 300 years before radiation standards for the next 1 million years need to be established. The standards determine the level of toxins that residents and others near the site can be exposed to without having a high risk of contracting cancer.

Inhofe issued a statement saying he was concerned that “continuing delays in opening our nation’s repository at Yucca Mountain will hinder the resurgence of nuclear energy in the U.S.”

Reid and Sen. John Ensign issued a joint statement calling it an “irresponsible bill.” Ensign was not consulted about the bill by his Republican colleagues. The bill is also supported by Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican whip, and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, an Ensign ally.

The bill’s introduction comes as Yucca Mountain re-entered the national debate as the Democratic presidential candidates campaigned in the run-up to the Nevada caucus. All Democratic candidates oppose the nuclear repository.

The new phased approach would allow the repository to be updated with changes in science and technology, Repubilcan committee staff said. “There are organizations that expect we will cure cancer in 50 to 100 years,” a Republican aide said.

The bill would also set in stone the June 30, 2008 deadline the Energy department set for submitting the project’s license application.

But vast funding cuts engineered last year by Reid now threaten the department’s ability to meet that deadline. Missing the milestone would be a significant below to the long-delayed project. The department’s project director said earlier this month he may not be able to complete work by then.

In many ways, the bill attempts to move the goal posts as the Energy department struggles to get the project on track this year, before the pro-nuclear Bush administration leaves office.

Joseph Egan, Nevada’s lead attorney fighting the dump, said, “It would be much, much easier to license something for 300 years than for 1 million years.”

He called the bill a “last gasp” for a dying project and doubted the legislation would advance in this Congress: “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.” Among the reasons: Reid runs the Senate.

Asked about the new legislation later Thursday, Reid said, “It’s just for show.” He said its chances of passing are “about the same as you’re going to drop dead in a few minutes.” Given that I’m still breathing while putting this online….

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Las Vegas SUN
January 24, 2008

Top Dems all sign pledges on clean energy

By Phoebe Sweet

Nevada will benefit from the election of one of the three leading Democratic candidates for president because of their commitment to renewable energy, environmentalists say.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards have signed pledges drafted by the nonprofit national environmental group Environment America to make clean energy a priority in the White House.

None of the Republican presidential candidates has signed the pledge.

“We’ve lost a lot of time over the last eight years with an administration that’s focus is on old technology,” said Charles Benjamin, Nevada executive director of Western Resource Advocates, referring to President Bush’s support of the oil, coal and nuclear industries. “Here in Nevada we could uniquely benefit from a new energy path.”

Environmentalists and renewable energy developers have said Nevada would experience an economic boom should renewable energy get the full support of Congress and the White House, because the state is rich in solar and geothermal resources.

And although the coal industry has promoted new coal-burning power plants as a way to achieve energy independence, Benjamin said the United States imports $3 billion worth of coal each year. Nevada also imports millions of tons of coal each year from Wyoming and Montana.

But Steve Rypka, owner of the green living consulting business Green Dream Enterprises, said the next president must support clean energy not because it is an economic opportunity but because of a global crisis.

“Our next president must commit to a clean energy future as if our future depended on it because it does,” Rypka said.

Released with the pledges was a report calling on the next president to take many of the steps the state’s environmental community has been demanding for years including increased reliance on renewable energy and efficiency programs instead of coal or nuclear energy, stricter building and appliance efficiency standards and reduced use of fossil fuels during the first 100 days of the new administration.

Environment America says the next president must make solar power a cornerstone of America’s energy supply, invest in clean energy research and development, impose a moratorium on new coal and nuclear plants, fight global warming and create partnerships with local governments.

Environment America works on coal, nuclear and renewable energy issues in Nevada and nationally.

“The next president will face an unprecedented energy crisis and boundless clean energy opportunities,” said Melisa Stodieck, a spokeswoman for Environment America. She said the report, “Putting America on the Path to Clean Energy,” “lays out what putting that vision and commitment to work looks like within the first 100 days in office.”

--The full report and pledge are available at www.environmentamerica.org.

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USA Today
January 24, 2008

Senators push Yucca storage of nuke waste

WASHINGTON — Six Republican senators plan to introduce legislation Thursday to try to re-energize efforts to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain that would handle the spent nuclear fuel building up at atomic reactors in dozens of states.

The bill would limit the requirement to make the facility in Nevada safe for 300 years rather than 1 million years to take advantage of future technological breakthroughs. After that 300 years, Yucca Mountain would need another license to make it safe for the remaining 1 million years.

Because the Yucca Mountain repository is decades behind schedule, nuclear waste has been piling up at commercial power plants in 39 states and slowing efforts to build more nuclear facilities, said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

"Without a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, our country will become more dependent on foreign sources of energy and pollute our environment even more," he said. "Yucca Mountain is the most studied piece of earth on this planet, but sadly, opposition is based on politics, not on sound science."

Nevada lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have tried to block Yucca Mountain from being built, even though Congress voted in 2002 to move ahead on the project. Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both told Nevada voters this month they would block Yucca Mountain if elected.

A federal appeals court ruled in 2004 that the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation safety standard for Yucca Mountain must extend beyond 10,000 years to 1 million years. The agency has yet to rewrite the rule, which has held up Yucca Mountain's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The site, originally scheduled to open in 1996, will not begin operations until at least 2016. Many nuclear power plants have started storing their used nuclear fuel on site in dry casks until Yucca Mountain or another permanent storage facility can be opened.

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Tacoma News Tribune
January 24, 2008

Save the nuclear option against global warming

Every time a presidential candidate stumps through Nevada, it seems, this state gets further from a solution for Hanford’s radioactive waste.

And the United States gets further from the nuclear power option, which may well prove a critical alternative to carbon-spewing fossil fuels.

As the three leading Democratic contenders campaigned in Nevada last week, they paid the usual homage to those who bitterly oppose the effort to create a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain.

Hillary Clinton vowed to “end for good” the attempt to create the repository. Likewise Barack Obama: “I will end Yucca Mountain.”

John Edwards not only swore to stop the Yucca mountain, he promised to prevent the construction of any new nuclear power plants anywhere in the United States.

Neither Obama nor Clinton are, like Edwards, ruling out any expansion of nuclear power. But killing the Yucca Mountain project is likely to strangle nuclear power indirectly, by eliminating any place to bury the spent fuel rods from existing or potential reactors.

The stakes for Washingtonians are particularly high. Hanford’s plutonium-production days left it with an immense quantity of intensely radioactive byproducts. That hot stuff is designated for Yucca Mountain. If the repository project is stopped, the Hanford waste stays in Washington – not far from the banks of the Columbia River.

There’s a reason Congress settled on Yucca Mountain as a repository site 20 years ago: It was drier than the alternatives and was well-removed from population centers. The chief argument against it is that scientists can’t prove with absolute certainty that the repository wouldn’t ever spring some kind of leak.

But compare that remote possibility with the immediate reality of global warming. And let’s be blunt: People who are serious about global warming better be serious about keeping the nuclear option alive.

All forms of power generation create problems. Hydroelectric dams drown valleys. Wind turbines ruin the view. The manufacture of solar panels generates toxic waste.

Those are trivial issues compared to the massive emission of carbon diox ide from coal plants. But relatively clean, renewable power sources aren’t going to come close to meeting America’s power demands anytime soon.

In the real world, the United States (and China, India, etc.) will long depend on burning either fossil fuels.

Or uranium. One nuclear plant can replace two 500-megawatt coal plants.

Compare the impacts: The nuke produces several tons of radioactive waste a year that need burial. The pair of coal-burners dump upwards of 7 million tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere.

Until cleaner technologies can take over, anyone who categorically opposes nuclear power and the only feasible nuclear repository – and still claims to be alarmed about global warming – just isn’t connecting the dots.

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Oak Ridger
January 24, 2008

County seeks bigger slice of DOE pie

By: Leean Tupper
leean.tupper@oakridger.com

Anderson County Commission has approved its annual resolution pertaining to the Department of Energy’s annual payment in lieu of taxes — the total of which amounts to an estimated $498,000 for tax year 2007.

Commissioners approved the resolution during their regular quarterly day meeting Tuesday morning, but not without expressing their displeasure at the dollar figure.

“Yucca Mountain (in Nevada), receives $11.2 million, and we’re sitting here getting $498,000,” said Commissioner Tracy Wandell of Claxton.

“They don’t have waste. We have nuclear waste in Anderson County,” he said.

Commissioner Jerry Creasey, of Oak Ridge, said discussions regarding the differences in what the Department of Energy provides communities housing its facilities and waste are nothing new.

Nor are the discussions related to the need for additional money in Anderson County, Roane County and Oak Ridge.

“As long as I can remember, going back 20 years, we’ve been talking about increases,” said Creasey, who nevertheless encouraged his fellow commissioners to keep up the fight.

“It goes back to our representation,” said Commissioner Mike Cox.

“They don’t represent us like they should,” he said in reference to Anderson County’s federal legislators.

“(U.S. Sen. Lamar) Alexander’s up for election this year,” Cox said. “We need to get him here and tell him what we want.”

For years, Anderson County officials, along with Oak Ridge and Roane County officials, have made numerous requests to the energy department and federal government to consider increasing DOE’s local PILT payments in lieu of paying property taxes to the counties and city.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation encompasses thousands of acres in Anderson and Roane counties, as well as Oak Ridge.

The reservation is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly known as the K-25 Site) and the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons plant that makes components for every warhead in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal and is the nation’s primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium.

In other matters on Tuesday, the Anderson County Commission:

• Appointed Mike Cox to serve as its representative on the Channel 95 board of directors. Channel 95 is a new cable-based government/education TV channel that will be shared by Anderson County government, Clinton city government and Anderson County schools. Planning for the new venture is currently under way.

• Approved a resolution asking the federal government for $275,000 in federal appropriations from the Environmental Protection Agency. If approved, the money would be used to extend water lines to approximately 150 households along Andersonville’s Park Road to the Anderson County Park area.

• Was reminded of its joint work session with members of the Anderson County Board of Education. The work session will be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the school board’s fifth floor meeting room at the Robert Jolley County Administration Building, adjacent to the Courthouse in Clinton.

• Approved a budget request to spend $22,923 to pay the county Election Commission’s legal fees associated with defending itself in election lawsuits filed by David Stuart and Joseph Lee in 2006.

Leean Tupper can be contacted at (865) 220-5501.

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The Tennessean
January 24, 2008

TVA will aim for nuclear unit, conservation

Goal is to cut its purchases of costly outside power

By Anne Paine

TVA's next rate hike for electricity will probably be a 6 percent-9 percent jump in April for projects that include a new nuclear power unit and energy efficiency, agency President and CEO Tom Kilgore said.

Kilgore also told The Tennessean editorial board that he supports reprocessing of nuclear waste to reduce it and create more fuel, but believes a long-disputed disposal facility proposed for Nevada's Yucca Mountain is necessary.

"Nuclear waste is a long-lasting problem, and we still need something to dispose of that permanently," he said.

For now, TVA has plenty of space to store its nuclear waste on-site, he said.

Reprocessing is a controversial practice of separating uranium and plutonium for reuse from other materials in the radioactive waste from nuclear fuel.

While France is one of the countries that is reprocessing, it brings with it a new set of costs and problems and still leaves lots of radioactive waste, critics say.

Kilgore said that a new nuclear unit and getting residents and businesses to reduce energy use would cut the amount of costly outside power now required.

About $1 billion of electricity ? 12.4 percent of its power ? was bought during the 12 months ending last September.

"We have to buy way too much power," Kilgore said Wednesday. "We're trying to close the gap."

Drought was costly

About $230 million of the cost resulted from the drought. Low water levels reduced power from the agency's dams. Production had to be stopped temporarily, too, at a nuclear unit. Nuclear and coal plants both rely on water for cooling.

About 10 percent of TVA's electricity is from hydroelectric, 30 percent nu clear, 60 percent coal and a percentage or two from natural gas plants. Less than 1 percent comes from solar and other green technologies.

The agency intends to increase its power output by completing a nuclear unit at Watts Bar, estimated to cost $2.5 billion and take five years. About $22 million is set aside for energy efficiency and conservation so far, but the amount could go well over $100 million, he said.

"We want to be leaders on this," he said.

The "listening session" the TVA board holds to hear from the public is being moved to the beginning of the meeting in an effort to get comment before votes are taken, he said.

It is unlikely that the public would get the materials that the board members would have or be voting on later in the meeting, he said. He added that this would be looked into further.

--Contact Anne Paine at 259-8071 or apaine@tennessean.com.

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Detroit News
January 24, 2008

Editorial

Candidates waffle on nuclear energy issue

Proper storage is key to expanding power source

The major candidates for president are missing an opportunity to promote nuclear energy, a sure way to meet a growing U.S. demand for power with minimal environmental impact.

Candidates campaigning this month in Nevada waffled or opposed burying radioactive waste under Yucca Mountain, part of a remote stretch of desert 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yucca and nuclear energy are keys to a comprehensive national energy strategy, and opposition to using the mountain is misplaced. Nuclear plants are one of the best ways to generate more electrical power without significantly increasing greenhouse gases. In turn, Yucca is the best place to store spent nuclear fuel -- a determination made after 20 years of scientific study.

About 45,000 tons of spent fuel is stored at more than 100 sites around the country -- including a number in Michigan. More than 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of one of these sites. The current storage is safe but considered temporary. And there are good reasons to transport the cooled-down nuclear materials to a permanent site at Yucca.

For one thing, the mountain is remote and relatively dry, minimizing the risk of contaminating ground water. The nearest permanent home to the mountain is 14 miles out in the desert. And since Sept. 11, Yucca is especially desirable in terms of national security.

The bulk of radioactive waste would be buried deep underground. And having one major repository reduces security risks. Nuclear power plants are already a major part of the power grid. In 2006, they generated about 25 percent of the electricity in Michigan and about 20 percent nationally.

On the record, transporting the accumulated waste to Nevada isn't particularly risky. Of 300 million annual shipments of hazardous materials in the United States, about 3 million (1 percent) are radioactive, according the U.S. Department of Energy. The shipments to Yucca will add an estimated 175 more hazardous-material trips to the 300 million -- barely a speck.

Since the 1960s, some 2,700 shipments of nuclear fuel have traveled more than 1.6 million miles without harmful release of radioactive material, the agency said. The fuel is neither explosive nor flammable and is transported in specially designed cases.

But you won't hear such details from many of the presidential hopefuls. While campaigning in Nevada, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards opposed using Yucca Mountain but none of the three detailed an alternative plan. On the GOP side, most candidates straddle the Yucca fence with the exception of John McCain, report Nevada newspapers that follow Yucca pronouncements closely.

McCain has it right. Nuclear energy is an integral part of the energy mix. Securing the spent fuel in a single secure location would take care of the current storage problem and allow the nuclear industry to grow to meet future energy needs.

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MetroWest Daily News
January 24, 2008

Nuclear Renaissance: Plymouth CEO believes nuclear power will make a comeback

By A.J. Bauer
GateHouse News Service

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -

Talk of biodiesel, ethanol, wind and solar power have largely dominated discussion of alternative energies over the last few years. But William Nevelos, CEO of Bartlett Holdings in Plymouth, believes we are on the brink of a nuclear renaissance.

The 58-year-old Lakeville resident has served as chief executive officer of Bartlett since 2004, when founder Bruce Bartlett retired and recapitalized the company. Since then, Bartlett has diversified its holdings, expanding from its original focus on radiation protection and other nuclear services to providing services for coal-burning power plants as well.

Bartlett employs about 4,200 during peak seasons in the spring and fall, and services some of the nation’s largest nuclear power plant operators. Despite his company’s diversification, Nevelos said it is still heavily invested in nuclear power – an investment he expects to yield large in the years to come.

Why do you think nuclear energy has played such a limited role in the debate over alternative energies?

Well, I think the tide has certainly changed. I think if you go back approximately five years ago, you probably have a population approval rating of about 35 to 45 percent, and the recent poll that the (Nuclear Energy Institute) just published shows that the nuclear acceptance by most of the population is around 65 to 70 percent.

And I think there’s so much concern about the greenhouse gas effect people are now starting to see that it is the most favorable of anything that’s out there. It’s not realistic, we just don’t have the technology now for solar, geothermal (and) the hydro-capacity in the United States is pretty much at its peak as far as what can be done. We’re experiencing a lot of drought, so even that is something we haven’t been able to really tap to the point where we were 20 years ago.

What do you think caused the stigma around nuclear power, and why do you think that stigma is decreasing?

I think that a lot of it has to do with education. I think a lot of people still equate nuclear power to nuclear explosion, nuclear warheads. I think a lot of people view the power plant as a means for manufacturing of nuclear weapons.

NEI has done a remarkable job in educating the public. Also, it’s been 25-plus years since Three Mile Island and I think there’s been a safety record that people have now come to appreciate in the United States. They look at France, they look at the Third World countries that are expanding Nuclear power is being embraced by them. I think people are starting to see the difference between nuclear power and nuclear proliferation.

What do you see as the best way to handle waste from a nuclear power plant?

I think that right now the solution that is in the works as far as Yucca Mountain – geological repositories are certainly the way to go I think the utilities have worked very diligently as far as proving to the public that the storage of the nuclear waste, the high-level waste, can be done safely.

I think the one issue that I would like to see as far as an effort along with Yucca Mountain, and I know they’re working on this, is the transportation associated with that – nice, safe transportation to get to Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is in a nice, remote area. There’s enough funding that 1,000 years from now we’re not going to have to worry about people stumbling on a Love Canal, or whatever. I think we’ve learned our lessons as a society, not with nuclear per se, but with chemical wastes and other waste, and we’re more environmentally conscious.

What do you see as the future of nuclear power in the United States?

I would like to see in the next 25 years us approaching the same capacity that is dependent on nuclear energy as France, which would be around 75 to 80 percent The new (federal) energy act provided first of their kind engineering grants that are going to see additional monies put their way so they can develop new power plants.

I think they’re going to do it more efficiently so it’s going to be more economical as far as the construction. More modular design, where most of the work is going to be off site and it’s going to be brought to the site so we’re going to have per megawatt lowering of the actual cost. All of those things will put us at that 85 percent. I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime – but you might.

Where do you see Bartlett in the future?

I think we’re positioned very well now for the nuclear renaissance. I think we’re positioned well for the retrofits associated with the coal-fired plants. There’s going to be a long-term construction phase as far as getting us up above 50 percent as far as nuclear goes, and the coal retrofits – in order for us to get more environmentally conscious in the United States – are big So both nuclear and coal, and the other thing that I like is we’ve concentrated on specialty companies.

--A.J. Bauer may be reached at ajbauer@ledger.com.

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Senator Harry Reid
January 22, 2008

Reid Highlights Nevada Priorities For 2008

Senate Work Begins by Addressing Nevada's Economic Challenges

Washington, DC— This week, Nevada Senator Harry Reid will be talking about his legislative priorities to help address the challenges facing Nevada, starting with the economy.

“The economy is facing some serious challenges and Nevadans are feeling the pinch. I will continue to leverage my position as the Senate Majority Leader to strengthen our state’s economy and make Nevada an even better place to live and raise a family,” said Reid. “During the new session I will work to help strengthen our economy, ensure that the budget addresses Nevada’s needs, ensure tax fairness for those living in the Silver State, spur Nevada’s renewable energy industry, create jobs, and provide tax relief for college tuition. I look forward to working with the president and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to implement solutions that revive our economy.” Below are just some of the solutions Reid will push to strengthen the economy.

Countering an Economic Slowdown

Reid will work with President Bush and members of Congress in both parties to develop legislation to strengthen the economy, largely by putting money into the hands of the middle class and those in greatest need.

Passing a Pro-Nevada Budget

Reid will work for a fiscally responsible budget that addresses Nevada’s needs and rejects anti-Nevada proposals, such as those relating to Yucca Mountain and the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act.

Tax Fairness for Nevadans

Reid will continue to push for a permanent extension of the deduction for state and local sales taxes. This deduction expired on December 31, 2007. This is a matter of fairness for taxpayers in states, like Nevada, that do not have a state income tax.

Investments in Nevada Clean Energy Industry

Reid will continue to push for tax incentives to spur Nevada’s growing renewable energy industry. Many of these incentives expire on December 31, 2008.

Yucca Mountain Layoffs

As Nevada wins the fight against Yucca Mountain, Reid will work on solutions to put those who have lost their jobs at the proposed dump back to work by making Nevada the leader in renewable energy, which will also strengthen Nevada’s rural communities.

Tax Relief for College Tuition

Reid will continue to push for the extension of the deduction for college tuition. This $4,000 deduction ($2,000 for couples with incomes between $130,000 and $160,000) expired on December 31, 2007.

Fully Fund the Payment-In-Lieu-of-Taxes Program

This program provides critical funds to western counties for police, teachers, road construction and other essential services. Reid is committed to seeing this program fully funded.

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KTNV
January 23, 2008

Officials Will Hear Yucca Mtn. Concerns

Residents who could be affected by the Yucca Mountain project will get their turn to speak about the plans.

Government officials will hear arguments from people who live near the railroad through Caliente.

The tracks would be used to deliver waste to the proposed nuclear dump site.

If you have a concern, head to the Clark County Government Center Wednesday from 11 AM to 1 PM.

The center is located on 500 South Grand Central Parkway.

Keep it tuned to Channel 13 Action News for the latest on this debate.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 23, 2008

Hating Yucca is fine here but what happens when you leave?

By Jon Ralston

The Democratic candidates all did their Yucca pandering while they were courting votes here last week. But now that they are campaigning in South Carolina, which has nuclear waste, the dynamic is different. And the South Carolina media sees it and pummeled Hillary Clinton this week for saying Yucca Mountain is dead. The interesting aspect of this editorial is that Barack Obama, who has tried to keep with Clinton, pander for pander, is not mentioned:

http://www.goupstate.com/article/20080122/NEWS/801220301/1022/OPINION01

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Nuclear Engineering
January 23, 2008

Lights go out for cash-strapped Yucca

The proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain is currently sitting in darkness on a ‘standby’ position after financial cuts resulted in the loss of 63 Bechtel SAIC contractors.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) is now running the site on a skeleton staff after its funds were cut by $108 million for this financial year by the US government.

The DoE has indicated it will not now be able to meet the target of 30 June for submitting a repository application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), although it hopes to make the application later in the year.

A spokesman for the project said: “The administration requested $495 million for the current financial year but was given $386.5 million, which is a difference of $108 million. That’s going to translate into quite a number of lay-offs, which have already started.

“The director of the programme has indicated that we are not sure we will make the 30 June deadline for submitting the application to the NRC. But we hope to submit it some time this year.

“This is a money issue right now and we are dealing with it and going through the impacts.”

He continued: “One of the impacts is that the site is in a standby situation. We are not running the tours and have had to lay off 63 people at the site. The contractor will no longer be at the site. DoE will run it with a significantly reduced workforce.

“Yucca is not completely closed, from time to time people will go into the tunnel but right now the electricity is off in the tunnel; there are no lights and the site is fenced off.”

If the Yucca application is delayed further it could call the whole repository into question, because any incoming democrat president would be likely to oppose the repository.

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Planetsave
January 23, 2008

Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Case Podcast, Part One

by Max Lindberg

I’ve been going on for some time now about the nuclear industry, the possibility of more nuclear power stations going online, and especially what to do with radioactive waste that’s been piling up for 50 years.

The answer to the waste situation was supposed to have been Yucca Mountain, a remote natural structure some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since it’s inception nearly 25 years ago, Nevadans have fought creation of a long-term storage facility in their back yard.

I wanted to know more about Nevada’s opposition to the Yucca Mountain project, so I picked up the phone and talked with Robert Loux, Executive Director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects in Nevada. He’s been going head-to-head with the DOE and other agencies for a long time, and has some interesting things to say about the project and the DOE.

As you know, Department of Energy officials have announced layoffs at the unfinished facility, and it appears Yucca Mountain may not fulfill it’s promise as a high-level nuclear waste repository. That told me Nevada’s been pretty successful in its fight against the government, and I felt it was time to learn more.

The interview was long, and has been separated into three segments, each covering a specific area of Nevada’s concerns about the project.

In the 1st, Loux explains his office and it’s responsibilities, then tells why the state is so critical of the DOE and it’s practices.

The 2nd interview concerns the regulatory process, and he talks about the mountain’s unsuitability due to earthquake faults, the threat of young volcanoes, and that water and air move freely through the structure.

In the 3rd segment, Loux addresses transportation issues connected with Yucca Mountain and why, at this point, there is no hope of getting large amounts of spent fuel to the facility in the next ten years, if ever.

A 4th segment is yet to be announced. I have calls in to the Department of Energy, and to Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), author of a bill awaiting action that would put a dagger through the heart of Yucca Mountain and make nuclear facilities responsible for their own waste products.

So we start with Mr. Loux introducing himself and the responsibilities of his agency.

http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/21/yucca-mountain-the-nevada-case-part-1/

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Planetsave
January 23, 2008

Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Case Podcast, Part Two

http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/22/yucca-mountain-the-nevada-case-podcast-part-two/

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Planetsave
January 23, 2008

Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Case Podcast, Part Three

http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/23/yucca-mountain-the-nevada-case-podcast-part-three/#more-2083

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Patriot Ledger
January 23, 2008

South Shore Insider:

Nuclear Renaissance

Plymouth CEO believes nuclear power will make a comeback

By A.J. Bauer
The Patriot Ledger

PLYMOUTH - Talk of biodiesel, ethanol, wind and solar power have largely dominated discussion of alternative energies over the last few years. But William Nevelos, CEO of Bartlett Holdings in Plymouth, believes we are on the brink of a nuclear renaissance.

Bartlett employs about 4,200 during peak seasons in the spring and fall, and services some of the nation’s largest nuclear power plant operators. Despite his company’s diversification, Nevelos said it is still heavily invested in nuclear power - an investment he expects to yield large in the years to come.

Why do you think nuclear energy has played such a limited role in the debate over alternative energies?

What do you think caused the stigma around nuclear power, and why do you think that stigma is decreasing?

NEI has done a remarkable job in educating the public. Also, it’s been 25-plus years since Three Mile Island and I think there’s been a safety record that people have now come to appreciate in the United States. They look at France, they look at the Third World countries that are expanding ... Nuclear power is being embraced by them. I think people are starting to see the difference between nuclear power and nuclear proliferation.

What do you see as the best way to handle waste from a nuclear power plant?

I think that right now the solution that is in the works as far as Yucca Mountain - geological repositories are certainly the way to go ... I think the utilities have worked very diligently as far as proving to the public that the storage of the nuclear waste, the high-level waste, can be done safely.

I think the one issue that I would like to see as far as an effort along with Yucca Mountain, and I know they’re working on this, is the transportation associated with that - nice, safe transportation to get to Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is in a nice, remote area. There’s enough funding that 1,000 years from now we’re not going to have to worry about people stumbling on a Love Canal, or whatever. I think we’ve learned our lessons as a society, not with nuclear per se, but with chemical wastes and other waste, and we’re more environmentally conscious.

What do you see as the future of nuclear power in the United States?

I would like to see in the next 25 years us approaching the same capacity that is dependent on nuclear energy as France, which would be around 75 to 80 percent ... The new (federal) energy act provided first of their kind engineering grants that are going to see additional monies put their way so they can develop new power plants.

I think they’re going to do it more efficiently ... so it’s going to be more economical as far as the construction. More modular design, where most of the work is going to be off site and it’s going to be brought to the site so we’re going to have per megawatt lowering of the actual cost. All of those things will put us at that 85 percent. I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime - but you might.

Where do you see Bartlett in the future?

I think we’re positioned very well now for the nuclear renaissance. I think we’re positioned well for the retrofits associated with the coal-fired plants. There’s going to be a long-term construction phase as far as getting us up above 50 percent as far as nuclear goes, and the coal retrofits - in order for us to get more environmentally conscious in the United States - are big ... So both nuclear and coal, and the other thing that I like is we’ve concentrated on specialty companies.

--A.J. Bauer may be reached at ajbauer@ledger.com .

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New York Times
January 23, 2008

America Needs France’s Atomic Anne

By Roger Cohen

It’s not often that I find myself recommending a French state-owned industry as the answer to major U.S. problems, but I guess there’s an exception to every rule.

In this case the exception is the French nuclear energy company Areva, which provides about 80 percent of the country’s electricity from 58 nuclear power plants, is building a new generation of reactor that will come on line at Flamanville in 2012, and is exporting its expertise to countries from China to the United Arab Emirates.

Contrast that with the United States, where just 20 percent of electricity comes from nuclear plants, no commercial reactor has come on line since 1996, no new reactor has been ordered for decades, and debate about nuclear power remains paralyzing despite its clean-air electricity generation in the age of global warming.

Areva is headed by Anne Lauvergeon, a brilliant product of France’s top schools. She’s earned the sobriquet “Atomic Anne,” a stylish “Vive les Nukes” saleswoman. The United States needs her equivalent to cut through its nuclear power hang-ups.

Those hesitations have been evident in this election year. Among Democrats, Barack Obama has shown most willingness (albeit guarded) to back nuclear power, with Hillary Clinton multiplying caveats and John Edwards opposed. Republican candidates are favorable, but the campaign suggests costly nuclear muddle will persist.

It’s time to look to the French. They’ve got their heads in the right place, with nuclear power enjoying a 70 percent approval rating. The Germans, by contrast, have gone silly-Green and are shunning nuclear power. The British, more smart-Green, are reviving their plants.

I know, that word “nuclear” still sends a frisson. Images multiply of Hiroshima and Chernobyl and the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 and waste in dangerous perpetuity, not to mention proliferation and dirty bombs.

But the lesson of the post-9/11 world is that we have to get over our fears, especially irrational ones.

Nuclear power has proved safe in both France and America — not one radiation-related death has occurred in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear power. It constitutes a vital alternative to the greenhouse-gas spewing coal-power plants that account for over 50 percent of U.S. electricity generation. Thousands of people die annually breathing the noxious particles of coal-fire installations.

Of course, wind and solar power should be developed, but even by mid-century they will satisfy only a fraction of U.S. energy needs, however much those needs are cut. Hundreds of square miles of eyesore wind farms barely produce the electricity you get from a nuclear plant on less than a square mile.

“Nuclear power is the most efficient energy source we have,” said Gwyneth Cravens, author of “Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Power.” “Uranium is energy-dense. If you got all your electricity from nuclear for your lifetime, your share of the waste would fit in a soda can.”

Cravens once feared this waste so much that she demonstrated against nuclear power plants, but she’s come around. Like Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who once lambasted nuclear power as “criminal” and now advocates its use, she’s been convinced by the evidence. That’s called growing up.

Greenpeace remains opposed to nuclear power and Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for the organization, told me building more plants in the United States would be expensive, wasteful and dangerous. “Why in God’s name would you want to build more targets for terrorists?” he asked.

Fair question, to which the answer is that jihadist terrorists should only dictate western energy policy to the degree that the United States and its allies try to cut dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Where Riccio has a point is that wild cost overruns on several nuclear power plants and on the planned Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada for radioactive waste, which will cost some $30 billion to open, have suggested there may be better ways to spend money on energy diversification and saving.

But again the French, with the cleanest air in the industrialized world, have an answer. Their standardized design, expedited approval process, and improving technology (evident in the third-generation Evolutionary Pressurized Reactor) offer streamlined routes to cost-saving. They have also drastically reduced waste by reprocessing most of it into fuel, a long-term answer to the disposal issue.

Has the United States taken note? Congressional incentives for new nuclear plants in the 2005 Energy Policy Act and plans for some two dozen new reactors suggest the political ground may be shifting.

For one possible plant, in Maryland, Areva has joined forces with Constellation Energy, a Baltimore utility. Lauvergeon has said she wants to “reinstate” the nuclear industry in the United States.

Vive Atomic Anne! Cooperation on a new generation of American nuclear plants would be a powerful signal of the transformed Franco-U.S. relationship under President Nicolas Sarkozy.

--Blog: www.iht.com/passages.

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Edie
January 22, 2008

Planned nuke dump to miss 2017 target

The target opening date for a controversial nuclear waste dump is "no longer realistic" following budget cuts, the official in charge of the project has admitted.

Edward "Ward" Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management at the US Department of Energy (DOE), said the Yucca Mountain facility, in Nevada, could not be opened in 2017 as planned.

Speaking before the Nevada State Legislature, Mr Sproat blamed a spending bill approved by Congress last month that slashed the programme's requested budget by £108m.

He warned that hundreds of jobs will be lost and it is unlikely the programme will submit its licence application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 30 as expected.

Mr Sproat said: "I cannot stand behind the June 30 2008 date as of right now until we evaluate what the budget impact is going to have on us.

"There are going to be significant layoffs, most of them from the state of Nevada."

He added: "Exactly how many people and who they are, we don't know yet."

Most of the budget shortfall will be taken out of funds for transportation, Mr Sproat said, meaning construction of a railway line to Yucca Mountain which was due to start in 2009 would also have to be suspended.

Earlier this month, the DOE ended a public consultation on environmental impact assessments for Yucca Mountain, which is situated about 100miles north west of Las Vegas.

Mr Sproat said thousands of comments had been received, and were now being examined by his staff.

Among them was the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Its economics campaigner Aja Binette told a hearing in Washington: "Unfortunately Yucca Mountain is a study in undermining democracy. It is not a solution to highly radioactive waste."

There has been widespread opposition to the project since the DOE first began studying the site in 1978 to determine whether it would be suitable for the USA's first long-term geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Kate Martin

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Fuel Cycle Week
January 22, 2008

Dumping on Nuclear

By: Andrea Jennetta and Nancy E. Roth

Why do respected reporters and editors so often use the word “dump” in mainstream news stories on any kind of radioactive waste, including spent fuel from civilian reactors? “Dump” appears in reports on the Yucca Mountain project, proposed interim storage sites and even low-level waste facilities in South Carolina, Utah and Washington. The word is endemic in the popular media. No one gives it a second thought. But does “dump” fairly characterize these sites? No.

Spent fuel and radioactive waste have some of the most extraordinarily exacting oversight of any regulated substance. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary the word “dump” means:

to let fall in or as if in a heap or mass

to get rid of unceremoniously or irresponsibly

a disorderly, slovenly, or objectionable place

After an eye-opening dialogue with a well-regarded environmental journalist who has frequently used “dump” to characterize the Yucca Mountain Project and other radioactive-waste disposal sites we gained the startling insight that reporters and editors see neutral words like “repository” or “facility” as euphemisms in reporting on nuclear. In their minds, “dump” is an accurate word for Yucca Mountain, and “repository” is a soft-sell word that the nuclear industry and its regulators use to dupe the public about the true nature of the facility.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary the word “repository” means:

a place, room, or container where something is deposited or stored : depository

Check out these two pictures of nuclear waste storage facilities. The first is the spent fuel storage facility at Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power plant. The second is the low-and intermediate-level waste containers stacked in the rock cavern of Sweden’s repository. Hardly a depiction of irresponsibility or disorder, is it? These images argue, perhaps better than the written word, why “repository” more accurately characterizes the meticulously engineered facilities in which nuclear waste is managed all over the world.

Not only is radioactive waste not dumped into these facilities, it is carefully placed so that it can be later retrieved. In fact, in the U.S., federal law requires that the material be retrievable—and that the Department of Energy monitor the facility for 100 years after it is closed. Radioactive waste cannot be “dumped” and yet be retrievable.

Our interlocutor did know about the law, it turned out, but has discounted it when writing about waste disposal. We wonder if most journalists who use the word “dump” do this. Or whether most journalists covering nuclear even know about the law.

By the way, this journalist has covered nuclear for well over a decade for a general readership publication—and is also in involved in teaching other journalists how to cover nuclear.

This leads us to ask: if journalists for publications and programs read or heard by the general public are truth-seekers and myth-busters, why then do they insist on using inaccurate and biased language? And make excuses about why they should continue to do so, as this journalist did, even when the error is pointed out and a reasonable, accurate term is available?

Could it be that the very people the public most needs to clarify and explain complex issues of energy policy have another agenda?

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Spartanburg Herald Journal
January 22, 2008

Editorials

Dumping on S.C.

Assuring Nevadans nuclear waste won't go there means it will stay here

Campaigning in Nevada, Sen. Hillary Clinton became the champion of preventing a nuclear waste repository from opening there. That also makes her the champion of storing dangerous plutonium in South Carolina, and voters here should hold her responsible for that policy.

The federal government has been sending its surplus plutonium to the Savannah River Site as it decommissions and cleans up its nuclear weapons facilities. Washington has identified two methods by which that material may eventually leave this state.

The first is by building a facility to reprocess the waste into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. That plan is behind its original schedule and faces opposition in Washington.

The other is for the plutonium to be permanently stored at the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, the only site properly located and designed for long-term storage of this hazardous material.

In Nevada, Clinton criticized other candidates for not being as firm in their opposition to the repository as she is. She promised Nevada voters: "When I am president, Yucca Mountain will be off the table forever."

So how will the plutonium leave South Carolina?

The Savannah River Site is not a suitable location for long-term plutonium storage. It is an environmentally sensitive site on a major river. The facility is not built for long-term storage of high-level nuclear material. Yucca Mountain meets both criteria.

Clinton proposes to scrap the nation's best solution for long-term nuclear waste storage. Instead, she would force the nation to continue to use temporary facilities, and she would force South Carolina to continue serving as the nation's makeshift nuclear waste dump.

And it's not just South Carolina at stake. Yucca Mountain would also receive high-level nuclear waste like spent fuel rods from commercial power plants. If it doesn't open, that material will continue to pile up at those power plants, where it isn't stored as properly as it would be at Yucca Mountain.

Why would Clinton tout such a policy? Is it because she values Nevadans more than South Carolinians?

No. It's because Nevadans have shown they care more about Yucca Mountain than South Carolinians care about getting the plutonium out of the state. Politicians campaigning in Nevada are asked about Yucca Mountain. They have to take a stand. And to gain votes in that state, they have to oppose the repository there.

If candidates were constantly asked about the plutonium here, they might take a more reasonable position on Yucca Mountain. They might acknowledge the entire nation needs a proper place to dispose of surplus plutonium and spent fuel rods and Yucca Mountain is the best option available.

But voters in the Palmetto State keep letting them off the hook. That should change now.

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Green Bay Press Gazette
January 22, 2008

Guest column: Pro-nuclear energy greenwash confounds lawmakers

By John LaForge
Guest commentary

The Assembly's Energy & Utilities Committee met last month, chaired by Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Ashwaubenon, to hear comments on Assembly Bill 346. The measure would repeal limits on new nuclear reactor construction in Wisconsin. Under current law, highly radioactive waste fuel, poisoned with plutonium and other long-lived isotopes, must have a place to be stored permanently before a new reactor can be built in Wisconsin. And the cost of a reactor needs to be competitive with alternatives. The committee is scheduled to vote on the bill today.

Now even after 50 years, scientists are still stumped by the earthquake faults that crisscross and the water that runs through Yucca Mountain, Nevada — the only spot the government is considering for such a dump. And the price of a gas electric plant is today about one-fifth that of a nuke.

Proponents used several interesting claims to give nuclear power a greenwash. Rep. James Soletski, D-Green Bay, said the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster was a "success of containment." In fact, over 10 million curies of radioactive noble gases, including 15-to-24 curies of radioactive iodine-131 and 43,000 curies of krypton-85 were vented from the "containment" building.

Official airborne release estimates are just guesses, because there weren't enough outside radiation monitors, half weren't working, and a large number of them went off-scale. Approximately 400,000 gallons of radioactive cooling water that had leaked from the reactor were secretly dumped into the Susquehanna River, a source of drinking water for nearby communities.

Montgomery asserted that "new reactor designs will be capable of reprocessing waste fuel rods and squeezing out 95 percent of the waste's energy." However, the U.S. government abandoned reprocessing of waste fuel because of technical dangers, the huge amounts of liquid high-level waste it produces and because of the bomb-building threat created by the extracted plutonium.

My statement to the committee focused on three recent studies that show: a) elevated leukemia incidence in young people living near U.S. reactors; b) a correlation between the strontium-90 found in baby teeth and the incidence of cancer among children living near U.S. reactors; and c) a dramatic rise in infant mortality following the opening — and the subsequent fall in infant mortality rates after the closing — of nuclear reactors in the United States.

Among the lawmakers who spoke last month, only Rep. Chuck Benedict, D-Beloit, talked turkey about nuclear power's dirty, dangerous and incalculably costly down side. "Wisconsin should invest in viable, cleaner renewable alternatives" to nuclear power, Benedict said. Conservation, efficiency, wind, solar, biomass and cogeneration, he said, are all preferable to "nuclear power's dangerousness and unreliability."

Not everyone has been conned by the greenwash.

--John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch of Luck, Wis., and edits its quarterly newsletter. Web site: nukewatch.com.

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Kankakee Daily Journal
January 22, 2008

Funding cuts may curtail nuclear waste recycling program

By Jon Krenek
jkrenek@daily-journal.com

An innovative proposal that could have brought the nation's first nuclear waste recycling plant to Morris may be in jeopardy.

Congressional funding cuts and criticisms levied against the plan by the National Academy of Sciences have hurt the plan to use nuclear waste to generate electricity.

Enough radioactive waste has accumulated at Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station since it opened in 1988 to cover an acre six inches deep. About 1,000 metric tons of spent uranium fuel rods currently are resting underneath 25 feet of water in a protective storage pool that will reach its capacity next year.

The dwindling storage capacity for such wastes is a mounting problem at nuclear power plants across the nation.

"Water is the best shielding that we have," said Bob Roher, a radiation protection technician at Braidwood. "It's getting to its potential, and we'll have to move to dry cask storage in 2009."

The U.S. Department of Energy has been exploring using such waste to generate electricity while burning off its most radioactive components at General Electric's operation in Morris.

Once a promising idea, the plan has taken a few steps backward since it was first introduced about a year ago.

Recent funding cuts and criticism from the National Academy of Sciences have bogged the proposal down even as the DOE nears completion of the first major study of the idea.

Brian Quirke, DOE spokesman, said local public hearings will be announced in the coming weeks to address whether to continue the program at all.

"People will be looking at the potential of siting in Morris, but what we're trying to do is make a decision on a public policy issue," Quirke said. "We are moving forward in a slightly different direction. The question is whether or not we should recycle spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors."

Taking hits

The program, known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is an initiative of President George Bush.

Recycling wastes and burning them to generate electricity in a specialized reactor would be a shift in federal policy for handling highly radioactive wastes. The current policy calls for permanent disposal beneath the Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That proposal remains snagged in political opposition from that state.

The proposed policy shift also met opposition in its public debut last year.

The DOE received about 14,000 public comments following public hearings held across the nation near 13 proposed sites, including Morris early last year. The National Academy of Sciences -- which advises Congress on scientific proposals -- recommended against a commercial-scale recycling facility, saying the required technology is too early in development.

Funding for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership also has taken a hit.

Congress granted the program $180 million this year, which is well below the $400 million the DOE had requested for the program. Quirke said the amount is enough to keep the program going, but at a much slower pace they originally envisioned.

Stepping back

The first public hearings regarding the Morris site drew 200 local residents, and the upcoming public hearing promises to draw similar attendance. Rural Morris resident April Gerstrung, who opposes siting a recycling program at the Morris location, is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward recent developments.

"I'm going to roll with the punches as best I can just like everyone else," she said. "I'm trying to stay as knowledgeable as possible about the whole thing."

Last October the agency agreed to keep all 13 potential sites under consideration when it nixed a summer 2008 deadline to select a final location for the $2 billion to $4 billion pilot project. Quirke said a new deadline set in 2008 will be to decide whether to pursue the program at all.

That hasn't necessarily ended the prospects for Morris.

GE received a $4.8 million federal grant last October to fund completion of a business plan to explore the viability of nuclear waste reprocessing as a commercial venture and conceptual design plans for the plant itself, according to the Energy Department. But if plans at Morris do eventually come closer to fruition, a new study on the environmental issues and safety would have to occur.

The upcoming public hearings will not address those issues.

"We will not be considering the specific environmental impacts at the specific sites," said Quirke, of the upcoming hearings. "If we decide to do it (locate at Morris), we will be going through a separate study."

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DOE
January 22, 2008

Senior DOE Official in Las Vegas to Highlight DOE Efforts to Advance Yucca Mountain Project

WASHINGTON, DC – This week, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Ward Sproat will travel to Las Vegas to address the Nevada State Legislature Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste on Tuesday and the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Winter Board Meeting on Wednesday. Director Sproat is expected to update the committee and the board on Yucca Mountain accomplishments in 2007 and program priorities for 2008.

WHO: Director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Ward Sproat

WHAT: Deliver remarks to the Nevada State Legislature Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
9:30AM PDT

WHERE: Grant Sawyer State Office Building
Room 4401
555 East Washington Avenue
Las Vegas, NV

*NOTE –To listen live over the Internet, visit the Nevada Legislature website.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 21, 2008

Nuclear Revival Rekindles Waste Concerns

The Associated Press

Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills.

The spent fuel, vitrified into blocks of black glass that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, is in "interim storage." Like nearly all the world's nuclear waste, it is still waiting for the long-term disposal solution that has eluded scientists and governments in the six decades since the atomic era began.

Industry officials hope renewed worldwide interest in nuclear energy will break a long, awkward silence surrounding nuclear waste. They want to revive momentum for scientific and political breakthroughs on waste that stalled after the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, which raised worldwide fears about radioactivity's risks to human and planetary health.

So far, though, recent talk of a nuclear renaissance has focused on the "front end," or reactor construction. Engineers are designing the next generation of reactors to be safer than today's _ and they're being billed as a solution to global warming. Nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide, blamed for heating the planet.

Few people have been talking about the "back end," industry-speak for the hundreds of thousands of tons of waste that nuclear plants produce each year, and the lucrative, secretive business of storing it away.

Waste "is the main problem with this so-called nuclear rebirth," said Mycle Schneider, an independent expert who co-authored a recent study for the European Parliament casting doubt on a global nuclear resurgence. He says government efforts to revive nuclear energy will stall without a "miracle" solution to waste disposal.

Workers at this waste treatment and storage site on France's Cherbourg peninsula, run by industry giant Areva, don't see a problem.

Though much of the technology here dates from the 1970s and 1980s, they point to a strong safety record and the 26,000 environmental tests conducted every year as evidence that the public has nothing to fear from their activity.

The tests routinely find crabs, cows and humans living nearby to be healthy. One longtime plant employee gestured toward her pregnant abdomen, holding her third child, as proof that there's nothing to worry about. Plant officials say strict security measures, tightened since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rule out terrorism risks.

Greenpeace questions state-run Areva's safety figures, and accuses the government of playing down accidents and soil and water contamination. A group called Meres en Colere, or Angry Mothers, was formed in the region after a 1997 study showed higher than usual local rates of child leukemia, a malady linked to radiation exposure.

Now the "pros" are on a new mission to dispel a generation of scares and suspicion, saying nuclear power is less dangerous to humans and the Earth than burning oil or coal. The "antis" say nuclear energy can never offer 100 percent protection from its radioactive ingredients.

The splitting of uranium atoms in a nuclear reactor creates the exceptional heat that drives turbines to provide electricity. The process also creates radioactive isotopes such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 that take about 30 years to lose half their radioactivity. Higher-level leftovers includes plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,000 years.

Direct exposure to such highly radioactive material, even for a short period, can be fatal. Indirect exposure, through seepage into groundwater, can lead to life-threatening illness for those living nearby and environmental damage.

For now, the best scientific solution for getting rid of the most lethal waste is to shove it deep underground.

Yet no country has built a deep geological repository. Governments meet protests each time one is proposed. The Yucca Mountain waste site in Nevada was commissioned in 1982 and is still awaiting a license.

Another option is recycling. Countries such as France, Russia and Japan reprocess much nuclear waste into new fuel. That dramatically reduces the volume: Forty years' worth of France's highly radioactive waste is stored under just three floor surfaces, each about the size of a basketball court, at Beaumont-Hague.

Recycling, though, produces plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons _ so the United States bans it, fearing proliferation.

And not all waste can be reprocessed. The deadliest bits _ such as fuel rod casings and other reactor parts as well as concentrated fuel residue containing plutonium and highly enriched uranium _ must be sealed and stored away.

That's what lurks 10 feet underground at this Normandy plant: More than 7,000 cylindrical steel canisters, each about the height of a parking meter, stacked and sealed upright in holes beneath the slick floor. Some contain compacted radioactive metal, the others hold spent fuel that has been vitrified into glass.

Among other ideas once floated for disposing of nuclear waste have been shooting it into space (deemed too risky because of the volatile rocket fuel) or injecting it in the ocean floor (stalled because testing its feasibility is too costly), or shipping all the world's waste to a collective nuclear dump.

The last idea proved too diplomatically delicate. But Greenpeace and Norwegian environmental group Bellona say European nations have for years been illegally shipping radioactive waste to Russia and leaving it there.

Current research in industry leader France _ which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its electricity, more than any other country _ is focusing on new chemical processes that would shrink nuclear waste and cool it faster.

It will be at least 2040, though, before these might be put to use, scientists estimate. Schneider says scientists are "creating work for themselves" by researching methods that may never be commercially feasible or do much to solve the long-term waste quandary.

The World Nuclear Association, an industry group, disagrees, citing increasing interest in waste research by governments. The managers at the Normandy plant say long-held taboos about the industry are fading.

"We have the best scientific solution for treating waste," deputy director Eric Blanc said, referring to the plant's vitrification process and network of cooling pools. "Others are coming all the time to study it."

Visitors to the plant must wear special uniforms and trek through a maze of security and radioactivity checkpoints.

The plant used to have Webcams and "open house" days for people from nearby communities, but both practices were stopped after Sept. 11. Now the Defense Ministry regularly monitors the plant, and vets all visitors.

Meanwhile, new reactor clients are lining up.

China signed a staggering $11.7 billion deal last month for two nuclear reactors from Areva. Areva later said the deal included a feasibility study for a waste treatment and recycling facility in China that would cost another $22 billion.

Areva already makes $2.2 billion in revenues a year on treating and recycling waste. The plant at Beaumont-Hague takes in 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year, from France, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. The foreign fuel by law must be returned to its owners once it has been reprocessed into a more stable form that _ through lack of alternatives _ is buried or held in storage.

The French fuel stays in Normandy indefinitely, while bulkier, lower-level nuclear waste is piling up in dumps worldwide.

Nuclear scientists' dream is a wasteless reactor, and some sketches for the next crop of reactors, the Generation IV, include those that recycle 100 percent of their refuse.

Both nuclear fans and foes agree, however, that it will take a few more human generations for that dream to come true.

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Oak Ridger
January 21, 2008

What different countries do with nuclear waste

By The Associated Press

Countries around the world are starting, expanding or reviving nuclear power programs. Here’s a look at how various nations handle the radioactive waste:

UNITED STATES: The country with the most nuclear reactors, more than 120 spread out over 39 states, has no central system for dealing with waste. Plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stalled for 25 years. For now waste is stored in dry casks and cooling pools at reactor sites. The U.S. government shuns waste reprocessing because of risks it could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. A push by the Bush administration for a new reprocessing method is likely to stall pending November elections.

FRANCE: France, more dependent on atomic energy than any country, recycles most of its nuclear fuel — and fuel from several other countries as well. French researchers are conducting experiments in an underground lab beneath Champagne country toward building a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, it “vitrifies” its deadliest waste, turning it into glass to make it more stable, and stores it in shallow underground canisters.

RUSSIA: In Russia, home of the world’s largest nuclear waste site, reprocessing is common. International environmental groups complain of poor safety records and oversight at reprocessing plants. Greenpeace has accused western European countries of secretly and illicitly shipping nuclear waste to Russia over several years.

FINLAND: Finland may become the first country to build a deep earth repository. The government has approved a long-term storage site, though it is not expected to be operational until after the country finishes building the world’s first “third-generation” reactor, expected in 2011.

TAIWAN: Taiwan, which has three plants and is building a fourth, sought to build long-term waste sites in North Korea and the Marshall Islands but was blocked by protests. Taiwan has stored 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste on a tiny island but protests from an aboriginal group are forcing it to move the waste to another site, as yet unchosen, by 2013.

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AP Google
January 20, 2008

Nuclear Revival Rekindles Waste Concerns

By Angela Charlton

BEAUMONT-HAGUE, France (AP) — Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills.

So far, though, recent talk of a nuclear renaissance has focused on the "front end," or reactor construction. Engineers are designing the next generation of reactors to be safer than today's — and they're being billed as a solution to global warming. Nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide, blamed for heating the planet.

Workers at this waste treatment and storage site on France's Cherbourg peninsula, run by industry giant Areva, don't see a problem.

For now, the best scientific solution for getting rid of the most lethal waste is to shove it deep underground.

Recycling, though, produces plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons — so the United States bans it, fearing proliferation.

And not all waste can be reprocessed. The deadliest bits — such as fuel rod casings and other reactor parts as well as concentrated fuel residue containing plutonium and highly enriched uranium — must be sealed and stored away.

Current research in industry leader France — which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its electricity, more than any other country — is focusing on new chemical processes that would shrink nuclear waste and cool it faster.

Visitors to the plant must wear special uniforms and trek through a maze of security and radioactivity checkpoints.

The plant used to have Webcams and "open house" days for people from nearby communities, but both practices were stopped after 9/11. Now the Defense Ministry regularly monitors the plant, and vets all visitors.

Meanwhile, new reactor clients are lining up.

Areva already makes $2.2 billion in revenues a year on treating and recycling waste. The plant at Beaumont-Hague takes in 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year, from France, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. The foreign fuel by law must be returned to its owners once it has been reprocessed into a more stable form that — through lack of alternatives — is buried or held in storage.

The French fuel stays in Normandy indefinitely, while bulkier, lower-level nuclear waste is piling up in dumps worldwide.

Nuclear scientists' dream is a wasteless reactor, and some sketches for the next crop of reactors, the Generation IV, include those that recycle 100 percent of their refuse.

Both nuclear fans and foes agree, however, that it will take a few more human generations for that dream to come true.

---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 20, 2008

SAY WHAT?

"When I am president, Yucca Mountain will be off the table forever. ... This is not just 'We're in Nevada, so we'll talk about an issue Nevadans care about. This is an American issue."

Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, stumping for Nevada votes in an appearance before the national press Wednesday. At the same briefing, Las Vegas-based transportation consultant Fred Dilger said that as spent waste moves through Las Vegas on its way to the repository, "All of the casinos on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard would be bathed in gamma radiation."

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Las Vegas SUN
January 20, 2008

How Clinton hit pay dirt

The keys to her Nevada victory: a huge wave of new voters

By J. Patrick Coolican, Michael Mishak

If you want to know how Sen. Hillary Clinton won a convincing victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucus, look back to a meeting Dec. 15 at William E. Orr Middle School in Las Vegas.

There, Robby Mook, Clinton’s state director, told 600 of the campaign’s most committed volunteers that he wanted to enlist many more supporters to caucus for the candidate -- more than twice what he asked for in August.

It was a startling move coming nearly a year into the Nevada campaign -- and just five weeks before the caucus. It also was a strategic risk because it would divert resources.

Mook’s colleagues in Clinton’s Iowa campaign paid no attention to his move. Turns out, they should have.

Clinton’s Iowa team would be blindsided three weeks later by a big turnout that favored Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. The Clinton team there hadn’t thought to consider Obama might draw out many voters who normally don’t participate in elections.

In Nevada, Mook looked at the landscape and found the following: Democrats, despite the predictions of naysayers, had taken a real interest in the presidential caucus. He feared that the campaign would fail if it limited itself to rounding up support only from voters with a history of participation.

So as he spoke to volunteers that cold December Saturday, Mook’s usual confidence was clearly shaken. Clinton needed to mine the electorate for voters the campaign originally thought would not participate.

It was a tall order. Campaigns have an easier time if they can work from lists of “likely voters.”

“We need to work hard now,” Mook told the group. “If the caucus were held today, we’d do OK. We would not be as successful as we want to be.”

The Sun was given access to the Clinton meeting, as well as to other internal discussions by the Clinton campaign, while also conducting background interviews with Obama staff, under the condition the paper not publish any of what it learned about strategy until after the caucus.

Mook said in an interview Saturday that his staff groaned at the suggestion of expanding the universe of voters, especially to such a radical new goal: Find 60,000 more. Some analysts estimated that was as much as the entire expected turnout statewide. (In August, the Clinton goal was 24,752 supporters.)

Now, not only was Mook pushing for an unheard-of total, he was also brutally honest about the profile of the average Clinton voter at the precinct captain meeting: Clinton supporters “are less likely to turn out,” he said. “They don’t understand the caucus.”

Reaching the new number required immense amounts of motivation, both of the voters and the volunteers trying to reach them.

The motivation came from the campaign and its best surrogates.

The endorsement of Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid was always seen as a good early “get,” but the campaign never expected him to go to the lengths he did.

At precinct captain meetings in August and December, Reid, not known as much of an orator, fired up the troops. His work and commitment made the sale authentic.

“I want you to feel the urgency of what’s going on here,” he said in December before closing with a “Field of Dreams” cliche: “If you do it, she will win.”

Mook played bad cop at the December meeting. He laid out what he expected from volunteers: hard-core supporters about whom the campaign would have no doubts, one volunteer for every 10 supporters, and a pledge to canvass the neighborhood twice a week, work the phones and host parties. No wavering supporters.

Five weeks later -- on Saturday -- Mook’s team hit the number, and the staff members were thanking Mook left and right for giving them the bigger goal, he said.

The Nevada caucus turned Iowa on its head. There, Clinton hit her original goal but was deluged by the Obama turnout. Here, the turnout was nearly double the 60,000 forecast -- standing at 115,800 late Saturday with 2 percent of precincts yet to report.

One precinct in a middle-class Las Vegas neighborhood showed the success of Clinton’s effort.

State Sen. Steven Horsford, a supporter of Obama, said the vote goal in his precinct was 29. Obama surpassed it easily with 45.

Clinton had 58.

Mook credited the Clinton precinct captains: “I give a lot of credit to our precinct captains. We came out of Iowa, and we never felt like we were losing them. People had a personal relationship with the campaign.”

Those precinct captains had to adjust midstream to an influx of voters no one expected. But because the campaign found them and nailed down their commitment, they were ready to take on the new goal.

Mook had set the much higher target because he was picking up signs of increased interest in the caucus.

The signs were clear to anyone watching: Democrats eager, even desperate to take back the White House, running a strong roster of candidates with talented field organizers. And December polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showed close races.

But not everyone was so savvy. The campaign of former Sen. John Edwards, for instance, was using a turnout model of 45,000 total voters, according to a campaign official.

Aside from heavy turnout, the Clinton camp made another smart strategic move that was aided and abetted by a strategic blunder: Although the Clinton team won’t admit it publicly, the campaign had been working Culinary Union members hard and organizing them for the past year. The effort recognized that because the union was waiting so long to make an endorsement decision (it didn’t come until 10 days ago), the campaign could peel off members and get them committed and working while the union dithered. The result was a surprising victory at seven of the nine special Strip caucus sites.

Most remarkable about this organizational drive is that it required secrecy -- if the Culinary found out, the union would have worked to shut it down.

And even though Clinton fared well at the Strip sites, she also benefited from the lawsuit filed to have the sites closed, according to interviews with voters, who expressed anger that Culinary workers -- and by extension, Obama -- were given disproportionate influence in the total delegate count because of the at-large sites.

The claim about delegate allocation wasn’t true, but many voters believed it to be so, which is all that mattered.

The Culinary is 49 percent Hispanic, and Clinton dominated among Hispanics statewide, according to exit polling.

Although the Clinton victory was decisive, especially with women, her victory among Hispanics was especially striking, beating Obama 2-1 with a demographic that comprised 15 percent of the voters, according to exit polls.

This was evident in Clinton’s campaigning the past 10 days, when she aggressively courted Hispanics and hit the issues they cared about. Lately, that means the economy and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, which is hurting working-class Hispanics especially.

“We refused to take it for granted and worked very, very hard knocking on doors multiple times,” Mook said. “We focused on the doors.”

To be sure, the Clinton organization wasn’t always a well-oiled machine. At a December meeting called to create a caucus-training guide for volunteers, the staff wrangled over verb choices and what color marker they should use.

For Clinton’s team, no doubt Obama’s Iowa victory drew the challenge into clear relief.

For their part, Obama’s supporters said the loss was a moral victory, given that they started from nothing a year ago and were going against much of the party establishment, save the Culinary.

“We made up 25 or 30 points in two months; things are going our way,” said Billy Vassiliadis, an Obama adviser and the chief executive of R&R Partners, an advertising and public affairs firm.

Vassiliadis acknowledged Obama and his campaign must do better with Hispanics to succeed in states such as California.

The Obama team points out that he could actually walk away with more delegates to the national convention than Clinton because he won in some rural counties that are given more weight than Clark County, where Clinton won handily.

But that won’t cloud the fact that this was a hard-fought victory for Clinton, one that seemed certain six months ago but extremely uncertain a week ago.

It’s not clear whether there was any impact from late advertising and media attacks on Obama’s record on abortion, the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain or his alleged lack of support for gaming.

And though it’s easy to slice and dice and analyze strategy, there’s this: Nevadan Democrats put their faith in Clinton and her experience.

At dozens of precinct locations voters interviewed by the Sun cited Clinton’s experience as the overriding factor in their decision.

As Mook said, “Sen. Clinton spent a lot of time here, and her presence here was more substantive and focused more on issues. (The voters) decided it was not a popularity contest.”

---------------------------

Lew Rockwell
January 20, 2008

Yucca Mountain Voters

Posted by Nick Bradley

The only county that Paul has a chance at winning in Nevada is Nye County, which he is currently winning 419-399 over Romney with 33/34 of the precincts reporting.

Support for Paul is strong in Nye County, home of the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, of which Ron Paul is the only vocal opponent. Nye County has also been nuked by the federal government almost 1,000 times, 100 of which were above-ground. In addition to that, it is home of Nellis AFB's bombing range. To top it off, 92% of Nye County is owned by the federal government, a sore spot for residents. So, Nye County has been bombed, nuked, and occupied by the federal government for 50 years, and now the feds want to pack its landmark full of nuclear waste. It's no wonder that they support the only candidate that opposes federal power.

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Chicago Tribune
January 20, 2008

10 years after plant closed, Zion slowly regains its glow

By Lisa Black

Ronald Schuster remembers exactly how he felt when he heard the Zion Nuclear Power Station would close, a decision that rocked the community that relied on it for much more than electricity.

"It was literally like someone got hit in the solar plexus," said Schuster, a radiation-protection safety officer who was herded into a meeting at 8:05 a.m. Jan. 15, 1998, to hear the news.

Ten years later, new owner Exelon has proposed dismantling the plant near Lake Michigan, opening up more than 250 acres of prime lakefront property by 2018. The plan calls for taking the two-reactor facility apart and moving everything but spent fuel rods out of state by rail.

The idea is bittersweet to locals who lived through the boom, when the plant pumped millions of dollars into the local economy each year; the bust, when jobs and money dried up; and now a measured recovery with more conventional development.

"The plant became a way of life in the community," said Mayor Lane Harrison, 57, who grew up in Zion. "We were relying on that one golden goose. ... Everybody was just hoping against hope that they wouldn't close."

It is the story of a classic American mill town trying to reinvent itself after the industry left town -- except the mill is a shuttered nuclear plant that generated both controversy and enough electricity to light up every household in Cook County. The plant may be dismantled, but the radioactive waste from it is likely here to stay for years to come.

Nationally, nuclear power is making a comeback, with new incentives prompting proposals for the first new plants in decades. But the Zion story underscores the reality that there is still no resolution about how to permanently store the spent fuel.

Under Exelon's proposal, Zion's fuel rods would be encased in concrete-and-lead casks 17 feet tall and left on-site, a source of concern to political leaders trying to quell fears of terrorism.

Changes after 9/11

Like other nuclear plants, Zion's was built near a large body of water, with a pipe 18 feet in diameter extending into Lake Michigan that pulled in thousands of gallons daily. The water circulated through a cooling system and was discharged back into the lake, heated but clean and non-radioactive, Exelon spokesman Neal Miller said.

Security was beefed up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with concrete barriers and checkpoints added along the driveway. It is a contrast from early days when "you were able to drive up to this building to deliver a pizza," Miller said.

The plant's proximity to the lake bothers U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who has pushed for the fuel rods to be moved to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it faces political opposition.

"My principal interest is we move 1,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel that's only 100 yards from Lake Michigan right now," Kirk said. "Zion is so wet and so close to the largest freshwater body of water in America that it is probably one of the places you least want [spent nuclear fuel] stored in the United States."

Added David Kraft, director of Nuclear Energy Information Service, a Chicago watchdog group: "I don't have the confidence in the casks that the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] does. They haven't demonstrated the casks won't break open if a national airliner took a nose-dive into them."

Exelon officials describe their methods as safe, highly regulated and closely monitored. They say the concrete containers were tested under extreme conditions, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. Once in the casks, the fuel will be moved another 400 feet from the lake, Miller said.

"This type of storage technique has become fairly common," said James Stubbins, who heads the Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The storage casks, in my mind, are perfectly safe."

Speculation remains about how much, if any, of the land would be available for private development if Exelon's plans are approved.

Brent Paxton, 44, a lifelong Zion resident and Lake County Board member, said the state already owns much of the surrounding property, including a marina to the north and Illinois Beach State Park, and may seek to keep the land undeveloped. He is less concerned about people shying away from development because of the fuel rods, since early fears about the plant did not play out.

"Initially, it was thought that just having the plant there would [negatively] affect property values, but it didn't," Paxton said.

Still, some people won't mourn the plant's dismantling.

"People were worried there would be a blowup while it was open," said Wayne Wasowitz, 52, of neighboring Winthrop Harbor, who recalled that some parents told their kids to stay away from the property out of fear they would be electrocuted. "I will be happy to see it dismantled and completely gone."

Feeling the loss

If all goes as planned, Exelon will dismantle the plant a decade earlier than expected by turning its license over to a private company, EnergySolutions Inc. in Salt Lake City, which says it can do the job more cheaply and quickly.

Officials expect the NRC to rule on the plan this year.

The plant looks eerily untouched, but the community still feels the loss.

Before the facility's closing, employees knew that then-owner Commonwealth Edison needed to replace two expensive steam generators, and the plant had been on temporary shutdown for months after an operator error drew a sharp rebuke from the NRC.

Officials said the plant closed because of the high cost of needed upgrades and equipment.

Today, 48 employees remain at the facility to operate two synchronous condensers that stabilize electrical voltage in the region. The radioactive spent fuel rods are stored in a deep pool of water to keep them cool, and the plant's two reactors no longer produce energy, nuclear or otherwise. Schuster is now plant manager at the 35-year-old facility.

The plant's closing marked a crushing blow to blue-collar Zion, where it had served as the city's largest employer and taxpayer. Nearly 2,000 out-of-town contractors left town immediately, and the 860 regular full-time workers began looking for new jobs.

Some local businesses saw sales plummet by 25 percent to 30 percent, said Eugene Swindle, who said his auto shop lost up to $6,000 monthly when workers stopped coming in.

Across the street, a new owner of Dunkin' Donuts panicked when shift workers no longer filled the store at midnight, and he returned the store to its previous owner.

ComEd agreed to gradually lower its tax contributions through 2005, giving Zion schools time to recover revenue from economic growth and higher tax rates. Today, Zion Elementary School District 6 has the highest tax rate in Lake County.

A slow recovery

Zion officials say the city, near the Wisconsin state line, is on an economic upswing with the help of three tax increment finance districts and a new business park.

The city, created in 1900 by Christian minister John Alexander Dowie, who envisioned a city ruled by God and free of worldly evil, never took off as planned and Zion struggled financially, according to historians.

Harrison's first term as mayor started in 1998, about the time the plant closed, and he began working to lure businesses to town.

The city of about 23,000 is now home to a FedEx distribution center and chains such as Applebee's, Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy and Country Inn & Suites.

When a scheduled Super Wal-Mart opens this spring, Harrison estimates the new companies will make up at least half of the tax revenue lost by the plant's closing.

Harrison sees better days ahead, envisioning condos and bike trails on the lakefront once the plant is gone.

By then, Schuster, who takes pride in keeping the shuttered plant clean and functional, expects to be retired. Its closing "broke my heart, it really did," he said. "When you've dedicated your life, when you grew up with this thing, there's a lot of ownership."

--lblack@tribune.com

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Las Vegas SUN
January 19, 2008

Omissions in Nuclear Waste Scuffle

By Calvin Woodward
The Associated Press

The dustup between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama over nuclear waste is a case of the pot calling the kettle radioactive.

Both have taken money from a nuclear power industry that needs a place to put its waste. Both say expanded nuclear power should be considered.

Both oppose the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. Neither says exactly where the waste should go, if not the only permanent repository under development in the U.S.

Those realities were cast aside in the lead-up to Saturday's Democratic presidential caucuses in a state that objects to becoming the nation's nuclear dumping ground.

But like the 77,000 tons of radioactive waste piling up in 39 states, those realities haven't gone away.

THE SPIN:

Clinton radio ad in Nevada: "The Las Vegas Review-Journal said Obama was 'hip deep in financial ties' to one of America's biggest Yucca Mountain promoters _ nuclear giant Exelon."

THE FACTS: Indeed, Illinois' nuclear power industry, which has thousands of tons of waste awaiting the opening of Yucca Mountain, has backed the Illinois senator. Executives and employees of Exelon Corp., the Chicago-based energy giant and nuclear plant operator, have contributed more than $200,000 to Obama campaigns since 2004, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

But the candidate who is attacking a rival for taking such money has enjoyed similar largesse.

Clinton has accepted thousands of dollars in contributions from the nuclear industry, including nearly $80,000 in this election from employees and a political action committee of NRG Energy Inc. That company is the first to file an application for a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. since before the Three Mile Island accident.

The Clinton ad correctly quoted the newspaper, although it turns out the paper's editorial board is endorsing Obama in the Nevada caucuses.

THE SPIN:

Obama: "Suddenly you've got the Clinton camp out there saying, `He's for Yucca.' What part of 'I'm not for Yucca' do you not understand? ... I have said over and over again I'm against Yucca. ... Never been for it. Never said I was for it."

THE FACTS: The Clinton ad doesn't claim he supports the project. It implies he's not sufficiently against it.

Obama's assertion that he's spoken against the site "over and over again" may be accurate, but he's not always been so unequivocal.

In a February 2007 statement to the Review-Journal, the Obama campaign said there were "significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there" and so Obama could not support the project "at this time."

As for Clinton, she has a record of opposing Yucca in the Senate. But she also asserts "nuclear power has to be a part of our energy solution."

She made that comment in South Carolina, which has an important Democratic primary next week and ranks third in the country in its dependence on nuclear power as a source of electricity, behind only Vermont and New Jersey.

Obama, too, says more nuclear power should be on the table.

As a practical matter, if the country is going to increase nuclear power, it has to have some place to put the reactor waste. For the foreseeable future, Yucca Mountain is the only place for it to go.

Democratic candidate John Edwards, as a North Carolina senator, voted twice in favor of the Yucca project and once against it.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 19, 2008

‘Jury’ hears final arguments

Clinton and Obama campaigns give it their final shot in Las Vegas

By J. Patrick Coolican, David McGrath Schwartz, Michael Mishak

This all began 18 months ago with a show of raw political power by Sen. Harry Reid, who leveraged his position as then-Senate minority leader and his relationship with Howard Dean and other members of the Democratic National Committee to make Nevada an early presidential voting state.

And it will end today with a show of raw political power by the winner, who will have managed to build an organization, recruit volunteers, persuade voters, dominate the media narrative and get his or her people to the caucus sites.

The entire effort by the major campaigns, and especially New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has consumed millions of dollars and thousands of hours of labor. Thousands of Nevadans, whose commitment and passion were questioned by the local and national media, have given over their lives to the campaign, especially during the past few weeks.

With candidates hitting Elko, Reno and Las Vegas in appearances Friday, the race ends as it began, with Clinton dominating the narrative. She was first to land major endorsements of important figures, such as her state chairman, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid.

This week, she used the run-up to the Nevada caucus to teach the less politically experienced Obama about rough politics, attacking him at every turn. He’s suspect on Yucca Mountain, having accepted money from the nuclear industry. He’s suspect on abortion rights, having voted “present” on an abortion-related issue in the Illinois Legislature. He’s suspect on gaming, having raised the issue of its social and moral costs and opposed its spread when in Illinois.

All three issues are considered fundamental to Nevada Democrats.

She accused him of wanting to raise taxes, and she questioned his ability to manage the federal bureaucracy after he said he didn’t see that as the chief role of the president. Plus, he spoke positively of President Reagan.

On each issue, Obama and his team responded, sometimes angrily: His record on Yucca is no different from Clinton’s, and she has also taken money from the nuclear industry. He’s been endorsed by leaders of the abortion rights movement and has a spotless record on the issue. Gaming is regulated by states, not the federal government. He offered up Nevada as a model of good gaming regulation and won the endorsement of the casino workers’ big union, the Culinary.

The tax increase would be levied on the wealthy and would go toward saving Social Security.

The president should have a vision and lead the country toward it, not shuffle papers around, Obama said. He was merely holding up Reagan as a model of a president who could mobilize people for change.

All this back-and-forth no doubt was confusing and even maddening to voters.

But now Nevada voters must decide by showing up at their caucus locations this morning.

On the eve of the contest, the candidates offered their final arguments in their final appearances in Las Vegas.

“When it is all said and done, it’s not about ... those of us running,” Clinton told a crowd of several thousand packed into the gym of Greenspun Junior High School in Henderson.

“It’s about you, your children, grandchildren. It’s about your future, and I am doing everything I can to make sure tomorrow is about you.”

With her husband, President Clinton, daughter, Chelsea, and one-time presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark standing behind her, Clinton then ticked off the array of daunting challenges awaiting the next president: the war in Iraq, “a war to win in Afghanistan,” an economy “showing increasing problems that are affecting the lives of so many people here in Nevada and across America,” 47 million Americans without health insurance, $100-per-barrel oil.

She pledged middle-class tax cuts, universal health care and a plan for withdrawal from Iraq in her first 60 days if elected. She also promised to introduce a $3,500-per-child tax credit to make college more affordable.

“I’m running for president because I know we can do better,” she said. “Some might say, how could we not do better?”

Obama, meanwhile, gave his standard stump speech to hundreds of supporters and more than a few still-undecided voters at UNLV on Friday night.

He made a last push, highlighting his positions on Iraq, health care and education. But he also addressed attacks on his experience and attacked Clinton -- by name, for once.

Pointing to her answer in Tuesday’s debate that she hoped a bill she voted for wouldn’t pass, he said that after spending too much time in Washington, “You don’t speak English. You don’t speak Spanish. You speak Washington-speak.”

The crowd was made up mostly of sign-waving supporters, including volunteers who planned to work today. Among them were Kristen Carter and her mother, Anne Burford-Johnson, who arrived from California on Friday morning and were set to put signs on doors at 5:30 a.m. today.

“We’re maxed out, but we’d rather see him than go to sleep,” Burford-Johnson said. “When you see him, the man inspires. It gives us energy.”

Obama closed his Nevada campaign before a packed ballroom at Caesars Palace at a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.

Obama has been advertised as the first viable black presidential candidate. At Caesars, he embraced the legacy of the civil rights movement.

“We’ve been told for so long it’s not possible. We have to wait for somebody to tell us it’s possible,” he said. “Don’t tell me I can’t do something.

“When I’m president, we’re going to take young men standing around street corners, and we’re going to start reaching them and we will say, ‘We have not given up on you.’”

Earlier at Obama’s UNLV rally, Mary Garrido said she planned to caucus today -- but still didn’t know which candidate she would support.

“My daughter told me to take a look at Obama, and I want to hear what he has to say,” she said.

After the speech, she called Obama “an inspirational speaker,” but said she was still in the undecided column.

Then -- with about 14 hours to decide -- she was off to Clinton’s rally.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 19, 2008

Chaos continues as Dems get started on caucuses

Northern Nevada Democrats began breaking into their presidential preference groups at noon as the last of the party faithful finished signing in at their respective caucuses.

About 1,500 people showed up at Billinghurst Middle School on Chesterfield Lane in northwest Reno for the Democratic caucus. Organizers said that’s 10 percent of the registered Democrats for that area.

Still, organizers ran out of presidential preference cards and resorted to handing out pieces of paper for people to write down the presidential votes.

At Reno High, Democrats were just finishing signing people, although there were still short lines at some of the larger precincts.

The turnout was good, organizers said. The precincts were spread out between the main gym, the small gym and the cafeteria. There were not as many Democratic caucus-goers at Reno High as Republicans but that’s because the Democrats had far fewer precincts meeting and the meeting places were more spread out.

Still, some participants were put off by the chaos.

“I want to go back to a primary,” said Bernadette Leichter, 73, a retired Reno resident attending the caucus at Billinghurst. “I’ve been here since 10:30 and it’s been very disorganized. I can’t even hear by precinct chairperson.”

Leichter said she was there to support Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I think she’s intelligent and experienced in the ways of politics,” she said. “I like her plans for health care and being against (nuclear waste repository) Yucca Mountain.”

University of Nevada, Reno student Jeromy Manke, 20, was willing to overlook the disorganized nature of the Billinghurst caucus.

“It’s an experience. It’s a little disorganized but it’s the first time in Nevada and I’m excited to be part of it.”

Manke planned to support Obama.

“He’s been against the Iraq war since the beginning. His policies on education are awesome. He has a plan for Pell grants and raising teachers’ salaries.”

Bill Davenport, a volunteer with the Hillary Clinton campaign, said some people have been showing up at the wrong caucus sites throughout the state. Those who do are calling in to a Democratic Party hot line that was set up, Davenport said. The party is allowing those people to caucus where they showed up, but they're reporting that to the hot line to make sure no one else is caucusing at another precinct in that person's place.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 19, 2008

Q&A with Mitt Romney

Anjeanette Damon

Before his last campaign stop in Reno on Friday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sat down with Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon. The following are excerpts from that interview.

Question: You’ve been positioning yourself lately as a Washington outsider, but many of your opponents also come from outside of Washington. What makes you different?

Answer: I spent my life in the private sector in the business world for 25 years, making critical decisions for a business. And the years I’ve experienced understanding how jobs come in and how they go is different than anybody else running for president on either side of the aisle. At a time when the economy is under assault globally and also fragile currently, that it would be helpful to have somebody who understands how the economy works, understands where jobs come from and how to keep them coming. I just came from Michigan and the people there recognize they have to have somebody optimistic about strengthening America’s economy and ensuring we remain competitive with the rest of the world.

Q: Do you have confidence that the Nevada caucus will be run properly?

A: I sure hope so. As you know candidates don’t have a lot to say about dates of caucuses or primaries where the events are held. In Iowa as many as 10 percent of the caucus locations were changed in the week leading up to the caucus. I don’t know how widespread the issue has been here in Nevada. I can certainly hope the information gets out to people so that we can get a good turnout.

Q: Do you think Ron Paul has a serious chance of winning Nevada?

A: I don’t know. I’ve looked at the polls, and they don’t suggest he is a leading contender at this point. But he has a highly motivated core of supporters.

Q: About Yucca Mountain, do you think the project is safe enough to carry the nation’s nuclear waste?

A: That’s under study today. I want to see the results of the study. As president I would not take any action that would put in jeopardy the safety or the well being of the people of Nevada. I am a governor and I come from the perspective of someone who believes the federal government should not impose its heavy hand on states. And so in a setting like this I would like to see the results of the study and make sure we don’t do anything that would harm or jeopardize the people of Nevada.

Q: What keeps you from, as many candidates, taking a bright line stance saying you are against the dump?

A: I want to see the results of the study that is under way and I’ve seen what the implications are for the people here and understand their concerns and what the options are.

Q: What about college sports betting, would you support a ban on that?

A: You know, I haven’t looked at gaming and the nature of the people here in Nevada, who of course are very familiar with Internet gaming, sports betting and the like. So I’d like to look at that before I made a decision or take a position on that. I haven’t looked at that. I must admit that gambling and college sports don’t seem to mix but have not looked at the specifics of the industry and therefore don’t have any comment on a position at this stage.

Q: Some are saying you are actually conceding South Carolina by campaigning here instead.

A: I hear the other guys are conceding Nevada. There are 34 delegates in Nevada and 24 in South Carolina. I’ve spent more time in South Carolina than Nevada. I’m happy to have spent this last almost a week divided pretty evenly between both states. Both states are important to me. I’m running ads in South Carolina and hope to do well enough there to surprise people. For someone from Nevada, that is an unusual question. I’m taking my campaign into 50 states because I think to become president you’ve actually not just got to get the nomination but you’ve got to win. And Nevada is a purple state. Yeah we got it last time but there’s no guarantee we’re going to win Nevada unless we have a candidate who cares about the inner mountain west and I do.

Q: In Michigan, you talked a lot about jobs. But in Nevada, jobs haven’t yet become a problem. What people are worried about are the housing slump, the foreclosure crisis. What are your plans for that?

A: Those are related, of course. What is happening in our economy right now, short term, is the slow down. But the long-term slide of our economy relative to our ability to compete globally is of real concern throughout the country. In Nevada, it takes the form of a housing crisis; in Detroit, an auto crisis. In different parts of the country you see it manifest in different ways. But strengthening our economy is central to our ability to have great jobs for our kids, a strong and vibrant military and have a bright future for our nation.

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AP Google
January 19, 2008

Nuclear Revival Rekindles Waste Concerns

By Angela Charlton

So far, though, recent talk of a nuclear renaissance has focused on the "front end," or reactor construction. Engineers are designing the next generation of reactors to be safer than today's — and they're being billed as a solution to global warming. Nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide, blamed for heating the planet.

Workers at this waste treatment and storage site on France's Cherbourg peninsula, run by industry giant Areva, don't see a problem.

For now, the best scientific solution for getting rid of the most lethal waste is to shove it deep underground.

Recycling, though, produces plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons — so the United States bans it, fearing proliferation.

Visitors to the plant must wear special uniforms and trek through a maze of security and radioactivity checkpoints.

Meanwhile, new reactor clients are lining up.

Areva already makes $2.2 billion in revenues a year on treating and recycling waste. The plant at Beaumont-Hague takes in 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year, from France, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. The foreign fuel by law must be returned to its owners once it has been reprocessed into a more stable form that — through lack of alternatives — is buried or held in storage.

The French fuel stays in Normandy indefinitely, while bulkier, lower-level nuclear waste is piling up in dumps worldwide.

Nuclear scientists' dream is a wasteless reactor, and some sketches for the next crop of reactors, the Generation IV, include those that recycle 100 percent of their refuse.

Both nuclear fans and foes agree, however, that it will take a few more human generations for that dream to come true.

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AP Google
January 19, 2008

Nuclear Waste Disposal Varies

The Associated Press

Countries around the world are starting, expanding or reviving nuclear power programs. Here's a look at how various nations handle the radioactive waste:

___

UNITED STATES: The country with the most nuclear reactors, more than 120 spread out over 39 states, has no central system for dealing with waste. Plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stalled for 25 years. For now waste is stored in dry casks and cooling pools at reactor sites. The U.S. government shuns waste reprocessing because of risks it could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. The Bush administration is pushing for a new reprocessing method, but that effort is likely to stall due to pending November elections.

___

FRANCE: France, more dependent on atomic energy than any country, recycles most of its nuclear fuel — and fuel from several other countries as well. French researchers are conducting experiments in an underground lab beneath Champagne country toward building a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, it "vitrifies" its deadliest waste, turning it into glass to make it more stable, and stores it in shallow underground canisters.

___

RUSSIA: In Russia, home of the world's largest nuclear waste site, reprocessing is common. International environmental groups complain of poor safety records and oversight at reprocessing plants. Greenpeace has accused western European countries of secretly and illicitly shipping nuclear waste to Russia over several years.

___

FINLAND: Finland may become the first country to build a deep earth repository. The government has approved a long-term storage site, though it is not expected to be operational until after the country finishes building the world's first "third-generation" reactor, expected in 2011.

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AP Google
January 19, 2008

Edwards, Clinton Critical of Obama

By Nedra Pickler

RENO, Nev. (AP) — John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Barack Obama's praise of the Republican Party and Ronald Reagan — an anathema for many Democrats, particularly union members considered crucial to winning Nevada's Democratic caucuses Saturday.

Obama responded by suggesting Clinton would be a "president whose plans change with the politics of the moment" as part of one of his most direct critiques of the New York senator yet.

The intensity reflects what polls suggest could be a tight contest Saturday as Nevada plays its most prominent role ever in a presidential nominating campaign. Nevada was granted a coveted spot right after Iowa and New Hampshire in an attempt to bring more racial and geographic diversity into the selection.

The novelty means there isn't a reliable way to determine who is likely to turn out at caucuses across the state. In addition, nine caucuses are to be held in casinos for the first time to allow shift workers to participate on a busy holiday weekend — making the result even more unpredictable.

Obama got a boost when he won the endorsement of the Culinary Workers Union that represents 60,000 housekeepers, bartenders, waiters and other employees on the Las Vegas Strip. Then a judge dismissed an attempt to eliminate the casino caucus sites. But Clinton still holds an edge in most polls.

Edwards, his chances for the presidency diminished by losses to Obama in Iowa and Clinton in New Hampshire, did not run television ads in the state and did not plan to stay in Nevada to wait for results. His schedule Friday had him leaving to campaign in Oklahoma, Missouri and Georgia, among the more than 20 states that vote on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Edwards questioned Obama's commitment to labor in his final appeal to Nevada voters — a rally with about 100 of his precinct captains in Las Vegas.

"Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party," Edwards said.

Reagan also "was destructive to the environment by removing a lot of the regulation that existed," Edwards added in a later telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change."

Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board Monday that "Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it," Obama said.

"I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom," Obama told the newspaper.

On Friday in Las Vegas, Clinton responded, "That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years." She said she didn't consider it a better idea to privatize Social Security, eliminate the minimum wage, undercut health benefits, shut down the government or drive the country into debt. "I think we know what needs to be done in America. And I think we're ready to do it. I'm ready to lead on day one."

Obama questioned her claim while campaigning at the University of Nevada Reno. "Senator Clinton has said she is ready to lead from day one, but it's important on day one to get it right, whether you're talking about war or you're talking about economic proposals."

Obama said Clinton recently joined his call for a tax rebate. When she initially announced her economic stimulus plan last week, she said she would consider a tax rebate in the future if the economy worsened.

"This is a larger point that has to be made," he said. "It is easy to be for policies that help working families when it's popular on the campaign trail, but the American people don't want a president whose plans change with the politics of the moment."

Two Obama supporters said they received automated phone calls Friday evening in which the senator was described as supporting a Republican agenda.

Gregory Martin, a financial adviser in Reno, said the caller, who had a woman's voice, said she was calling to bring to his attention recent comments Obama had made "in support of the Republican Party and Bush's vision for America." The call also said Obama was in favor of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and was identified as coming from "friends of Hillary Clinton," Martin said.

Amber Erlich, an Obama volunteer from Phoenix, received a similar recorded call at the home of another volunteer in Pioche, Nev., she said. The caller, also a woman, said Obama wants to dump waste at Yucca Mountain and had called the Republican Party "the party of ideas," Erlich said.

The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Clinton aides said earlier there were reports of voter intimidation and confusion among Culinary Union members who support Clinton. Some union members thought the union's endorsement of Obama meant they wouldn't be allowed to caucus for Clinton, while others feared retaliation if they chose to caucus for Clinton, the aides said.

"I'm afraid some people may feel that they can't come or they shouldn't come or can't support the candidate of their choice," Clinton herself said during a campaign appearance in Elko. "We know there are some unions in the south who are telling people who to caucus for and if they're not going to caucus for who they choose, don't come at all. I don't think that's right."

Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey and Beth Fouhy in Las Vegas, and Evan Berland in South Carolina contributed to this report.

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Baltimore Sun
January 19, 2008

Obama continues stand-up, talks Yucca Mountain

by John McCormick

ELKO, Nev. -- As he campaigned in northern Nevada today, Sen. Barack Obama was clearly trying to make sure there were no misunderstandings, at least from his point of view, before Saturday's caucuses.

In doing so, he repeated a riff he also delivered last night in Las Vegas, where he recounts a question from a debate earlier this week. An extended excerpt from the bit, which he delivers as if it were something of a comedy routine:

"I was asked, what are your weaknesses…I said I'm not good at shuffling paper. My desk is a mess. I also need help filing things, and keeping on schedule. And so, then they went to the other candidates. One of them said, my biggest weakness is I am just too passionate about helping poor people. And then, the other person said, well, I'm just too impatient to fix all the problems here in America. And so, I said -- what I wanted to say -- was I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question. I thought that you said, what are you biggest weaknesses. And I thought that meant, what are you biggest weaknesses. But now that I understand how Washington works, actually my biggest weakness is that I like to help old ladies across the street. I use that example, only because that is how Washington talks. They don't say what they mean. They don't answer the question, and so now, we're seeing all these criticisms from some other candidates that don't make sense."

Obama also responded here to an ad being run by Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign that suggests she is the strongest opponent of a proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, a hot-button issue in Nevada.

The ad suggests Obama is "hip deep in financial ties" to Chicago-based Exelon Corp., a nuclear plant operator that supports the Yucca site.

The Associated Press reported that executives and employees of Exelon have contributed more than $200,000 to Obama's campaigns since 2004, citing PoliticalMoneyLine.com, which tracks campaign money.

"Sen. Clinton is putting out an advertisement implying that I'm in favor of Yucca Mountain," Obama responded. "Now, I've never been in favor of Yucca Mountain, never voted for Yucca Mountain. I kept on saying, I'm opposed to Yucca Mountain. So, when you say that I'm in favor of Yucca Mountain, and I have repeatedly said, I'm not. What part of I'm not in favor of Yucca Mountain do you not understand? But that's how politics works."

Obama's wife, Michelle, meanwhile, seemed to be making a veiled reference to Sen. Hillary Clinton, when she argued that she and her husband have had to struggle all their lives to get where they are today, while others have claimed to be "more prepared" or have more of a "right to power."

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Living on the Earth
January 19, 2008

Interview: Waste Not....Here w/Lisa Mascaro

Bruce Gellerman

GELLERMAN: Since the 1980's the United States has been committed to building a nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain. The site was designed to deal with high level radioactive waste from the nation's atomic power plants.

Yet two decades and $9 billion later, there's a test tunnel leading a thousand feet deep into the barren basalt wasteland—but no nuclear waste. Most Nevada residents oppose the Yucca project—and in a recent debate, the top democratic presidential candidates sought their support.

GELLERMAN: Well, at long last, there may be light at the end of the Yucca Mountain debate. Joining me is Lisa Mascaro, Washington correspondent for the Las Vegas Sun. Hi, Lisa.

MASCARO: Hi, Bruce. Thanks for having me.

GELLERMAN: This is the never-say-die project, but it seems that the Department of Energy officials who are in charge of Yucca Mountain are about to miss an important deadline, right?

MASCARO: Yes, that's right. The Energy Department announced this week that its June 2008 deadline for the next step of the project, which is to submit this application to license the project—they may not be able to meet that deadline now because of some of these steep budget cuts that were engineered by Congress at the end of last year.

GELLERMAN: Well it was your Senator, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, who did cut deep into this budget.

MASCARO: Absolutely. The Nevada delegation—and really the whole state of Nevada—from the government structure and a vast majority of the population of Nevada, polls show us—are opposed to this project and have been opposed to it. And the Nevada delegation here in Washington has fought for years trying to whittle away, they say—the buzzword is sort of to starve the project of its needed funds. Well, now that Senator Harry Reid is the majority leader, he has been able to engineer one of the largest budget cuts ever to the project.

GELLERMAN: Well, they've laid off a lot of workers and they put it on a caretaker status, basically.

MASCARO: Yeah, there was a real symbolic move these past several weeks. The contractor out there at the site basically closed up the tunnel to the site by erecting a chain link fence across it and laid off 60-something workers out at the site. The Energy Department has now announced this week that further lay offs—as many as 500 lay offs to a workforce of about 2700 on the Yucca Mountain project may have to be let go because of this budget cut.

GELLERMAN: Well the Democrats are all saying 'no way, Jose.' What are the Republicans saying?

MASCARO: Yeah, there are—you're absolutely right. The Democrats have come out so strong against this project, some even going so far as to say that they will be sure to kill it if they are to take office. The Republicans have been more mixed and you've definitely heard some of the candidates saying that the nation needs a place to put the nuclear waste and this is the place that was decided on years ago and we need to go forward with this project.

GELLERMAN: Well what happens if they really do shut down Yucca? Where does the waste go?

MASCARO: Right, Bruce. Well that's an interesting debate and one that's been going on for some time. There is a school of thought that says that you can store the waste exactly where it is. It can stay put at the energy producing sites across the nation. And it's something that Senator Reid and the Nevada delegation has pushed to continue doing just that.

GELLERMAN: Lisa Mascaro is Washington correspondent with the Las Vegas Sun. Lisa, thanks a lot.

MASCARO: Thanks for having me.

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Los Angeles Times
January 19, 2008

Democrats duel to the end in Nevada

Clinton and Obama staked their tents here months ago in anticipation of the state's earliest-ever caucuses. Besides some nods to Yucca Mountain and other Western issues, it's been politics as usual.

By Mark Z. Barabak and Seema Mehta

LAS VEGAS -- Putting a Western stamp on the presidential campaign, Nevada voters are expected to flock today in record numbers to the state's earliest-ever caucuses, delivering a boost to either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama.

The Democrats, with a win apiece, dueled across the state Friday in a final burst of campaigning on the eve of their party's third nominating test. The race here, like the first two, appeared exceedingly close.

Obama, the winner of Iowa's caucuses, traveled 1,200 miles: from Las Vegas to Reno, then to Elko, then back again. The Illinois senator intensified his criticism of Clinton, accusing her of distorting his record and changing her positions for political expediency.

"It is easy to be for policies that help working families when it's popular on the campaign trail," he told more than 1,000 people packed into a gym at the University of Nevada in Reno. "But the American people don't want a president whose plans change with the politics of the moment."

Clinton, who avenged her Iowa loss by edging Obama in New Hampshire, traced a similar path Friday, visiting the same three cities as well as fast-growing Henderson.

The New York senator seized on a recent Obama interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, in which he called former President Reagan a transformative figure and said the GOP, for a time, was "the party of ideas" challenging conventional wisdom.

"That's not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years," Clinton told employees at a small Las Vegas printer. "I don't think it's a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don't think it's a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. . . . I don't think it's a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt."

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who once counted Nevada as a good bet for an early win, has seemingly faded. He hoped to jump-start his campaign Jan. 26 in South Carolina and campaigned elsewhere Friday.

Nevada, a state with a strong labor movement and a booming Latino population, was granted an early voting slot by national Democrats hoping to introduce a fresh voice into the nominating process. (Nevada Republicans are also caucusing, but their impact was diminished as most candidates focused on South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary today.)

For the most part, the experiment succeeded.

"Usually, the candidates fly over Arizona, Utah and Nevada on the way to California," said Mike Sloan, who led Democrats' caucus fundraising drive. "For the first time, they've been required to do more than that."

Clinton and Obama practically pitched their tents in the high desert, arriving soon after New Hampshire voted and leaving Nevada for only brief excursions, mainly to California, which votes Feb. 5. They made an unprecedented effort to court Latinos, endorsed gun-loving Nevadans' right to bear arms and competed with Edwards to be the most adamantly opposed to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, 90 miles from Las Vegas.

"If the caucuses accomplished nothing else, it accomplished that," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was key to bringing the early vote to his home state.

To a large extent, however, Nevada merely served as a backdrop for the argument Clinton, Edwards and Obama have waged for months, over judgment and experience, over who can best wind down the war in Iraq, and over which of them is better equipped to lift a slumping economy.

"A few national issues have been framed with, say, a slightly Western tilt," said Eric Herzik, head of the political science department at the University of Nevada. "But besides Yucca Mountain, which is an easy issue for Democrats, they haven't talked about water, they haven't talked about land, they haven't talked about the role of the federal government in Western states."

This being Nevada, a state that prides itself on keeping the West a bit wild, Democrats also witnessed a brawl between labor unions over the caucus rules. The fight was settled when a judge decreed that nine casino precincts could be operated to accommodate workers on the Las Vegas Strip.

The legal scuffling was seen as a fight between backers of Clinton, including much of Nevada's political establishment, and Obama, who won the support of Las Vegas' Culinary Union, the state's biggest and most influential labor organization.

Clinton alluded to the fight Friday, suggesting that some supporters were being intimidated from caucusing on her behalf. The union denied any such harassment.

The caucuses will operate as Iowa's did. Republicans, who begin meeting at 9 a.m., will cast ballots in a straw poll that has no bearing on the allocation of presidential delegates. One of the few candidates to visit, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigned for two days this week. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas also stumped here, playing to the broad libertarian streak.

Democrats, by contrast, have campaigned for close to a year, stepping up efforts after Iowa and New Hampshire delivered their split verdict.

The party's caucuses will be conducted at more than 1,700 locations statewide. With same-day registration, anyone eligible to vote can participate, including Republicans and independents.

As in Iowa, the meetings are just the first step in a process that will award delegates to the Democrats' summer nominating convention. The chief effect will probably be the momentum enjoyed by the winner. Turnout was expected to easily top the 9,000 who voted in 2004, when Nevada held caucuses in mid-February.

Some Democrats fret that the skirmishing -- particularly over the location of caucus sites -- might undermine party unity in the fall.

But D. Taylor, head of the Culinary Union, said a hunger to win the White House would easily overcome any lingering animosity.

"Whatever differences we have -- and there are real differences -- clearly the alternative of several more years of an administration like the Bush administration would be disastrous," Taylor said Friday.

--mark.barabak@latimes.com
--seema.mehta@latimes.com
--Times staff writers Robin Abcarian and Peter Nicholas contributed to this report.

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Rocky Mountain News
January 19, 2008

Political frontier moves West

By David Montero

Once candidates merely flew over the West on their way to California. Now with today's Nevada precinct caucuses, and the Democratic National Convention being held in Denver, the West is no longer just a placeholder on primary calendars.

The red-tiled roofs stretch well into the desert, where craggy cliffs eventually rise and scrape the faded blue sky.

Tract after tract of stucco homes stand with signs for move-in specials to tempt potential buyers.

Phil Mackovski stands on a street watching roofers carefully place the tile in grooves on an unfinished cluster of houses and puts his hands in his jacket pockets.

Just two years ago, Mackovski's building company was booming. He could barely keep up with the region's thirst for housing. His small business, Mackovski Builders, was hiring crew after crew of workers to complete the homes that sold within weeks.

And then, about 10 months ago, it all came to a screeching halt.

"I have lots for 30 units to build on," he said. "And I can't start on any of them."

The subprime mortgage crisis, the foreclosure crisis - whatever you want to call it - ramped up in earnest and slammed places like Las Vegas last year. Other Western states with lots of open land and builders willing to sell the American Dream began seeing the real estate market suffer, too.

Last year, according to Realtytrac.com, Western cities crammed the top 10 list for number of foreclosure filings. Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix are all found there.

It has become one of the top talking points for the presidential candidates as they jockey for votes at the Nevada's caucuses being held today.

The real estate crisis has become more of a Western issue and one the candidates are increasingly putting the spotlight on. Before that the only Western issue that seemed to crop up was the controversy of dumping nuclear waste in the Silver State.

"Yucca Mountain, Yucca Mountain, Yucca Mountain," quipped former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, alluding to the shorthand used for the ridge of mountains where the waste is buried.

But Webb, who is supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, said while she has talked her share about Yucca Mountain, she's been hammering at the foreclosure crisis as well.

Clinton hits foreclosures hard

That was true Friday when Clinton showed up at A+B Printing just off The Strip. It only took her about a minute into her speech to mention foreclosures to the nearly 40 workers jammed into the tiny office.

"I went door-to-door in Las Vegas last week and I started meeting people who are unemployed now," she said. "Nobody ever thought the economy in Las Vegas would slow down."

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards spoke to union carpenters Wednesday night and talked about the mortgage mess as well.

"We need to provide help to people who are in danger of losing their homes through a home rescue fund," Edwards said.

Sen. Barack Obama held a roundtable meeting with victims of foreclosure in Reno as well and, according to a report in the Reno Gazette-Journal, took a shot at his fellow politicians in Washington, D.C.

"It could've been stopped if the White House and Congress were paying more attention and listening to the people involved," the Illinois senator said earlier in the week.

Bob Duffy, professor of political science at Colorado State University, said it's not surprising the candidates are starting to hone in on the high-profile mortgage crisis as they traipse through the West because of the impact it's having in the region.

Duffy said it helps that the issue is a national one - cities in the Rust Belt are also struggling with foreclosures - but it does give the candidates a foothold on an issue that is impacting many voters in Western states.

"They focus on the issues that matter in the places they're campaigning and, for years, that was Iowa and New Hampshire at the beginning of the season," Duffy said.

Foreclosures a national issue

But Mike Stratton, a Western political consultant based in Denver who was a chief strategist to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's failed bid for the Democratic nomination, said those issues do get talked about by the candidates as they campaign in rural areas.

"Yucca gets all the headlines, but when you get out to rural Nevada, they have to be able to talk local issues," Stratton said. "That's how they will have success at those caucuses. But those issues are below the radar screen nationally."

Stratton said the jumbled caucus and primary results up until this point - four different Republican winners in four states and two different winners in two states on the Democrats' side - has helped highlight Western issues. The crowded field has helped the West - just as the Democratic National Committee had intended when it awarded Denver the convention in August and gave Nevada the first caucus, Stratton said.

"The goal was the candidates would have to campaign out here and get immersed in the West," he said. "Is it more than we've gotten historically? Exponentially more. Look at how much time the candidates are spending in Nevada."

By Friday afternoon, Edwards had flown out to Missouri and Obama was out of the state as well. Clinton was headed up to Elko in the afternoon.

Once the caucus is over this afternoon and a winner is declared, the campaigns will go full-throttle to Feb. 5, when Colorado and more than 20 other states will hold primaries or caucuses.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said last week he thought it would be unlikely the nominee would be known after that date and thought it could drag out until mid-March.

But at some point, the field will be clear and the nominee will arrive in Denver. This time, however, the path will have traveled on the ground through the West.

That was the strategy, at least.

"They used to be able to fly over us," Stratton said. "The goal was to put the West at the forefront, and with four states in play - Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona - it worked."

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
January 19, 2008

'These are uncharted waters' in Nevada

Stakes are high in 2 states today

By Jerome L. Sherman

LAS VEGAS -- Today, what happens in Vegas won't stay in Vegas.

At more than 1,700 caucus sites throughout the Silver State, voters for the first time will have a chance to leave their mark on a tight national race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Organizers are expecting at least 40,000 people -- and possibly as many as 100,000 -- to turn out for an event that attracted only 9,000 participants in 2004, when the state's caucuses took place at a later date on the primary calendar.

Thousands of workers in the glittering casinos that line the Las Vegas Strip can caucus in nine unprecedented "at-large" sites near slot machines and card tables, including the Tower Ballroom of the Bellagio and the Egyptian Ballroom of the pyramid-shaped Luxor.

"These are uncharted waters," said Brad Coker, managing partner of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which has performed polls for the Las Vegas Review-Journal over the last 15 years. "This is the first time they're doing a caucus that is meaningful. This time there's actually something at stake."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton split the first two contests this year, with Mr. Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and Mrs. Clinton taking the New Hampshire primary. Now, both are pushing hard for a victory in Nevada as they look for an edge on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, when 22 states vote.

A Mason-Dixon poll released yesterday gave Mrs. Clinton a 9-point lead here, 41 to 32 percent, while former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina received 14 percent. Ten percent were undecided.

On the GOP side, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the only Republican with a strong campaign organization in Nevada, had a 15-point lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The Republicans are focusing on South Carolina.

Mr. Coker said his pollsters, mindful of inaccurate polls that predicted a big win for Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, were careful to identify people who definitely plan to attend the caucuses. The caucuses start at 11 a.m. Pacific time for the Democrats and 9 a.m. for the Republicans.

Yet because intense interest in the Democratic race likely will fuel a record turnout, Mr. Coker refused to predict a victory for Mrs. Clinton, who is getting the bulk of her support from women and has received endorsements from some top Nevada political figures.

"I think Clinton has an edge," he said. "But I think that it may be going too far out on a ledge to say she has a solid lead."

No one knows what effect the caucuses on the Strip will have. Regular sites receive a fixed number of delegates, but the at-large sites will receive delegates based on turnout.

Anyone who works within two and a half miles of the sites can attend caucuses there. They are for only the Democratic contest, although all eligible voters, including independents and Republicans, can register as a Democrat on location and participate.

(On Thursday, a federal judge rejected a lawsuit from the Nevada State Education Association aimed at blocking the at-large caucuses.)

Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, which owns 10 hotels in Las Vegas, said the company is trying to accommodate all workers scheduled on the day shift who want to attend the two-hour event.

Meanwhile, the gambling, shopping and eating that fuel this city's economy won't stop. The caucuses likely will be "invisible" to guests, Mr. Absher said.

"There will be no service interruption," he said. "If it's managers bussing tables, we'll make it work." He had no estimate on how many employees will participate.

Mr. Obama may have an advantage among Strip workers. Many belong to the 60,000-member Culinary 226, the state's largest union, which has endorsed him.

Inside the triumphal arch of the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace -- home to more than 150 designer stores, spiral escalators and curved ceilings with frescoes of the sky -- employees had mixed views on the arrival of presidential politics in the heart of Sin City.

"My boss said I could have as much time as I need" for the caucuses, said Jennifer Martin, 36, a bartender at Wolfgang Puck's Spago, a swanky fusion restaurant in the mall. Ms. Martin is scheduled to work from noon to 10 p.m. today, but she is eager to get away to support a female candidate for president. "Hillary is just fabulous," she said.

Some workers said they had no interest in politics. Others were baffled by the complexities of the caucus process.

"People are talking about the caucus, but they don't have a clue what it is," said Nicola Olivarez, a director at Galleria di Sorrento, a fine art shop.

A Republican who backs Mr. Romney, she said she can't leave work to go to her caucus site.

Both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton planned to hold events late last night to rally their supporters.

"I think Nevadans are already enjoying the fruits of my labor," the former first lady told the Las Vegas Sun. "I have a record of achievement that is already impacting the state. I'm not asking Nevada to take me on leap of faith."

It was a shot at Mr. Obama's lack of experience on the national stage. During a speech at a high school on Thursday night, Mr. Obama countered by sticking to his message about the importance of change, telling a boisterous crowd that voters shouldn't give the White House to another group of political insiders.

"The American people understand that's not a good bet," he said. "They understand that the biggest gamble right now is to have the same old characters playing the same old Washington games over and over again."

Mr. Obama spent about 10 minutes addressing Mrs. Clinton directly by name, a stark contrast with his New Hampshire stump speech. He accused her of distorting his position on raising the payroll tax for Social Security and his opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a major Nevada issue.

"I have said over and over again I'm against Yucca Mountain," he said. "Suddenly you've got the Clinton camp out there saying he's for Yucca. What part of 'I'm not for Yucca' do you not understand?' "

He has accepted campaign donations from Exelon, an Illinois-based nuclear company, but he says he won't let his donors change his views, according to the Review-Journal.

As Obama supporters entered the high school, four campaign workers with laptop computers helped them locate their caucus sites.

The campaign has more than 100 staff here, including veterans of his Iowa victory. It also will have 50 vans to take people who don't have transportation to the caucuses.

Mrs. Clinton also has a formidable Nevada organization.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 3,000 members in the state and has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, has brought in more than 125 paid political workers.

Mr. Edwards is receiving support from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and the United Steelworkers of America.

Kelly Martinez, a precinct captain for the Obama campaign in a working class neighborhood in southeastern Las Vegas, was planning to hold a chili party yesterday to motivate potential caucus-goers.

A special education teacher who originally moved here to pursue a career as a dancer and a singer, she is responsible for tracking Obama supporters at 30 homes.

"You can bet I'm going to be calling them at 11 a.m. if I don't see their mug there," she said.

--Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 202-488-3479.

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Rutland Herald
January 19, 2008

Windham County senators want study of nuclear waste

By Susan Smallheer
Herald Staff

MONTPELIER — The two senators from Windham County want to find the best storage location in the entire state for Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's high-level radioactive waste now that a federal facility is decades if not centuries away, according to legislation they introduced this week.

Sen. Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, president pro tempore of the Senate, and Sen. Jeannette White, D-Windham, have also introduced another Vermont Yankee bill that would define the terms of the proposed independent safety assessment.

The study, which is now supported by the Douglas administration, as well as the state's entire congressional delegation, is due to be conducted at the plant before the state decides whether the reactor can keep operating for another 20 years.

Shumlin said it has become clear the federal government is not going to take away the high-level waste at Vermont Yankee or any other nuclear reactor anytime soon. In Shumlin's estimation it will be 200 to 300 years before the spent fuel is removed from Vermont to a national storage facility.

Entergy Nuclear, the owner of Vermont Yankee, is expected to start transferring its oldest fuel out of an underwater fuel storage facility at the reactor and put it in air-cooled concrete casks stored next to the plant and on the banks of the Connecticut River. "There is no rational person left in Vermont who believes that the federal government is going to take this waste anytime in our lifetimes," said Shumlin.

The developers of Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of the high-level waste facility in Nevada, just this week laid off their last workers and sealed off the main tunnel into the desert facility.

According to Democratic presidential debates in Nevada this week, neither Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards, the leading Democratic presidential candidates, support Yucca Mountain, Shumlin pointed out.

"That means we are stuck with that waste for the next several hundred years," said Shumlin, who said Vermonters approved building Vermont Yankee in the late 1960s with the promise that high-level waste would not stay in-state.

Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said Friday the two bills were unnecessary.

"Our site is obviously preferable. It's licensed for nuclear operations and it's in a high security area. The pad is already constructed.

"We intend to make the fuel ready for transport to Department of Energy as soon as that agency wants it," said Williams, adding that Entergy Nuclear expects DOE to start accepting the high-level waste in 2017. DOE was supposed to start taking the waste in 1998, he said.

"It's our obligation to show we're ready. We're moving forward and will be loading them in the spring," he said of the air-cooled concrete and steel casks.

"And there's no reason why the DOE couldn't be building their own dry fuel storage pad," he said.

As for the independent safety assessment, Williams said nuclear safety was the province of the federal government.

"There is no indication in any of the reports of the plant's condition or performance indicators that would say the additional inspection is necessary," he said.

Shumlin said he and White wanted the terms of the independent safety assessment defined before the Legislature adjourned in May.

He said the Legislature, Gov. James Douglas and the three members of the congressional delegation were united in wanting an independent safety assessment done before the plant gets state approval from the Public Service Board to operate beyond its original license, which expires in 2012.

He said there has only even been one independent safety assessment done — at Maine Yankee. That plant was eventually dismantled by its owners because of the high cost of repairs. He said technology has changed a great deal since the Maine study, and he said he wanted to establish "the highest standard" for the Vermont study.

--Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.

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Washington Post
January 19, 2008

When Attacked, Obama's Now Hitting Back

By Shailagh Murray and Alec MacGillis

RENO, Nev., Jan. 18 -- The hundreds of people who turned out at the University of Nevada on Friday heard Sen. Barack Obama deliver a lofty stump speech about bridging the nation's divides and creating a groundswell for change. But they also witnessed him engage in the more mundane task of rebutting attacks from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on his positions on Social Security taxes and on the proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

"When Senator Clinton implied that I'm for Yucca when I've never been for it, that's a problem. That erodes people's confidence in our politics," Obama said.

It was a sign of a lesson learned the hard way: Let no attack go unanswered.

After his victory in the Iowa caucuses, Obama arrived in New Hampshire more as the head of a movement than as a candidate, greeted by huge crowds that lined up for hours to hear a speech that could have been delivered at a suburban megachurch, all empowerment and inspiration.

While the Democratic senator from Illinois was holding his rallies, though, Clinton's campaign sent out a mailing accusing him of being soft in his support for abortion rights, organized 24 prominent New Hampshire women to send an e-mail echoing that charge and distributed a flier accusing him of seeking a big tax increase on working families. The charges were debatable, but Obama's only response was a hastily arranged automated phone call decrying the abortion attack. Clinton won the primary with strong support from the mailings' target audiences -- women and working-class voters.

Locked in a close race with Clinton that could continue well beyond the Feb. 5 primaries once seen as the campaign's decisive moment, the Obama team is determined not to make the same mistake. Much of the feel-good imagery was ditched in the New England snow, and it has been replaced by a more traditional campaign that rebuts and prebuts, brags about endorsements, and engages with -- rather than floats above -- the competition.

In Nevada, which holds its caucuses Saturday, the campaign has reverted to "town hall" meetings built around audience questions, rather than the rousing standalone speeches Obama gave in New Hampshire.

The shift in both tone and substance was apparent in a debate Tuesday in Las Vegas. Gone was the sense of easy confidence that Obama carried into the last debate before the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary. This time he was all business on issues such as energy, the mortgage crisis and Iraq.

"We came into New Hampshire on a high," said David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser. "The iconic rallies, combined with the polling, conveyed a sense that we were taking it for granted. She [Clinton] looked like she was working for it, scraping for it." He added, "This is a long process, and this is how you learn."

But the new, more aggressive strategy also poses a challenge for Obama: The more time he spends rebutting Clinton attacks, the more difficult it is for him to focus on the broader themes and uplifting rhetoric that have been drawing voters to him. While Obama may have the facts on his side -- at least in several instances -- engaging with the senator from New York may seem to many voters to be a wearying and obscure show of tit-for-tats that distracts from his overarching offer of a "new kind of politics."

But the need for such a rapid response is heightened by Obama's tendency to say things that his rival's campaign can seize on as fodder for attacks. On Friday, the Clinton campaign organized a conference call with several congressmen to lambaste Obama's remarks, in an editorial board interview in Nevada, about the transformative nature of Ronald Reagan, who, Obama said, "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it." The Obama campaign quickly arranged its own call with congressmen, arguing that the remarks were a historical observation, not an endorsement of Reagan's politics.

On Friday night there was another attack, a radio ad from the Clinton campaign in which basketball star and Clinton friend Earvin "Magic" Johnson calls Obama a "rookie." The Obama campaign immediately produced a rebuttal noting that Johnson in his rookie year won the MVP award in the National Basketball Association finals.

Clinton's charge questioning Obama's credentials on abortion rights surfaced a month before the Iowa caucuses; she cited Obama's votes of "present," rather than "yes" or "no," on some abortion bills in the Illinois Senate as proof that he is shaky on the issue. The Illinois chapter of the National Organization for Women had criticized the votes, but the Obama campaign pointed to statements by Pam Sutherland, the head of the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, saying the "present" votes were part of a strategy to protect legislators in vulnerable districts. Obama has 100 percent ratings from abortion rights groups.

But the mailing in New Hampshire, which stated in bold that Obama was "unwilling to take a stand on choice," arrived much closer to the vote there than in Iowa. His campaign rushed out an automated phone call two days before primary day, but on the final day of the campaign, volunteers reported with dismay that many voters were asking about Obama's stance on abortion rights.

This week, the campaign took a more combative approach. Last Saturday, Obama staffers called Sutherland to ask her to publicly explain the "present" votes. "The facts are the facts -- he helped us with a winning strategy," she said in a conference call with reporters the next day.

Clinton also attacked Obama's position on Social Security in a mailing that went to voters in New Hampshire and Nevada, accusing him of seeking a "trillion dollar tax increase on America's hardworking families." It was a reference to his statements that he would consider addressing Social Security's deficit by raising the $97,500 limit on salaries subject to payroll tax. At times, he has suggested a "doughnut hole" of untaxed salary above the current limit and taxing everything above $200,000.

Obama let the charge go unanswered in New Hampshire. But in Nevada he has offered a defense to his audiences, saying that raising the cap, particularly if limited to those earning more than $200,000, would make the tax more fair to working-class Americans, and noting that Clinton told a voter a few months ago that she was open to the idea. Her principal proposal for addressing Social Security is to restore "fiscal responsibility" and to appoint a study commission.

On Thursday came another Clinton broadside, a radio ad airing in Nevada that charged that Obama is "hip-deep in financial ties" to Chicago-based Exelon, a nuclear plant operator that supports the Yucca Mountain waste site, which is hugely unpopular in this state. Obama got Nevada supporters on the phone to assure reporters of his opposition to the Yucca site, and he rehashed it in his appearances.

In engaging more directly, the Obama campaign has mostly refrained from using its own radio ads or mailings to attack Clinton's record or proposals. A union backing him began running a harshly worded Spanish-language radio ad this week accusing Clinton of suppressing working-class voters because some of her supporters filed an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging caucus sites at Las Vegas casinos.

But, as the Clinton campaign points out, that does not mean that Obama has avoided attacks altogether -- he weaves them into his comments on the stump and in interviews, where his barbs have grown sharper. In Reno on Friday, he ridiculed an answer Clinton gave during the Las Vegas debate about her support for a 2001 Senate bankruptcy bill that was backed by credit-card companies and strongly opposed by consumer groups. Clinton said she was glad the measure never became law. "Think about that," Obama said. "She voted for it even though she hoped it wouldn't pass."

The crowd favorite was Obama's reenactment of how Clinton and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) responded during the debate to a question about their biggest weaknesses. Obama recalled his own answer -- that he is disorganized. "And Senator Edwards says, 'I'm just so passionate about poor people. And helping them.' And then Hillary says, 'My biggest weakness is I'm so impatient about bringing about real change to America.' "

Smiling, Obama added: "This is what I mean. This is political speak. This is what you learn in Washington, from all those years of experience."

Watching the new course Obama has taken, some campaign insiders like to think the New Hampshire loss was not the worst outcome for a candidate who is relatively new to the national stage, compared with Clinton, and followed a relatively easy path to the Senate. Had Obama won in New Hampshire, said one prominent Democrat, he might have become the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, "but he wouldn't be ready for the general election, he wouldn't be ready for the White House."

--MacGillis reported from Washington.

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Xinhua News
January 19, 2008

Backgrounder: Nevada caucuses in U.S. presidential nomination race

Profiles: U.S. 2008 presidential primaries, caucuses forerunners

Calender: U.S. 2008 presidential primary, caucus

Backgrounder: Key players in 2008 U.S. presidential race

Backgrounder: U.S. presidential nomination process and Iowa caucus

Backgrounder: Major events leading up to 2008 U.S. presidential race

Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Both Republicans and Democrats will cast votes in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.

With a large minority population and the fastest growing labor population in the West, the Nevada caucuses is important for the presidential nomination race, especially for the Democrats.

"A candidate who can win in Nevada will be able to win in the West and positioned for victory in 2008, " said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.

Nevada has 1,763 precincts, and Democrats have organized 520 caucus sites, including nine at-large sites which has sparked off some controversy.

With a population of almost 2.5 million, Nevada is one of the fastest growing states.

Voter registration is fairly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

Of 990,815 registered voters for the 2006 general election, 403,020 were Republicans and 396,022 were Democrats.

Local issues include the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, water, land use and growth, and immigration.

In addition to its rapid growth, the state has the highest percentage of union membership in the desert Southwest, a voting age population that is 31 percent minority, and the third-largest population of veterans in the United States.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 18, 2008

Porter looks at recycling nuclear fuel

By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- After inspecting a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in France, Rep. Jon Porter on Thursday said Nevada universities should be at the forefront in researching the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

"According to the French, there is a shortage of folks in this field; and if we can become the premier state in researching the recycling of nuclear fuel and alternative energy sources, the pressure to open Yucca Mountain might be reduced," Porter said.

During reprocessing, uranium and plutonium are separated from other materials in spent nuclear fuel. That could significantly reduce the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste which would be stored at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But for more than 30 years, the United States has banned reprocessing of nuclear waste in an attempt to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons material.

"I think we have ignored a viable option for a number of years, and we need to accelerate efforts to look at reprocessing as a way to diversify our energy portfolio," said Porter, a three-term Republican.

Porter said the cost of completing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain ranges from $80 billion to $90 billion compared to about $15 billion to build a nuclear reprocessing facility.

Porter and Republicans Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Phil English and Bill Shuster, both of Pennsylvania, toured the Areva nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in LaHague, France, last week on a nine-day taxpayer-funded trip.

The lawmakers also inspected energy facilities in Azerbaijan and Turkey, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan crude oil pipeline, which transports 1 million barrels a day and is projected to reach its capacity of moving 3 million barrels daily next year, according to Porter spokesman Matt Leffingwell.

Although not all of the oil goes to the United States, Porter described the BTC pipeline as a vital U.S. energy resource.

"The pipeline allows us to get oil and gas from that region without Russia and Iran who like to play games," he said.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 18, 2008

Nye solar options look bright

By Mark Waite
PVT

The Las Vegas consulting firm BEC Environmental Inc. got a reward from Nye County Commissioners Tuesday for bringing home the bacon, when it comes to renewable energy projects.

Commissioners almost doubled the firms contract, from $120,000 to $220,000.

BEC Environmental recently helped Nye County sign an option with Solar Millenium to lease up to 640 acres of land at the Tonopah Airport for $25,709 annually. Solar Millenium wants access to the land to conduct a feasibility study for a solar powered project.

Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley said Solar Millenium also is negotiating with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to lease two adjacent sections of land for the project. The company responded to a request for proposals for alternative power issued by Nevada Power, which is under a mandate to provide 20 percent green power under Nevada's renewable portfolio standards by 2015.

BEC Environmental Inc. President Eileen Christensen said her company had to subcontract with legal counsel to draw up the Tonopah airport lease. I's important to move quickly in appraising property and approving contracts when someone comes to the table, she said.

If a project fails to materialize, Christensen said, "part of our job is to make sure you have the assurance if those people fall down on the deal you at least have the bond."

Eastley said BEC has also been involved in working with a potential developer which has expressed an interest in establishing "an international port" at the Tonopah Airport.

Nye County Natural Resources Director Jim Marble said the contract with BEC Environmental has been more successful than county officials have expected. But Eastley still pushed for a county business manager to recruit clients.

Christensen's report stated since BEC began economic development work with Nye County the county realized $157,500 from successful grant applications, $492,000 from a congressional grant for renewable energy projects, $150,030 leveraged by facilitating grant applications and a $12,854 option to lease county property.

Individual grants include a $42,500 state cultural affairs grant for the old Nye County courthouse, $50,000 for the former Barrick Bullfrog Mine and $65,000 to abate the old Gabbs recreation hall.

Assistant County Manager Pam Webster said the county will use payment equal to taxes received from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of Yucca Mountain for the $100,000 amendment to the contract.

"We actually did three separate projects in Pahrump. All three of them decided to go elsewhere based on the challenges they faced," Christensen said.

One company that wanted to locate a small, solar powered project in Pahrump, Sithe Global, moved elsewhere after concerns were raised by Valley Electric Association, the local cooperative. VEA is not under requirements to provide a percentage of renewable energy in its portfolio under state law.

But Christensen said, "Commissioner (Gary) Hollis's cooperation working with the local co-op will definitely make a difference in the future."

There's currently two more renewable energy projects under consideration in the Pahrump area, Christensen said. Another four companies expressed an interest in solar projects in the area between Pahrump and Beatty, while another company wants to construct a wind power project in the Beatty area, Christensen said.

Nye County installed anemometers to study wind speeds for the installation of any wind turbines in the Beatty area, she said. The U.S. Air Force has advised which areas would be acceptable for wind power projects that don't interfere with radar at Nellis Air Force Base, Christensen said. That will hopefully avoid a situation like happened back in 2002 with M & N Wind Power when the air force shot down their wind and solar project on the Nevada Test Site at the 11th hour.

A wind power project is also being studied in the tri-county border area intersected by Nye, Esmeralda and Mineral counties, Christensen said.

Renewable energy projects increase the development of transmission lines and other related infrastructure, which will attract other business to the area, her report to the county states.

Two geothermal projects are pending in the Carvers area, in Big Smoky Valley in far northern Nye County. Two companies, Raser Technologies and Ormat Technologies, submitted successful bids during a BLM auction of geothermal leases last August. Those bids resulted in another $561,000 in lease revenue to Nye County, outside of BEC Environmental's work.

"In addition to renewable energy projects we're also working with the contractor out at the Nevada Test Site for a couple of different projects in the Amargosa and Mercury area," Christensen said.

There is also an attempt to persuade the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to focus some of their research projects in Nye County instead of exclusively in Las Vegas, she said.

Eastley said some of the sites developers are looking at were cleaned up using funds from the brownfields grant. That program is targeted toward re-mediation of industrial sites, like the Tonopah Airport, a former army air base.

Eastley said she's traveled extensively throughout the state meeting with power companies, the governor's office and others about alternative energy projects.

While commissioners were pleased with the work of BEC Environmental Inc., Eastley said, "One of the most critical positions we need in Nye County is a business manager. It's someone capable of carrying the ball when it's handed off by them to a developer to the goal line, which is getting that business open. We have no one to negotiate those contracts, we have no one to draft those contracts, we have no one to review those contracts," Eastley said.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 18, 2008

Back then

20 years ago this week

"Tremendous pressure" will be applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain on the Nevada Test Site, Sen. Harry Reid predicted.

Reid commented further, "I think realistically it's going to take three things to stop the dump from coming now."

The first is Yucca Mountain's proximity to the test site's underground explosions and frequent earthquakes in Southern California. Second would be the fact that underground storage is the worst way to store nuclear waste, and third, the transportation of nuclear waste from other states.

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AP Google
January 18, 2008

Omissions in Nuclear Waste Scuffle

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dustup between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama over nuclear waste is a case of the pot calling the kettle radioactive.

Both have taken money from a nuclear power industry that needs a place to put its waste. Both say expanded nuclear power should be considered.

Both oppose the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. Neither says exactly where the waste should go, if not the only permanent repository under development in the U.S.

Those realities were cast aside in the lead-up to Saturday's Democratic presidential caucuses in a state that objects to becoming the nation's nuclear dumping ground.

But like the 77,000 tons of radioactive waste piling up in 39 states, those realities haven't gone away.

THE SPIN:

Clinton radio ad in Nevada: "The Las Vegas Review-Journal said Obama was 'hip deep in financial ties' to one of America's biggest Yucca Mountain promoters — nuclear giant Exelon."

But the candidate who is attacking a rival for taking such money has enjoyed similar largesse.

The Clinton ad correctly quoted the newspaper, although it turns out the paper's editorial board is endorsing Obama in the Nevada caucuses.

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AP Google
January 18, 2008

Obama Debuts New Act in Vegas

By Nedra Pickler

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The White House campaign has brought a new act to Vegas. Barack Obama has stepped up his campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he's trying to use humor to bring her down before this weekend's Democratic presidential caucus.

His argument is starkly different from the "Iowa nice" approach he used in recent weeks when campaigning in the first caucus state. Candidates who go negative there have a history of turning off voters, so Obama rarely criticized Clinton directly in Iowa — instead he made veiled references to "some of my opponents" — and he won the state.

But there's nothing subtle about Las Vegas. With a high-stakes match on the line Saturday, Obama embraced local traditions by debuting a biting political standup routine Thursday night that mocked his rival.

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork — something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, `What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, `Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"

"Folks, they don't tell you what they mean!" he said. Obama chuckled at his own joke before riffing on another Clinton answer in the debate, when she said that she is happy that the bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001 never became law.

"She says, 'I voted for it but I was glad to see that it didn't pass.' What does that mean?" he asked, again drawing laughter from the crowd and himself. "No seriously, what does that mean? If you didn't want to see it passed, then you can vote against it! People don't say what they mean.

"You know what I'm saying is true," he said, then addressed his routine directly at audience members who don't know who they will vote for yet. "Undecideds, remember now, remember what I'm saying."

He continued by responding to a new Clinton radio ad that accused him of having financial ties to supporters of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site that most Nevadans are loath to come to their state.

"I have said over and over again I'm against Yucca," Obama said. "I'm against Yucca Mountain. I think the science is not there. I've never, I've never been for Yucca. Never been for it. Never said I was for it.

"Suddenly you've got the Clinton camp out there saying, `He's for Yucca.' What part of I'm not for Yucca do you not understand?" he said, then laughed along with his audience.

As the laughter subsided, Obama drove home the broader point he's been trying to make against Clinton the entire campaign.

"Those kinds of tricks, that kind of approach to politics is what has to stop because what happens is then nobody believes anything," Obama said. "The voters don't believe what politicians say. They get cynical. Folks in Congress, they'll tell you they're looking out for you — they're looking out for somebody else. We have to change that politics and that's why I'm running for president."

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Obama's new act.

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Chicago Sun-Times
January 18, 2008

Obama: No nuke dump

NEVADA | Jabbed by Clinton for taking donations from Exelon, a major supporter of Yucca Mountain site

Lynn Sweet

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Yucca Mountain is a battle cry in this state.

Congress has been wrestling for years over whether nuclear waste from other states -- Illinois is one of them -- should be stored at Yucca.

Nevadans, to put it mildly, are against designating Yucca as a permanent waste repository, putting the state at odds with Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear operator, supporting a Yucca dump.

Yucca is more than a hot-button issue here. Yucca is radioactive.

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards all pledged the Yucca site would never be developed, reinforcing those pledges at Tuesday's debate.

Now, days before the Saturday caucus vote in Nevada, Clinton, at the debate and in a new paid radio spot running statewide, is highlighting the campaign donations Obama has taken from employees of Exelon.

"So who will shut down Yucca Mountain once and for all? Hillary Clinton," a narrator said. Her spot said, "And Barack Obama? The Las Vegas Review Journal said Obama was, quote, "hip deep in financial ties" to one of America's biggest Yucca Mountain promoters ... nuclear giant Exelon."

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics of donations over $250, Obama's presidential war chest has received $194,750 from 150 Exelon employees, with top executives sending in the checks. Exelon workers, bundled together, rank sixth in Obama's top donor groups.

Though Exelon is a national company, almost all of the Obama contributors live in the Chicago area. Much of the money came in during the first months of the Obama campaign. The money from Exelon executives handed ammunition to Clinton.

The Obama campaign, realizing the potential damage of being seen as waffling on Yucca, organized a conference call Thursday morning to push back. Anti-Yucca activist Bob Fulkerson said "it is completely ludicrous and disingenuous to suggest that somehow Sen. Obama is soft on Yucca Mountain."

At a rally Thursday night at Rancho High School here, Obama brought up Clinton taking him on over Yucca. "I have said over and over again I am against Yucca," Obama said. "What part of 'I am not for Yucca' do you not understand?"

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Daily Green
January 18, 2008

Nevada Primary: Nuclear Waste Takes Center Stage

Democrats (and Ron Paul) Oppose Yucca Mountain Dump

By Dan Shapley

Nuclear waste is already an overheated political issue. Now, it's entering stage left, on the eve of the Nevada primary.

Nevada's Yucca Mountain is home to the proposed central dump for the nuclear waste now being stored at each of the nation's 100-plus nuclear power plants.

All the Democrats running for president have vowed to stop the dump, and cited the lack of a safe and politically viable method for dealing with the long-lived radioactive waste as a reason they oppose or question nuclear power. Republicans have all stated support for nuclear power, though with varying degrees of interest in government subsidies for the industry; Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate to oppose the Yucca Mountain waste repository, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Nevada residents, for the most part, don't much like the idea of being the nation's radioactive waste dump. But the storage of spent fuel – in 130 facilities in 39 states, where some 161 million Americans live within 75 miles, according to the Investor's Business Daily – is proving controversial around the country, particularly since 9/11 brought fears of a terrorist attack into focus.

The Investor's Business Daily suggests repealing the 30-year-old ban on reprocessing nuclear fuel, so that the 56,000 tons can provide electricity to homes and businesses again.

In the era of global warming, nuclear power is getting a second look from environmentalists, the most vocal traditional enemy of the technology. What to do with the waste for the next few thousand years is the question.

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Seattle Post Intelligencer
January 18, 2008

A race to stop nuclear dump

By Joel Connelly

BOULDER CITY, Nev. -- During most of the 20th century, presidential forays into the West were occasions to celebrate concrete achievements -- dams that impounded great rivers, nuclear reactors that manufactured plutonium or irrigation projects that turned the desert (and agribusiness profits) green.

The promises heard from Democratic presidential hopefuls before Nevada's Saturday caucuses could not be more different.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has pledged to "end for good" the U.S. Department of Energy's multibillion-dollar, quarter-century effort to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, in the desert north of Las Vegas.

Clinton is pledging to shift the nation's energy emphasis away to "clean, renewable energy," and told a forum here: "We can't do it if we have to continue to subsidize the carbon industry, while trying to move away from it."

A few hours later, former Sen. John Edwards said, in effect, I'll see you and raise you one. Edwards was speaking in the hall of the Carpenters Union, one labor organization that has been sympathetic to the Yucca Mountain project. He pledged to shut down the nuclear repository, block construction of additional nuclear power plants and declare a moratorium on "building any new coal plants in America."

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois holds open the prospect of more nuclear plants, but has pledged to shut the door on Nevada's waste dump. "I will end Yucca Mountain," he said in a speech Tuesday. "Billions of dollars have already been spent on a mistake."

Edwards' coal moratorium would apply to such projects as a pair of big, 750-megawatt coal-fired power plants proposed for remote Ely, Nev., by two Nevada power companies . Other power companies are separately seeking to build another coal plant near Ely, as well as a power plant in Mesquite northeast of Las Vegas.

It's a 180-degree turn from days when Harry Truman whistle-stopped through the West, warning that Republicans would turn the region "into a wilderness," or when U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Floyd Dominy proposed plugging the Grand Canyon with two high dams. One would have flooded Lava Falls, the Colorado River's most treacherous rapid.

A turnaround in attitudes also has swept the West. A big part is urbanization. The desert has bloomed with cities: Close to 2 million people live in the Las Vegas area and 3 million in Phoenix, with phenomenal growth from Bend to Cedar City to Boise to the Tri-Cities.

In some places, too, rural residents have risen in opposition to what they see as detrimental industrial development.

Small towns and ranch folk along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front even made Dick Cheney blink when the vice president and other Bush administration officials wanted to open federal lands to natural gas development. The feds were forced to back away from their plans.

It's now understood that dangerous activities and polluting industries can't just be stuck away in a remote corner of the country where they'll have no effect.

Atmospheric nuclear testing created a "cancer cluster" in towns downwind of the Nevada test site. Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is not only warming the Earth, but clouding our views of its beautiful places.

Ely, Nev., is pretty far away from population centers, but it's just 50 miles from Great Basin National Park, renowned for having some of the nation's cleanest air and clearest nighttime views. "Like a clean white page, the relatively clean air in the Great Basin can be marred easily," Paul DePrey of the National Park Service wrote to state officials earlier this week.

Critics worry about the effect power plants may have on nearby national parks and monuments. A few years back, Arizona's power lobby had to yield to public pressure and install emission-reducing equipment at the Navajo power plant, located a few miles outside Grand Canyon National Park.

"Views are what the Grand Canyon is about. And Zion. And Bryce Canyon. Without views, what is the Grand Canyon? It's just a big ditch," former Interior Secretary (and Arizona Gov.) Bruce Babbitt exclaimed on a recent Seattle visit.

With Yucca Mountain, a particular message has hit close to home.

About 11,000 rail shipments would be required to fill the nuclear waste repository. It would mean two to three trains, containing caskets full of nuclear fuel rods, passing through Las Vegas each week.

Six big trucks a week could be expected. And, according to Dr. Fred Dilger, a safety expert, the shipments would go on for 38 years.

Nevada still has rural islands of support for nuclear dumps and coal plants. Still, attitudes have changed. In the 1980s, when the feds began nuclear repository work, the state's main interest was to maximize tax revenue. The Legislature created a new Bullfrog County consisting of a square around Yucca Mountain. The huge, rural Nye County, wanting its cut, sued to get rid of the new county.

"The Legislature ultimately retreated, and we were treated to newspaper headlines saying, 'BULLFROG COUNTY CROAKS!' " joked Democratic state Sen. Dina Titus.

According to polls, 80 percent of Nevadans hope the Yucca Mountain project enjoys a similar fate.

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USA Today
January 18, 2008

Editorial:

Yucca. Candidates pander on Nevada's nuclear waste site

Saturday's caucuses in Nevada are the next big showdown in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. So it's predictable, though still deplorable, that the leading candidates are falling all over themselves to pledge opposition to storing the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

The waste storage plan is a reasonable one that has been studied for more than 30 years. There also is no alternative site. If the waste is not stored there, it must be kept, as now, at the plants where it is produced, which is hazardous, not least because of the terrorism potential. But the issue is radioactive in Nevada, especially among Democrats.

(Photo — Yucca Mountain: The nation’s first nuclear waste site could be here, north of Las Vegas. / By Laura Rauch, AP)

Yucca Mountain thus becomes the latest evidence of why it's so destructive to give a few early-voting states so much clout in the presidential selection process. Already this year, candidates have gone to Iowa and promised support for wasteful corn-based ethanol, and to Michigan and pledged fealty to the ailing auto industry. In both cases, candidates catered to a single state's interests by promising bad policy for the nation.

Now Nevada joins the list.

At Tuesday's debate in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all vowed to block the remote Yucca Mountain site if they become president — but failed to offer any alternative except more study.

In a singularly disingenuous bit of political jiu-jitsu, Edwards (who twice voted for Yucca Mountain) said he opposed using the site and then said he opposed building any more nuclear power plants because there's no safe way to dispose of the waste.

In an only slightly less irresponsible comment, Obama said he opposed dumping at Yucca even though his home state of Illinois has the most nuclear plants. Let's see whether we follow the logic: His state is contributing more to the problem than any other, but he opposes the only likely solution.

Clinton said she opposed the Yucca site — and attacked Obama and Edwards for not being quite as opposed as she is. Frankly, it was hard to tell the difference.

The candidates' positions bespeak a lack of seriousness about reducing greenhouse gases and the nation's dependence on oil and coal. The lack of a national repository gives nuclear power opponents a handy reason to oppose the industry's expansion, which is an important piece of any rational energy policy.

Opposing Yucca won't strangle nuclear power, which appears poised for rebirth. But secure, centralized, long-term waste storage is smart, and the science suggests the objections to Yucca can be overcome.

The hang-up, which could haunt the next president, has less to do with science than with not-in-my-backyard politics.

In the East, a spot that has been discussed as a promising place to store nuclear waste is the granite formations of, yes, New Hampshire, home to the nation's first presidential primary. As if!

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Washington Post
January 18, 2008

The Trail

For Both Clinton and Obama, Nuclear Donors

By Matthew Mosk

Nuclear energy has been a hot topic as Democrats steam toward the Nevada caucuses, with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton making her opposition to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain a major component of her campaign there.

Clinton has also made the topic a key point of attack against rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, putting out a radio ad that refers to Obama as being "hip deep in financial ties" to Chicago-based energy giant Exelon Corp., a nuclear plant operator that supports the Yucca waste site.

While Obama called the ad misleading during a campaign stop Thursday, his financial ties to Exelon appear to be inescapable. A cursory search of his campaign finance report shows 158 contributions from people who identify themselves as Exelon employees, totaling more than $150,000.

But Obama's not the only candidate wading deep in a pool of contributions from the nuclear energy industry.

Clinton has received $68,650 in 34 contributions from NRG Energy, and the company's chief executive, David Crane, is listed as one of her Hillraisers -- meaning he has brought more than $100,000 in contributions into the campaign. The Clintons' ties to the New Jersey-based power giant run deeper than that, though. The company committed $5 million to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, according to the web site of the charity run by former president Bill Clinton. The company's six-year commitment is $175 million.

The commitments are not donations to the former president's charity, but promises made by the company to the Global Initiative to spend the money on projects that will "help increase the benefits and reduce the burdens of global interdependence, make a world of more partners and fewer enemies, and give more people the tools they need to build a better future."

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Nieman Watchdog
January 18, 2008

A campaign threat to the nuclear power industry

If a Democrat wins the presidency—and if campaign promises count—it may be time to write the obituary for Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. What happens then to the renewed call for nuclear power in the U.S.?

By Joseph Davis
jdavis2@starpower.net

The top three Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards tussled before the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus over who was more opposed to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The fuss has importance as more than just campaign mud-wrestling.

It may be a sign that it is finally time to write an obituary for the Yucca Mountain plan – and a sign that the industry-ballyhooed "renaissance" of commercial nuclear electric power in the U.S. is headed for trouble – or for a train-wreck.

Being against Yucca Mountain is a pretty good way to get elected in Nevada. At the MSNBC debate in Las Vegas Jan. 15, the three leading Democrats contended over which of them had been against Yucca Mountain earliest and most strongly. Whichever Democrat is nominated, Vegas oddsmakers might well favor that person to win the White House in November, and he or she would presumably be expected to live up to the campaign rhetoric by killing Yucca Mountain..

The cloud over Yucca Mountain's future is much darker than that. Not only will the likely president want it dead, but also the Majority Leader of the Senate, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who has made a career opposing Yucca Mountain and has used his agenda-setting clout against it. The one-two punch of a president and a Senate leader may be the knockout.

On Jan. 8, the Associated Press reported further Energy Department cutbacks in the contract staff working on Yucca Mountain – from a peak of about 250 workers in 2004-2005 to a skeleton crew of about 15 caretakers today. That's because Congress (at Reid's urging) has drastically cut the budget for the repository.

The director of the Yucca Mountain project, Edward Sproat, told Las Vegas Sun reporter Lisa Mascaro that he is now unsure he can meet a June 2008 target for a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Any later, and the NRC would be unlikely to act on it before the Bush administration left office and the NRC changed hands. Two of the five NRC seats are vacant right now, which could magnify the leverage of the next administration.

The original idea, under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and other laws, was to pick a site for nuclear waste disposal based purely on scientific criteria – finding a rock formation to contain waste that would remain highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. But Yucca was born of politics, not science, back in 1987, when Congress told scientists they could pick any site they thought best – as long as it was Yucca Mountain. Nevada never agreed. Some 20 years later, after billions of dollars of study, the Energy Department is not much closer to making an air-tight scientific case.

This year, politics may be the project's final undoing.

Since the Jan. 15 debate, Clinton and Obama have continued to clash over the Yucca issue in radio ads, with Clinton accusing Obama of ties to the nuclear industry and the Obama camp saying that was unfair.

In Nevada, neither candidate, Clinton or Obama, is talking much about the fact that both have expressed willingness to consider expanding commercial nuclear power in the U.S.

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Our "Ask This" questions might first go to the candidates themselves. But they could also be asked of Congress members, Energy Department officials, utility and nuclear industry leaders, and environmentalists.

Q. How specifically do Democratic candidates propose stopping Yucca Mountain?

Q. How do any possible GOP supporters of the repository plan to resuscitate it?

Q. What is their proposed alternative to Yucca Mountain?

Q. What state would it be sited in?

Q. If there's no place to put spent fuel and other waste, should the U.S. start licensing new nuclear power plants?

Q. If not, how do they propose responding to the industry push for new plants?

Q. Will the Energy Department submit an application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by its June 2008 target? And how long will NRC take to act on it?

Q. Will the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission irrevocably approve the start of a new generation of plants before George Bush leaves the White House?

Q. Will President Bush try to fill the two vacancies on the 5-seat NRC before leaving office? And how will Congress respond?

Q. Who might the next president appoint to the NRC?

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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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