Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, February 22, 2008
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MinnPost
February 21, 2008
Critics wonder what happened to Pawlenty's push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Is Gov. Tim Pawlenty backing off his calls for "bold initiatives" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Democrats on a state Senate committee and environmentalists say his administration has cast aside or watered down most of the recommendations that came from his own climate change advisory committee after nine months of study and $40,000 in state funds for a consultant.
The 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, approved with strong bipartisan support and signed by Pawlenty last May, required the governor to submit an "action plan" on how to achieve legally mandated reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
When he signed the law, Pawlenty said: "The best time to have taken action on energy issues would've been 30 years ago. The second best time is right now."
Since then, as chairman of the National Governors Association, Pawlenty has given several speeches imploring states to enact "bold, innovative initiatives" to address climate change.
But his administration's "preliminary action plan" of Feb. 1 drew broad criticism because it sidestepped such issues as adopting California's clean car standard to reduce gas emissions, expanding acquisition of farm and forest lands to "sequester" carbon, and setting policy to expand transit.
Where the 55-member advisory committee urged specific action, Pawlenty's plan often said action should be "encouraged" or "supported" or studied further.
A Pawlenty spokesman dismisses notions that the governor is backing down, saying that some of the solutions are best addressed at regional and federal levels.
Last-minute surprises
When that initial plan was broadly criticism, Pawlenty's point person on energy policy, Deputy Commerce Commissioner Edward Garvey said a revised report would be made in advance of a Feb. 13 hearing before the Senate Energy and Utilities Committee.
A day before the hearing, Garvey met with the committee chairwoman, state Sen. Yvonne Prettner-Solon, DFL-Duluth, to explain how his revised report would specifically address how to meet the law's goals to reduce carbon emissions linked to climate change: 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2015, 30 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050.
But when Garvey testified on Feb. 13, Prettner-Solon said she was "surprised" that Garvey not only didn't have the promised revised report but that the plan wouldn't be made final until sometime after the Legislature adjourns.
"The governor's plan does not address the goals" of state law, said Bill Grant of the Izaak Walton League's Midwest office. Grant was among four members of the governor-appointed Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Committee who told the committee they were "disappointed" with the administration's position.
Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung brushed aside a question about the seeming disconnect between the governor's strong statements on climate change and his administration's refusal to endorse specific actions offered by his advisory committee.
"Ultimately we believe the most effective way to address many of these issues is at the national and regional levels, in order to encourage more comprehensive action and so our state does not become an island," McClung said. "We are hopeful that the 2008 legislative session will build on the significant progress we made in 2007."
That sentiment was echoed at the committee hearing by state Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont. "Maybe we should just take a pause here and catch our breath," Rosen said, referring to the several energy laws signed into law last year.
Legislators taking another look at advisory group's ideas
Prettner-Solon said she will form a working group on ways to meet the state's Next Gen law using the advisory group's recommendations.
Also, DFLers Sen. Ellen Anderson of St. Paul and Rep. Jean Wagenius of Minneapolis announced that they and other legislators would move ahead with bills to reduce greenhouse gases that they believe will "bring tens of thousands of good-paying, reliable green jobs to our state."
The initiatives:
• A Clean Car Act patterned after one adopted by California and 11 other states that would reduce carbon emissions from passenger vehicles by 30 percent by 2016, said the bill's author, Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said California's law is federally pre-empted and cannot be enforced, a position that some 16 states including Minnesota have challenged in court.
• A "Green Solutions Act" would set principles for a "cap and trade" system as Minnesota works to implement a regional system to set "caps" of total carbon emissions allowed and create a market-driven "trade" system where emitters could buy and sell carbon credits. A de-escalating cap would increase costs to emit over time and drive new technology to reduce emissions. Anderson and Rep. Kate Knuth, DFL-New Brighton, are the bills' authors.
Both proposals have been endorsed by Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, all of whom are U.S. senators. Pawlenty led support of a Midwest governors' regional "cap and trade" system that has yet to be implemented.
Anderson and Wagenius also noted there are significant carbon-reduction implications in transit provisions in the Legislature's $8.4 billion transportation bill that faces a Pawlenty veto because it includes the state's first gas tax increase in 20 years.
An initiative to reduce energy consumption and to promote clean energy would result in job creation, Anderson said, and, as the advisory committee has said, be a net economic winner for the state.
Knuth said that view is supported by a major new economic study by the McKinsey and Company's research group that U.S. energy consumption could be halved by 2020 with a total investment of $170 billion, with a 17 percent rate of return.
In presenting his report on the governor's climate change strategies, Garvey told Prettner-Solon's committee that the initial state focus should be to implement energy laws passed in 2007. Garvey said his report is "preliminary" but declined to say when it would be made final.
The new laws require utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources (wind and solar) by 2020, to reduce energy demand by 1.5 percent annually, to acquire lands for perennial crops to grow grasses for biofuels and expand research for biomass fuels (from wood, animal waste and garbage).
Potential bombshell
Pawlenty's plan included a potential bombshell by proposing to lift the state's moratorium on nuclear power plants. His advisory group considered the controversial matter, but said only that nuclear power should be considered after 2025 — if cost and waste disposal issues are resolved.
Building a nuclear waste depository has been an elusive federal goal since the 1970s when U.S. nuclear power plants were expanding, including Minnesota's reactors at Monticello and Prairie Island. The latest estimate is that the Yucca Mountain waste depot in Nevada, already 10 years overdue, may be ready by 2020.
While support for nuclear power expansion is gaining some traction nationally, observers say that a proposal to lift Minnesota's moratorium would be so divisive here that some wonder if the plan was embraced to divert attention from the climate change issue.
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News-Dispatch
February 21, 2008
Spent Nuclear Fuel
Cook Nuclear Storing Assemblies On Site
Editorial
Nuclear energy makes people nervous. So when AEP announced that its Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman would spend $54 million to build a dry cask storage facility to store its spent nuclear fuel assemblies, it caused some concern.
Cook is barely 30 miles north of Michigan City, just off Red Arrow Highway, and it's a place most people don't give a second thought to. That's because since the plant opened more than 30 years ago, it's operated safely. The 650-acre plant has a license to operate its Unit 1 until 2034 and Unit 2 through 2037.
AEP is running out of room to store its used fuel assemblies inside the plant, which it why it wants to construct the dry cask storage area. Without the new storage area, Cook will run out of room to store its spent fuel assemblies by 2015.
Cook has 2,805 spent assemblies stored in a pool inside the plant, with room for 3,613. The plant is refueled every 18 months.
Because a national repository for spent nuclear fuel hasn't been opened as planned in Yucca Mountain, Nev., each nuclear plant is responsible for storing its own. AEP said the dry cask method has been in use for decades and that half of the nation's 64 nuclear plants use the method. Dry casks are 16-feet tall, have steel one-inch thick, are 6-feet in diameter and weight 45 tons. Each cask holds 32 spent fuel assemblies and, when full, are sealed with a 9-inch thick welded steel lid and then covered with a 30-inch thick concrete and steel shield weighing 175 tons.
Whether you agree or disagree over the use of nuclear energy, the fact is the plant is operating and the storage system being proposed has been used for decades without accident.
"We would prefer the federal government meet its obligation to accept used fuel, but until that happens, dry cask storage is a proven, safe and necessary temporary option," said Mike Rencheck, a senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for AEP.
We agree. There needs to be a national solution for storing spent nuclear fuel, but until there is, this is the best and safest option available.
Our Opinion
The Issue: Storage of spent nuclear fuel assemblies on site is necessary because use of the federal storage site has been blocked.
Our Opinion: Open storage in reinforced containers has proven satisfactory at many nuclear plants, and with the safeguards required, this should not create any public concern.
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PBS
February 21, 2008
The Bush Environmental Legacy: 9 Landmark Decisions
Review actions the Bush Administration took over the last eight years that will have a lasting impact on our environment.
* Denies California the Clean Air Act waiver: In January 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency rejected California's request to set stricter vehicle emission standards than the federal law, which in turn prevented more than a dozen other states from setting their own tough emission standards for cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles. To learn more, see NOW's Emission Impossible.
* Interferes with climate change science: In February 2006, The Bush White House revised NASA and other agency documents to remove language regarding climate change, and engaged in a systematic effort to mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming, according to an investigative report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
* Advocates for more nuclear power plants: During President Bush's second term, he pursued a number of measures to advance the nation's use of nuclear energy. This included a plan to make it easier for nuclear power plants to obtain licenses for new reactors, even if those reactors have not been properly tested. The White House's 2008 budget also sought funding for building a long-delayed and controversial nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
* Establishes the world's largest marine conservation area: In 2006, the Bush administration announced plans to designate a string of islands near Hawaii as a national monument, creating the largest protected marine reserve in the world. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands cover 84 million acres and are considered biologically rich. Environmentalists have praised the decision.
* Dismantles the Roadless Rule: In 2005, the Bush administration formally repealed the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which was issued by the U.S. Forest Service in January 2001 to protect the last remaining "wild lands" in our national forests. The rule placed nearly 60 million acres of wilderness in 39 states-nearly one-third of the nation's forests-off limits from logging and road-building. A federal court rebuked the Bush administration in 2006 ordered reinstatement of the Clinton-era Roadless Rule. The Bush administration immediately appealed that decision and then went back to the states and asked them to resubmit their petitions and re-start the entire rulemaking process. Under Bush's plan, state governors decide whether areas in their own states should be opened to resource development. Idaho and several other Western states could open their most national forest lands to commercial activities like logging and oil and gas drilling.
* Opens public land to oil and gas drilling: The Bush administration and Congress have opened up millions of acres of public land in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska's North Slope to oil and gas drilling.
* Declares carbon dioxide not a pollutant: In 2002, the Bush administration redefined carbon dioxide, the primary cause of global warming, so that it is no longer considered to be a pollutant and therefore not subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. (In a defeat for the Bush administration on April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can regulate heat-trapping pollution.)
* Weakens regulations governing air pollution: In 2002 and 2003, the EPA eliminated new-source review regulations, exempting thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and factories from being required to install pollution controls when they replace equipment and make significant changes to their plants. In 2006, the EPA ignored the advice of its own scientists and chose not to implement stricter health standards to limit chronic public exposure to particle soot, a dangerous air pollutant.
* Rejects the Kyoto Protocol: On March 28, 2001, the Bush administration withdrew the United States from the global warming treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that the treaty would hurt the U.S. economy. This treaty, negotiated by more than 100 countries over a decade, calls for the 38 largest industrial nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012 to 5.2 percent below the levels in 1990. The Bush administration continues to be adamant in its rejection of mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Sources:
Clean Air Watch
Natural Resources Defense Council: The Bush Record
Rolling Stone: Crimes Against Nature
The New York Times: Changing All the Rules
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PR Web
February 21, 2008
Congress Cuts Down On Interest-Group-Funded Travel
Members of Congress and their staff accepted barely one-quarter as many trips from private interest groups last year as they did only two years before, according to LegiStorm, a web company that provides information about Congress. Congressional travelers filed reports of 1,320 trips costing $3.73 million that they took courtesy of private interest groups in 2007.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) February 21, 2008 - Members of Congress and their staff accepted barely one-quarter as many trips from private interest groups last year as they did only two years before, according to LegiStorm, a web company that provides information about Congress.
Congressional travelers filed reports of 1,320 trips costing $3.73 million that they took courtesy of private interest groups in 2007, down dramatically from the peaks in trip number and cost. In 2004 4,684 trips costing $10.21 million were taken, and in 2005 4,797 privately funded trips cost $9.77 million. The number of trips reported continued its decline even from the 2006 total of 1,848 trips, although the total spent increased from $3.56 million thanks to more-expensive foreign journeys.
The decline in privately financed travel comes as scrutiny has increased and ethics rules have tightened since the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff blossomed in 2005.
"Not only have congressional trips decreased but the character of those trips has changed dramatically as well over the past two years," said Jock Friedly, a former congressional investigative reporter who is president and founder of LegiStorm. "Increasingly, this travel is sponsored not by well-heeled interest groups with narrow public policy interests but by universities, foundations and think tanks which have broader educational missions. While travel paid by private companies and interests has by no means disappeared, it is far less conspicuous now."
Privately financed congressional travel has been a topic of concern for government watchdogs in recent years because of the extraordinary opportunity that trips offer for private interests to sway public policy.
"It is fascinating to see how greater public scrutiny of these trips appears to have virtually shut down some of the more patently absurd trips," Friedly said. "In the past, we saw such things as cruise ship inspections paid by cruise companies and visits to European capitals to investigate airport baggage security systems. But you can't really find much of that in 2007. It is proof that transparency can modify behavior."
Some of the biggest corporate trip sponsors of the past few years appeared to suspend sponsorship of congressional trips altogether in 2007. Since 2000, Microsoft Corp. has sponsored more than 250 trips to educate members and staffers about relevant issues like piracy and antitrust laws, or even to celebrate the launch of the Xbox video game system. Yet the Seattle-based company sponsored not a single trip last year.
Likewise, the Nuclear Energy Institute has ferried hundreds of congressional aides in recent years to Las Vegas, Nev. where they could take in shows and gamble while learning about the importance of the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository to the nuclear industry. None of those trips occurred in 2007.
Lavishly financed excursions to Taiwan sponsored by an industry group, with major government involvement, had been among the most popular trips taken by congressional staff, with scores of staffers making the trip each year. Last year, there were no trips reported by this industry group and only two total to Taiwan.
The pro-Israel lobby proved its enduring clout as Israel remained a favored travel destination. More than 1 in 5 dollars spent on congressional travel in 2007, or 22%, was to that country, with most of the money coming from the American Israel Education Foundation. In all, $831,331 was spent on 75 separate Israel trips. Germany and China were also top foreign destinations, although the funding was from more diverse sources.
In 2007, the bulk of the congressional trip funding was for more-expensive visits to foreign countries. While foreign countries were the destination in only 423 of 1320 trips, or 32%, these trips cost $2.78 million of the $3.73 million total, or 75%
The busiest month by far was August, when Congress recesses and members and staffers have time for extended foreign trips. Some $1.26 million, or more than one-third of the total for the year, was spent on travel that month.
LegiStorm maintains a comprehensive database of more than 27,000 privately financed congressional trips based on the disclosures required of members of Congress and their staff by the House and Senate ethics committees. LegiStorm.com makes all trips, including images of the actual documents filed, freely available to all users.
Members and staffers have 30 days to file their trip reports so all 2007 records are now supposed to be complete, although in the past a few straggling filers have sometimes taken months or years to submit their paperwork, if they file it at all.
LegiStorm, founded in September 2006, maintains the only database of congressional staff salaries. The site features numerous other resources, such as personal financial disclosures of members of Congress, political headlines and cartoons, House and Senate floor and committee schedules, and reports from the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the White House.
--LegiStorm is a sister company to Storming Media, a provider of Pentagon documents, and PatentStorm, a provider of U.S. patent information.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 20, 2008
DOE probing prohibited documents in database
It's not clear just what problem is
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Department of Energy internal inspectors are investigating DOE document-handling within the Yucca Mountain program, according to a federal official.
It has not been made clear what was being investigated.
The probe was disclosed in a recent report circulated within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC hosts the electronic library of Yucca Mountain documents that are pertinent to the Energy Department's bid for a license to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
A Jan. 25 report from library administrator Dan Graser said the NRC was informed the Energy Department inspector general was investigating the discovery of "prohibited access, non-official business documents" submitted by DOE for the database.
Contacted Friday, Graser declined to discuss what was found or what was being investigated.
"As far as I know, it is still ongoing within the DOE IG office," Graser said of the probe.
A spokeswoman for Inspector General Gregory Friedman said she would not confirm or deny the report.
Ward Sproat, director of the DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management that runs the Yucca project, said Monday he was unaware of any document investigation.
Sproat said he met with Friedman on Thursday on other matters, "and he mentioned absolutely nothing about it."
The electronic library, called the licensing support network, contains more than 3.5 million documents pertaining to the proposed nuclear waste repository about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Attorneys for the state of Nevada have complained to the NRC that the database is "enormously bloated" with multiple copies of documents, empty e-mails, clearly obsolete content and employee personal e-mails.
Graser said the investigation is unrelated to that content.
"It is none of that stuff," he said. "Those are not the sorts of things the inspector general investigates."
--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.
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Idaho Mountain Express
February 20, 2008
Until waste problem is resolved, no more nuclear plants
Disposing of waste generated by U.S. homes and industry became a crisis in the 20th century and seems to be worsening in the 21st century.
Americans generated 251 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2006, or about 4.6 pounds per person per day (compared to 2.7 pounds per person per day in1960). Recycling diverted over 80 million tons from waste dumps. But the remaining mountains of waste forced communities to find expensive new land for disposal.
By comparison, a far more menacing industrial waste continues to elude disposal and continues to pose one of the planet's riskiest and costliest threats.
Where and how to store nuclear waste has been debated for decades without a satisfactory conclusion. Yet, nuclear generating plants have found a new surge of support from some seeking alternatives to coal-fired plants.
Not so fast.
Before new nuclear plants are built, the United States must end the delays and wavering on storing nuclear waste, which has been accumulating at 122 temporary storage sites in 39 states for more than 20 years. The estimated 53,440 metric tons of radioactive waste accumulated from nuclear power plants would cover a football field 10 feet deep. The military has generated another 22,000 large canisters of nuclear waste.
Outside of the industry, few realize or know this: Because it has not fulfilled its pledge to store nuclear waste permanently, the Department of Energy has been compensating nuclear plant operators for the on-site storage—so far paying $342 million out of the government's general fund.
Nuclear power customers are paying twice for the dilly-dallying on storage—the first time through a small surcharge on power generated by nuclear plants, and now through tax funds used to pay the industry to store waste.
Current estimates foresee the possibility of $35 billion in eventual penalty payments by the federal government.
The giant underground storage facility at Nevada's Yucca Mountain won't open until 2020 at the earliest—and not at all, if critics have their way. Alternative disposal methods--firing waste into outer space, burying it under ocean islands, recycling waste as a nuclear fuel and others--have their own critics and risks.
The average U.S. nuclear plant creates 20 tons of new radioactive waste per year. By the year 2005, a total of 104 plants were operating. They continue to add more waste and multiply the handling costs to taxpayers and the possible risks to health.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be grossly irresponsible to license any new plants until the most compelling nuclear problem--getting rid of existing waste or storing it well--remains unsolved.
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Senator Harry Reid
February 18, 2008
Reid Calls On Senior DOE Official To Level With The American People About Yucca Mountain
Dump Director to Give Progress Report on Monday
Las Vegas, NV – Nevada Senator Harry Reid called on Ward Sproat, the Director of the proposed dump at Yucca Mountain, to level with the American people about the future of the dump. Sproat is scheduled to deliver an update of the dump’s progress and priorities for 2008 on Monday in Washington, DC.
“I hope the Energy Department can find it within itself to actually shoot straight with the American people about the future of Yucca Mountain,” said Reid. “The dump will never be built, especially after the devastating blow Congress dealt it last year when we cut its funding by $108 million. As support for the dump deteriorates among the nuclear industry and among its few cheerleaders in Congress, it could not be more clear that its days are numbered. The Energy Department should stop wasting taxpayer dollars and look at real solutions to the nation’s nuclear waste challenges that don’t put the lives of millions of Americans at risk by hauling it across the country.”
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KVBC
February 19, 2008
Yucca Mountain official puts no date on opening amid budget cuts
The top official overseeing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump says he cannot say when the project will open any more.
The department had planned to open by 2017 -- but Ward Sproat says it has now abandoned that goal.
Sproat is the director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Officials say the project will need at least $1 billion a year to construct, but the most recent budget capped funding at about $400 million a year.
Sproat said in a speech Monday in Washington that a firm date cannot be set until the funding issue is resolved. He said liabilities from lawsuits by utility companies will balloon to $11 billion by 2020 if nothing is done.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 19, 2008
Lack of money spells uncertainty for Yucca nuke dump, DOE says
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Long-range prospects for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain are clouded because there is no fix in sight for budget shortfalls plaguing the Nevada program, a Department of Energy official said Monday.
Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said DOE is poised to meet a key licensing milestone by the end of the summer after budget cuts forced the latest in a series of retoolings for the repository, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But Sproat said the department has abandoned its "best achievable" goal of having a repository opened by 2017. Now, he said, DOE is reluctant to set a new target.
"A firm date cannot be set until the funding issue is resolved," Sproat said in a speech to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the organization of state public service officials.
Sproat urged them to step up lobbying for Congress to pass a bill that would loosen the strings on the fund earmarked to pay for the repository.
Ratepayers for nuclear utilities are charged a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour of electricity they consume, a rate that has built the fund to a $21 billion balance.
In time, more than $1 billion will be needed annually for construction, DOE officials say. Budget caps in Congress, plus the efforts of repository opponents such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have limited annual payouts to about $400 million.
"Until we get this issue fixed I can't, nor can anyone else, tell you with any degree of certainty when the repository is going to open," Sproat said. "This is the single biggest issue we as a country need to address so this repository can go forward."
At $400 million a year, "we are never, ever going to build this repository with that kind of cash flow funding; it just ain't going to happen," he said.
The longer a repository goes unopened, the more taxpayers will pay to utilities who have sued the Energy Department for delays, Sproat said.
If Yucca were to open by 2017, the liability would be some $7 billion, he said. A 2020 opening would cost $11 billion in settlements and judgments.
Sproat said those numbers are getting the attention of lawmakers.
"We are talking big bucks," he said. "It is one of the levers that gets people interested and gets them to understand we just can't leave things the way they are."
In the near term, Sproat said, DOE plans to file a repository license application "sometime this summer" with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Spending limits engineered by Reid in this year's budget caused DOE to push back a June 30 target.
--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.
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Las Vegas SUN
February 19, 2008
Sun editorial:
An era of scrutiny
Resigning accountability chief uncovered waste and demanded accountability
David M. Walker has announced he will resign March 12 from his post as U.S. comptroller general, a position that made him chief of the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO was created in 1921 as a nonpartisan entity charged with reviewing how the government spends its money. Congress uses GAO data, recommendations and testimony in making its decisions.
Under Walker’s guidance, the GAO has provided crucial and often critical reports and testimony on such important issues as health care spending, Social Security and the Iraq war.
For example, it was the GAO that documented the woeful lack of government oversight in the federal assistance offered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And its auditors drew sharp criticism from the Bush administration for a September report that said the United States had failed to meet most of its Iraq reconstruction benchmarks.
It also was the GAO that, in 2001, said the Defense Department’s proposal to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was tainted by a “failed scientific process.”
From revealing the vague language in loan documents that helped fuel the current mortgage crisis to government computer system glitches that left personal information unprotected, the GAO has helped to provide Congress and the American people with a candid view of government’s shortcomings. Such knowledge is the first step toward solutions.
Walker has ridden herd over these investigations, butting heads with Bush administration officials who refused to cooperate. He is leaving five years short of a full 15-year comptroller general’s term to take the helm of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank dedicated to finding solutions to what it calls “key sustainability challenges” such as energy consumption and shrinking funding for entitlement programs, health care and education.
We hope the next comptroller general who would be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate will possess the kind of unyielding thoroughness and perseverance that Walker brought to the GAO.
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Heartland Institute
February 19, 2008
Over Time, Nuclear Power Skeptic Becomes Advocate
Written By: Review by Jack Dini and Jay Lehr, Ph.D.
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
Power to Save the World
By Gwyneth Cravens
Knopf, 2007
464 pages, $27.95, ISBN 978-0307266569
Initially a skeptic about radiation and nuclear power, Gwyneth Cravens spent nearly a decade immersing herself in these subjects for her new book, Power to Save the World. After visiting mines, experimental reactor laboratories, power plants, and remote waste sites, she changed her views about nuclear energy.
You name it, she investigated it. She has thoroughly researched Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, the Nevada test site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), and Yucca Mountain. After all this effort she refutes the claims against nuclear power with more facts than we have seen in any other book on this subject. Some useful examples follow.
Radiation Exposure
The annual public radiation exposure permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for nuclear facilities is 15 millirem. The average person in the United States is exposed to 200 millirem of radiation per year. If you spent all your time in Grand Central Station, you would get an annual radiation dose of nearly 600 millirem.
At Three Mile Island, the total calculated dose Pennsylvanians received after the accident was far less than the measured dose New Mexicans receive from nature every day. Interestingly, in New Mexico the cancer rate is much lower than the national average although natural background radiation is much higher than the national average. The same is true for Denver.
Residents of Finland receive an annual dose of radiation three times higher than a person would receive living in the zone surrounding Chernobyl now excluded from habitation.
As of 2006, nuclear-powered submarines and ships had safely traveled a total of 134 million miles and registered 5,700 naval reactor years of safe operation with a total of 254 reactors.
Hormesis
What may explain these facts is the biological theory of hormesis: Organisms are made more resilient by low-level exposure to a substance that is toxic in larger doses. Cravens covers this topic, but in attempting to present both sides of the issue she does not cover the wide literature base of studies on animals and humans that confirm the beneficial effects of low-level radiation.
Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst has published extensively in this field and is a good source for additional information.
In spite of this science, governments continue to use the linear no-threshold model, which says any radiation dose, no matter how small, is harmful. Misuse of this model has produced spending in excess of $1 trillion in the United States alone for negligible health benefits just for government environmental cleanup programs, while truly significant measures that would protect the public health remain unfunded.
Bombs, Accidents
The idea that radiation from atomic bombs has caused a substantial increase of genetic mutation has no scientific support. There is no evidence of increased mutation, genetic diseases, or cancer in animals or humans following exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation. This is true even around Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where atomic bombs ended the war with Japan.
Likewise, there is no scientific evidence the population near Chernobyl experienced an increase in overall cancer incidence, mortality, or nonmalignant disorders related to radiation exposure following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant failure.
The worst large-scale consequence from Chernobyl has been thyroid cancer in Ukrainian and Belarusian children. Readily available potassium iodide tablets would have protected the children by preventing the uptake of radioactive iodine 131, but Moscow unnecessarily delayed allowing distribution of the tablets. Even so, 95 percent of the affected children recovered completely.
Chernobyl was a failure not of nuclear power but of the Soviet political system. The predicted increase in cancer from Chernobyl would probably be too small to notice but for the extra scrutiny the Chernobyl area receives.
Cleaner than Coal
The annual solid residues of coal combustion come to 890 pounds per American. Cravens calculates that if an American got all his or her electricity from coal over a lifespan of 77 years, that person's mountain of solid waste would weigh 68.5 tons. A coal-fired plant releases more radiation than a nuclear plant.
The corresponding amount of waste from a lifetime of nuclear power, by contrast, would weigh two pounds and fit into a soda can. And of that amount, only a trace is long-lived.
The many experts Cravens consulted were adamant in pointing out terrorists could neither penetrate the security at an American nuclear plant nor make an atomic bomb from its fuel.
Regarding future nuclear power plants, some estimates indicate a plant of standardized, streamlined design, with many more built-in, passive safety features, and therefore fewer pumps, valves, and other components, could be built in five years, as is already being accomplished in France. The price per plant comes to about $3 billion, which makes nuclear power much less expensive than solar or wind power.
Spent Fuel Storage
Storing spent nuclear fuel poses no problem. The Yucca Mountain site in Nevada was supposed to open in 1998, but delays have continued to plague the project. And Cravens mentions an alternative we had not heard: the Sub-Seabed Operation.
Cravens points out that in the ocean there is a vast red-clay formation that has maintained great stability and uniformity over millions of years--far longer than the half-lives of almost all the radionuclides in nuclear waste. The clay has low permeability and the consistency of peanut butter.
A pointed steel canister containing high-level nuclear waste dropped to the ocean floor would sink through this muck to a depth of 30 meters. The continuous rain of sediments from above would bury it deeper. Many thousands of square miles of seabed like this exist under many miles of water hundreds of miles from shore.
Such sites, though costing several orders of magnitude less than Yucca Mountain, have long been overlooked as potential storage sites for spent nuclear fuel.
Wind, Solar Alternatives
Although Cravens believes alternate energy sources such as wind and solar are important, she offers an honest assessment of their huge limitations.
For example, a 2006 National Academy of Sciences study found the Indian Point Nuclear Plant near New York City produces about 10 percent of the electricity for New York State. To replace that power with a wind farm would require 300,000 acres--nearly 500 square miles--of windmills operating under the most favorable conditions.
At the McGuire Nuclear Station in North Carolina, where strong winds are rare, 50 square miles of photovoltaic cells would be required to replace the nuclear facility with solar power.
Newly Discovered Reality
Cravens' book demonstrates how, time and again, political fear-mongering and misperceptions about risk have trumped science in the dialogue about the feasibility of nuclear energy.
Among the closing words from this onetime skeptic are these: "How amazing it was to find that something so completely familiar turned out in reality to be so very different from what I had assumed all my life."
Our only complaint with the book is that many of these facts are embedded in a long, long narrative story. Cravens is primarily a novelist, and the book reads like it, but her precision in detailing all the science is nothing short of amazing.
This book will give you all you need for comprehensive future references regarding radiation and nuclear power.
--Jack Dini (jdini@earthlink.net) is an environmental columnist and author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director for The Heartland Institute.
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News Dispatch
February 19, 2008
Cook Wants To Store Used Fuel
$54 million facility would seal airtight steel canisters with concrete, officials say.
Julie Swidwa
For The News-Dispatch
BRIDGMAN, Mich. - American Electric Power will develop a dry cask storage facility at its Cook Nuclear Plant to temporarily store used fuel beginning in 2011, AEP has announced.
The Cook Nuclear plant is about 30 miles north of Michigan City on Red Arrow Highway.
The $54 million facility will seal used fuel in airtight steel canisters with concrete, designed to withstand tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, missiles, airplanes, temperature extremes and sabotage.
The storage facility at Cook will sit on a two-acre concrete pad near the center of the 650-acre property, isolated from public view, spokesman Bill Schalk said.
Some environmental organizations petitioned the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2006 to study the effects of earthquakes on nuclear waste storage casks, but federal regulators concluded there is little threat.
Environmentalists are appealing, alleging a strong earthquake would present a safety risk.
Cook plant has stored its used fuel assemblies in a steel-lined concrete pool inside the plant. Even at plants that use dry cask storage, the used fuel assemblies have to be cooled in water before being stored.
Schalk said the pool at Cook contains 2,805 used assemblies and has a capacity of 3,613. Under current projections, the pool will reach capacity in 2013. The plant refuels its units once every 18 months.
Without another storage option, there would be no place to put used fuel and the plant could not continue to operate past 2015. Cook's operating licenses run through 2034 for Unit 1 and 2037 for Unit 2.
The U.S. Department of Energy was supposed to have opened a repository for used nuclear fuel by 1998, but that process was stalled due to opposition to store fuel inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Mike Rencheck, AEP senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, said Cook provides a reliable source of electricity for AEP.
"We would prefer the federal government meet its obligation to accept used fuel, but until that happens, dry cask storage is a proven, safe and necessary temporary option," Rencheck said. He said AEP decided to announce plans to give people a chance to comment or raise questions.
Schalk said the schedule calls for the design phase to be completed by September 2009, construction to be completed by October 2010 and the first phase of cask loading to be completed by November 2011.
The 16-foot tall, 1-inch thick steel casks are 6 feet in diameter and weigh 45 tons. Each cask will hold 32 spent fuel assemblies, and each cask will be sealed with a 9-inch thick welded steel lid. A 30-inch-thick concrete and steel shield weighing 175 tons will be placed over each cask, and the casks will be put inside the storage building.
"You fill each canister with 32 fuel assemblies, then weld that shut, and that fuel should never have to be handled again," he said.
Schalk said about half of the 64 nuclear plants in the United States use dry cask storage.
--Julie Swidwa is a reporter for The Herald-Palladium in St. Joseph, Mich.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 18, 2008
Presidential Politics: All factions make case for victory
Nevada Republicans, Democrats tout strengths of McCain, Clinton, Obama
By Molly Ball
Review-Journal
If you ask Nevada Democrats, Republicans are in trouble in November.
Seeing historic numbers and enthusiasm in their favor, both nationally and in the state, the Democrats are practically preparing the ticker tape right now.
The almost certain Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, is in favor of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and not popular with the party's conservative base, they note.
But to the Republicans, it's the Democrats who have treacherous waters to navigate.
They point out that presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton remain locked in a bitter and exhausting battle, potentially sowing permanent divisions and giving the GOP a head start on coming together.
"If it (the Democratic race) goes on and on, that benefits the Republicans," said Republican Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, an early McCain supporter. "The longer it goes on, the more likely there will be division."
It may be true, Woodbury said, that Democrats have an edge in voter enthusiasm this year, but presidential elections are about the candidates.
"If Hillary Clinton is nominated, that's going to energize Republicans," he said. "And once the novelty of Senator Obama wears off and he has to go face to face on all these issues, the same thing will occur there."
But Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, rejected the idea that the Democrats are in for a protracted fight.
"She's a dead man walking," Segerblom said of Clinton. The legislator and longtime party activist campaigned for John Edwards until he dropped out last month; Segerblom now supports Obama.
"Something could happen to him, but barring that, the numbers are there, the sentiment is there," Segerblom said of Obama. He predicted Clinton would drop out after next month's Ohio and Texas primaries.
The Democratic race took a vicious turn in the run up to the Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses, with powerful Democratic interests in the state pitted against each other. The Culinary union, jumping late on the Obama wagon, aired attack ads against Clinton, while the Clinton campaign, backed by most of the Democratic establishment, was supportive of a lawsuit against the Nevada Democratic Party that challenged workers' right to caucus on the Strip.
In the end, Clinton won the majority of precinct delegates here, but Obama could get more of the state's national convention delegates because he performed well in rural and Northern Nevada, a confusing and conflicted result that serves as a good metaphor for the Democratic caucuses.
Segerblom, however, said the conflicts on the surface didn't reflect the mood of the rank and file.
"Everybody I've talked to says, 'I like Hillary, but Obama's great, too,' or vice versa," he said. "I know there was bitterness in the caucus between institutional forces, but on the whole, it's insignificant."
Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas, a major Clinton supporter, disputed the notion that his candidate was dead in the water, but agreed that there would eventually be party unity.
"I firmly believe that we can come together," he said. "I, myself made a promise since before I endorsed, to Obama, to Edwards and all the other candidates, that whoever ended up getting the nomination I would endorse and personally support and go out and actively campaign for them. If Senator Clinton gets the nomination, I would hope the leaders of the other campaigns get on board with the same cause, which is winning the general election."
Kihuen noted that before he endorsed, he helped lure all the candidates to his Assembly district to campaign, something his constituents appreciated. And he said that while Clinton and Obama supporters have strong feelings about their candidates, they don't differ widely on the issues, whereas many Republicans differ with some of McCain's basic stances.
An original Obama supporter, state Sen. Steven Horsford said Obama's increasingly large margins of victory in recent contests showed a party gravitating toward him, and argued that the huge overall Democratic turnout in the primaries was a good sign for the ticket.
"There has been a reflection of the amount of energy and overall momentum and galvanized support there is out there, not just for Barack Obama, but for Democrats in general," he said. He argued that the drawn-out nature of the Democratic race could even be a plus for the party because voters in more states have felt like they had a say in making the eventual nominee.
Then there's the fact that few Nevada Republicans went for McCain in their Jan. 19 caucuses. He came in third, with 13 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney's 51 percent.
Romney endorsed McCain last week, and Woodbury said his and other candidates' supporters would come around, though it might take some time.
"I think there will be some grumbling for a while among those who supported other candidates, but I think in the end, confronted with the choice between the Democratic nominee and John McCain, or even the choice of sitting it out, I think they nearly all will support John McCain," he said.
But Woodbury acknowledged one of the problems McCain faces: the sentiment in the Republican base that he's not conservative enough.
"I don't hear Democrats saying they're going to support the other candidate like some of the right-wing commentators on McCain," he said.
A prominent Romney supporter, former Gov. Kenny Guinn, said he was glad his candidate endorsed McCain. But Guinn, who while in office also faced criticism for being insufficiently conservative, expressed misgivings for other reasons.
"I wish he had a different attitude toward Yucca Mountain, but it looks like we'll be in the same position with him as we are with Bush. We just have to work around him," Guinn said of McCain. "And then I certainly hope he will be more receptive on the issue of state regulation of boxing. And with gaming, he had pushed at one time to have it regulated on the federal level, but historically Nevada's done an outstanding job."
Despite all that, Guinn said he was behind the Republican ticket. "You can't have a presidential candidate where everybody agrees on every issue they have," he said. "I try to look at it and say, he has a very strong sensitivity to national security for America, and that's very important."
Republicans, he said, have a head start that will be a major advantage. "I think we're fairly well set up, the Republicans, now, with plenty of time to organize and raise money for the general (election), while the Democrats are still competing."
Polls that have pitted McCain against the Democratic candidates in Nevada have shown mixed results.
In a December Review-Journal poll, McCain was the strongest Republican candidate, beating Clinton in a hypothetical general election by 17 percentage points and Obama by 7 points.
Against Obama, McCain drew 17 percent of Democrats, 49 percent of independents and 74 percent of Republicans. Obama drew 10 percent of Republicans, 32 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats.
However, in the fast-moving stages of the campaign, that poll was a long time and many candidates ago. Rudy Giuliani, whose campaign totally fizzled in January, was the Republican leader in it.
A more recent but not totally trusted poll had Obama trouncing McCain in Nevada, 50 percent to 38 percent. The Rasmussen Reports survey had McCain beating Clinton 49 percent to 40 percent.
Rasmussen conducts automated telephone polls, which some consider unreliable. The Nevada survey, conducted last week, carried a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Nevada caucus-goers who supported Romney are "not convertible by the Democrats," said University of Nevada, Reno political scientist Eric Herzik. But, he said, "now it's a question of do they stay engaged."
If Obama is the Democratic nominee, he said, "he could pick off a significant portion of even conservative Republicans. That's an anti-Washington, D.C. vote. I've talked to plenty of Republicans who said, 'I'd never vote for Hillary Clinton, but Barack Obama's interesting. He's offering change.'"
As new voter registrations continue to be tabulated, Democrats continue to gain strength. As of Thursday, with all the new registrations from the day of the caucus processed, there were nearly 69,000 more active registered Democrats than Republicans in Clark County, an edge of more than 10 percentage points.
Since shortly before the caucus -- Jan. 16 -- Clark County Democrats had gained more than 17,000 registrations, while Republican registrations had declined slightly, according to the Clark County Election Department.
President Bush won Nevada by 21,500 votes in 2004.
Statewide data isn't yet available, and Clark County has long been the state's Democratic stronghold.
But Nevada is considered a "swing state," closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, with the mood of independent voters likely to be the determining factor in which party prevails.
In 1992, the first time Nevada went for the Democratic presidential ticket since 1964, Segerblom was chair of the state party and said there was a similar feeling of excitement in the air.
"The stars have to be in alignment, and from what I can tell, they're in alignment this year," he said.
--Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 18, 2008
Coming to Lake Mead: MX well groundwater
By Henry Brean
Review-Journal
In 1979, the U.S. military began work on a short-lived scheme to hide a mobile arsenal of nuclear missiles in the Nevada desert.
The MX missile project quickly collapsed under the weight of its own cost and scale, but not before hundreds of exploratory wells had been drilled across the region in search of water for the effort.
Now these Cold War relics have become key components of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to tap groundwater across the eastern part of the state.
The authority has teamed with the U.S. Geological Survey and Nevada Division of Water Resources to take periodic measurements from about 40 MX wells.
A few of the holes have been fitted with equipment to monitor them continuously.
The authority is using data from the old wells as it presses for federal and state permission to build a massive pipeline network into rural areas of Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties.
Last week's state hearing on the Lincoln County portion of the water project included groundwater readings made possible by the MX project.
So did a 2006 hearing on the authority's plans in White Pine County's Spring Valley.
"I think it's cool. No data goes to waste," said Jeff Johnson, division manager for the authority's surface water resources department.
The notion is reminiscent of a certain Bible passage about beating swords into plowshares. But many rural residents don't see much difference between nuclear missiles and SNWA pipelines; to them, both look like attempts to exploit their quiet corner of the state.
"There is a strong sense of powerlessness," said Louis Benezet, who lives in the mountains east of Pioche.
On Feb. 8, he spoke out against the water authority's pipeline plan during a public input session held as part of the most recent state hearing on that project.
Benezet's family roots in Lincoln County date back to 1910. He became a full-time resident of the county in 1980, just as early work on the MX project was gearing up.
He said he protested the work back then because it was "indiscriminately tearing up the fragile desert landscape."
Since then, he and his neighbors have battled against plans for a hazardous waste incinerator in one nearby valley and rail routes in another that one day could carry radioactive cargo to Yucca Mountain.
"There have always been people who have wanted to put things here that other people won't put up with other places," Benezet said.
Steve Bradhurst understands the links between the pipeline and MX missile project as well as anyone.
In 1980, Nevada Gov. Robert List appointed him to head up the state office established to assess the MX project.
Bradhurst now serves as executive director of the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, a coalition of eight rural counties launched in 2005 to study and protect water resources in those areas.
"It's sort of like we're back to the argument we had in '80 and '81 ... when it looked like rural Nevada was going to be a sacrifice area for the rest of the country," he said. "(Now) it looks like rural Nevada is going to be a sacrifice area for growth and development in Southern Nevada.
"It raises the same principal question: Doesn't this area have a right to a future?"
Then-President Carter pressed for the MX project, which military planners dreamed up as a way to protect the nation's nuclear missiles from a Soviet first strike.
The $30 billion plan involved the construction of up to 4,600 underground launch sites and a 200-mile "racetrack" on which rockets mounted horizontally would be shuttled from site to site. With no way to know which site had a missile in it at any given time, the Soviets would be forced to target them all.
"It was a shell game," Bradhurst said. "The idea was the rest of the country would be able to respond while Nevada and Utah disappeared. We would be the sponge to absorb Russia's nuclear arsenal."
The project would have affected 35,000 square miles in Nevada and Utah. Its proposed footprint took in seven Nevada counties and drew staunch local opposition.
"Before Yucca Mountain there was MX," said State Archivist Guy Rocha. "The overwhelming number of Nevadans opposed MX."
They needn't have worried so much. Carter's plan faded quickly. Ronald Reagan saw to that. Nine months after he was sworn in as president, he announced he was scrapping the plan.
By then, though, some 219 exploratory wells already had been drilled in 26 Nevada watersheds.
The U.S. Geological Survey eventually assumed control of the superfluous MX wells, including an especially large one that has proved important to the water authority.
The hole known as MX-5 is located on the Pahranagat Wash in the Coyote Springs Valley, about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. When the Air Force drilled it to a depth of 626 feet in 1981, it produced what Johnson called "an incredible amount of water," nearly 4,000 gallons a minute.
Then the missile project petered out, and the federal government traded the well and the 42,800 acres surrounding it to defense contractor Aerojet in 1988.
Eight years later, the company sold the still-vacant land to high-powered Nevada lobbyist Harvey Whittemore.
In 1998, he persuaded the water authority to buy the well and about half of his water holdings in the Coyote Springs Valley for $25 million, the same amount he is said to have paid for the entire property.
Today, MX-5 is easy to miss. It's little more than a rust-covered pipe jutting a few feet from the ground just off state Route 168, a few miles east of U.S. Highway 93.
That will change in the coming weeks, though, when work begins on a 16-mile, $21 million pipeline that will allow the authority to use water from MX-5.
The water will be treated at the well site for elevated levels of arsenic and piped east to the distribution system for the Moapa Valley Irrigation District. From there, it will flow into the Muddy River and then into Lake Mead, where the authority will capture it using existing intake pipes.
"We anticipate moving water in late '09, early 2010," Johnson said.
When that occurs, it will mark the first time groundwater from outside the Las Vegas Valley has flowed from local taps.
If authority officials have their way, it won't be the last.
By 2015, they hope to tap billions of gallons of water a year from Eastern Nevada and pump it to Las Vegas through a pipeline that is expected to cost well over $2 billion.
The authority's case for its pipeline relies on data from the MX wells, particularly in Spring Valley where the agency plans to tap more groundwater than anywhere else.
The 1 million acre basin in eastern White Pine County is home to 17 monitoring wells from the missile project. Only Railroad Valley in Nye County has more MX wells.
"These wells are the only view we have into the ground. We need to see as many views as possible," Johnson said. "Anything out there that can be monitored, we're monitoring it. We're leaving no stone unturned."
Water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy compared her agency's use of the wells to another wartime project that has found a "peaceful application," the water line built from Lake Mead to the chemical plants in Henderson during World War II. That straw continues to supply lake water to Nevada's second largest city.
The MX project could prove almost as valuable. "Look at all the science we got out of it," Mulroy said.
"It has also saved the authority a little bit of money because drilling wells isn't cheap," Johnson added.
Rocha said, "Without taking a position on whether this water importation plan is good, bad or indifferent, I think it is a good use of something. If I was the Southern Nevada Water Authority, I would use this resource."
Bradhurst agreed.
"It's a credit to the water authority," he said. "They should be using any information that's available."
As for which project is worse, the pipeline or the missile array, Bradhurst said it's almost too close to call. Although a swath of land would have been closed off from public access had the MX been constructed, it "wasn't going to take a lot of water out of the ground," he said.
But as far as Benezet is concerned, the choice between well heads and warheads is no contest.
"The MX was totally outlandish. It was totally insane," he said. "I don't have anything good to say about the pipeline, but at least I can understand it."
--Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean @reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0350.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 17, 2008
Yucca Mountain e-mails show staff yucked it up
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Deep in a public database, amid seemingly endless pages of almost indecipherable technical discussions of the Yucca Mountain repository, there is this: an e-mailed photo of a carved Halloween pumpkin "vomiting" seeds and pulp into a toilet.
Elsewhere on the Web network are e-mails from employees sharing recipes and restaurant menus, off-color jokes, movie schedules for the Suncoast, personal musings and prayers.
A 1999 message circulated among a half dozen women discussed an Ann Landers column comparing the merits of husbands who are geologists with those of husbands who are engineers.
"He keeps my truck purring! what more can you ask?" wrote an engineer's wife.
One from December 1998 is a cartoon of Santa Claus squatting over a chimney, drawers dropped, with the caption, "How to Tell You've Been Really Bad."
In preparation for licensing, screening software at the Department of Energy combed through voluminous documents that were gathered over years within the computers of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste program.
As they steered 3.5 million items into an Internet database, it was perhaps inevitable that somebody's photo of their baby dressed in a cable-knit sweater and the theme lyrics to the old "Green Acres" TV show would be moved along with more pertinent, but less interesting, research material.
Attorneys for the state of Nevada gathered samples and sent them to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this month, complaining that the DOE database was "enormously bloated."
They said the network is cluttered with duplicates, clearly obsolete content and empty e-mails, plus messages like the one containing the joke about the woman who ties a ribbon around the testicles of her snoring dog.
"Some of this is pretty creative stuff," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Loux's attorneys and technicians regularly search the database as they prepare legal challenges to the repository.
DOE spokesman Allen Benson said some nonrelevant e-mails mistakenly were vacuumed into the database, which is called the Licensing Support Network, or LSN.
"People use e-mails for all kinds of things, and sometimes they simply misclassify it," Benson said. "I have seen e-mails where people say, 'Are you available for lunch?'"
Benson said more than 20 million e-mails were reviewed.
"It doesn't surprise me when you are dealing with millions of e-mails that some of those would find their way onto the LSN," Benson said.
As far as content on the personal missives, Benson said, "Some were clearly included that should not have been."
The database, found at www.lsnnet.gov, was set up for DOE to disclose the scientific studies, data analyses and other technical material behind its application to build a nuclear waste complex at the Nevada site.
Its users mainly are stakeholders such as the state of Nevada, the Nuclear Energy Institute and environmental groups that will play major roles when the proposed repository's safety will be debated before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
E-mails have been a sore spot for Yucca managers since 2004, when it was discovered that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists had sent electronic messages suggesting they were falsifying quality assurance documentation of their research.
The allegations sparked a controversy within the Energy Department and on Capitol Hill. DOE spent several years and $25.6 million on investigations of the hydrologists and the work they conducted.
In an effort to rebuild confidence, the Energy Department commissioned Sandia National Laboratories to rebuild portions of the hydrology research.
Maynard Brusman, a workplace psychologist from San Francisco, said personal e-mail in the office is common but sometimes disclosures are embarrassing in offices where public perception is a valued commodity.
"It creates a perception that someone is not at the wheel, that something is not really right," Brusman said. "Someone could wonder if they are paying attention and focusing."
--Contact Steve Tetreault at stetreault @stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 17, 2008
Nevada Views: A better approach to energy policy
Nevada has plenty of alternative options to meet its needs
By Timothy Hay
Special to The Review-Journal
I am compelled to respond to the recent "Nevada Views" opinion piece by Michael Yackira which minimizes the ability for alternative energy resources to supplant the need to build a massive coal-fueled power plant in Northern Nevada.
If completed, that multibillion-dollar facility would burden Nevada electric ratepayers for many decades to come. There is a superior and less expensive way to meet Nevada's need for reliable and affordable energy. With vision and through cooperation between the utility, regulators, lawmakers and the incredibly inventive entrepreneurs from the private sector who have recognized the value of renewable energy development in Nevada, we can chart a new course.
I think many share my view that Nevada should lead the nation in a 21st century energy policy that protects both consumers and the environment. Nevada is blessed with a vast array of energy options. Instead as Mr. Yackira, the former president of FPL Energy, indicates in his essay, Nevada Power is obsessed with promoting coal-fueled power plants as the only alternative. Every national trend indicates that is a risky business strategy for both utility ratepayers and his shareholders.
Across the country dozens of proposed coal-fueled electric plants have been canceled in the past year, largely because of the financial risk they represent. It is important to remember that if the Ely plant is built, it will largely define Nevada's energy choices until late in this century: Current ratepayers, their children, grandchildren and likely their great-grandchildren will be paying the costs of the planning decisions we make today. The sad truth is that the "clean coal" and "cheap coal" mantras the industry drills into paid media campaigns deceive Nevada's consumers. Future coal-fueled power plants will be neither cheap nor clean.
A recent article from the reliably conservative Forbes magazine indicated coal prices could double over the next two years. Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal company, presented financial analysis recently that their own projections indicated a 59 percent increase in coal prices over the same period.
At the same time, the Department of Energy has moved to abandon its much publicized experimental clean coal generation project -- FutureGen -- due to soaring cost projections. Major investments banks have recently indicated that financing for future coal plants may be conditioned on their economic viability under potentially very expensive restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.
But Nevada Power seems to adopt the premise that whatever these future costs will be, they will be passed on to Nevada ratepayers. If future Public Utility Commissions determine otherwise, an enormous potential risk exists for the company's shareholders and its creditors.
Nevada has long been considered the nation's "breadbasket" of renewable resources. Properly developed, Nevada's solar and geothermal potential alone far exceeds our electricity consumption, allowing Nevada to eventually become an exporter of green energy to less fortunate states. Advertising which leads consumers to believe our utility has deeply invested itself in geothermal and solar projects so as to claim that Nevada's per capita production of these resources leads the nation is deceptive. Private companies have developed the geothermal and solar projects that sell renewable power to the utility under long term contracts. Nevada Power has not invested its own capital in major renewable facilities.
These long-term contracts also impair the utility's balance sheets because they are treated from an accounting standpoint as equivalent to long-term debt obligations.
So what is a reasonable alternative? Let me briefly outline one plan that would create good jobs, enhance the rural tax base and benefit Nevada's current and future ratepayers.
In order to meet Southern Nevada's unique energy needs, it is critical to have reliable and affordable base load energy and adequate supplies to meet the peak summer needs when air conditioning essentially doubles the electric load in Las Vegas. A balanced portfolio of renewable resources can economically meet those demands, protect the environment and create more jobs for Nevadans than the coal alternative Nevada Power seeks to impose.
Geothermal resources in Northern Nevada have been conservatively estimated at between 2,500 and 10,000 megawatts, enough to meet our needs far into the future. Geothermal power can be developed at rates that are currently comparable to coal-generated power, and without any risk of future fuel price increases or environmental costs.
Geothermal energy is reliable and available 24 hours a day. Concentrated solar thermal power is ideally suited to Southern Nevada's electric load profile, and new technologies and economies of scale can produce that power at prices comparable to that for peak energy needs to provide air conditioning during the summer heat. Ancillary technologies, such as solar hot water heating, cost effective photo-voltaic arrays, and enhanced energy efficiency can also supplement our energy resources.
If Nevada's utilities are unwilling to invest their own capital (for whatever reason) in utility-owned renewable facilities, the state should allow the long-term renewable contracts to be treated as a regulatory asset that can earn a rate of return. The status quo gives the utility a tremendous incentive to place massive and expensive multibillion-dollar facilities, such as the Ely coal plant, into its rate base to earn a return for shareholders (and to increase consumers bills). If the financial incentives for renewable power contracts are equivalent, large and risky developments such as Ely will quickly become less attractive to utility management and the shareholders.
In order to deliver expanded geothermal base load power to Southern Nevada, an interconnecting transmission line is essential, as the governor's renewable energy transmission task force recently proposed. Private firms have recently expressed a desire to share in the cost of such a line and federal incentives may become available as the nation revises its energy policy to encourage the reduction of greenhouse gases. This line would be economically viable without the "anchor tenant" of a multibillion-dollar coal plant. With that transmission infrastructure in place, other renewable energy such as wind, when available, can then be transmitted to displace fossil fuel generated electricity.
It has been estimated that the solar thermal potential in Southern Nevada alone, when properly developed, could supply a substantial portion of the nation's electric load at rates equivalent to fossil fuel. That peak energy can first be generated near Las Vegas and integrated into the existing utility infrastructure, and ultimately exported to other states.
Technology for the storage of solar thermal power is also progressing, so that solar power could eventually supplement base load electric resources.
A focused effort by the state and the utility to develop 100 to 200 megawatts of geothermal production per year over the next decade and the transmission infrastructure needed to supply that energy to Southern Nevada would displace in a cost-effective manner the need for a multibillion-dollar coal-fueled plant with its enormous risks of future costs to Nevada consumers and enhance our energy security and reliability. The simultaneous expansion of solar thermal generating and manufacturing facilities can make Nevada the center of a vibrant 21st century industry and the good local jobs it would create.
So why does the new CEO of our utility want to lock Nevada ratepayers into decades of payments to out-of-state coal companies? Utilities are sluggish, unimaginative and bureaucratic in my experience. With a favorable regulatory environment, business as usual which places all future economic risk on Nevada consumers satisfies shareholder and management interests -- and has resulted in the doubling of electric rates in Las Vegas over the past decade.
As consumers, we need and deserve a creative, forward-looking energy policy centered around renewable energy because in the long term that is the only responsible policy Nevada can afford. Will this be a challenging endeavor? Of course. It also may be the best legacy we can offer future Nevadans.
--Tim Hay, a former Nevada consumer advocate and former member of the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, writes from Reno.
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UPI
February 17, 2008
Nuclear waste costs U.S. gov't millions
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. taxpayers reportedly have already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to get rid of nuclear waste from more than 100 reactors that has yet to be disposed.
The federal government has already paid the utilities $342 million, a figure expected to balloon to $11 billion in the coming years, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The fees arose out of an agreement hammered out between the government and utilities in which the Department of Energy agreed in the early 1980s to dispose of the nuclear waste for a fee of a 10th of a cent per kilowatt-hour, the newspaper reported.
Edward Sproat III, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said if the nuclear repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, is able to accept waste in 2017, taxpayers will have given about $7 billion to the utilities.
If the Yucca Mountain site opens in 2020, the damages would come to about $11 billion, and for each year beyond that, about $500 million more, he said.
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New York Times
February 16, 2008
As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON — Forgotten but not gone, the waste from more than 100 nuclear reactors that the federal government was supposed to start accepting for burial 10 years ago is still at the reactor sites, at least 20 years behind schedule. But it is making itself felt in the federal budget.
With court orders and settlements, the federal government has already paid the utilities $342 million, but is virtually certain to pay a total of at least $7 billion in the next few years and probably over $11 billion, government officials said. The industry said the total could reach $35 billion.
The payments come from an obscure and poorly understood government account that requires no new Congressional appropriations, and will balloon in size, experts said.
The payments are due because the reactor owners were all required to sign contracts with the Energy Department in the early 1980s, with the government promising to dispose of the waste for a fee of a 10th of a cent per kilowatt-hour. It was supposed to begin taking away the fuel in the then far-off year of 1998.
Since then, the utilities have filed 60 lawsuits. The main argument — employing legions of lawyers on both sides — is when the government would have picked up the fuel if it had adhered to the original commitment, and thus how much of the storage expense would have fallen on the utilities anyway.
But the damage number is rising. If the repository that the government is trying to develop at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, could start accepting waste at the date now officially projected, in 2017, the damages would run about $7 billion, according to Edward F. Sproat III, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
But that date is actually “clearly out the window,” Mr. Sproat said in a conference call with reporters, because Congress underfinanced the effort to build the repository, among other problems, he said. Mr. Sproat said the goal of applying by this June for a license to build Yucca could no longer be met.
If the repository opens in 2020, the damages would come to about $11 billion, he said, and for each year beyond that, about $500 million more. The industry says the total could reach $35 billion.
“The rate-payer has paid for it,” said Michael Bauser, the associate general counsel of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade group. “The Department of Energy hasn’t done it, and now the taxpayer is paying for it a second time.”
Initially, the Energy Department tried to pay the damages out of the Nuclear Waste Fund, the money collected from the nuclear utilities, plus interest, which comes to about $30 billion. But other utilities sued, saying that if the government did that, there might not be enough money left for the intended purpose, building a repository. So the government now pays the damages out of general revenues.
The damages are large relative to the annual budget of the Energy Department, which is about $25 billion. But the money comes out of the Treasury, not the Energy Department. Under a law passed in the Carter administration, such payments are recognized as obligations of the federal government and no further action by Congress is required to make them.
The money comes out of a federal account called the Judgment Fund, which is used to pay settlements and court-ordered payments. For the last five years, the fund has made payments in the range of $700 million to $1 billion, with the average payment being $80,000 to $150,000. In contrast, payments to utilities have been in the tens of millions.
The government is also running up extra expenses on its own wastes. Some of the waste that is supposed to go to Yucca, left over from nuclear weapons production, is sitting in storage that is expensive to maintain.
Some extra expense was assured, because Yucca has been beset with legal and managerial problems, and it is not clear whether the geology is suitable for the goal, storing the waste for a million years with only very small radiation doses for people beyond the site boundary. The interim solution is storing wastes in steel casks, pumped full of inert gas to prevent corrosion, an arrangement that will keep the wastes isolated for decades at least.
At some point, the escalating costs slow down, because some of the expenses for dry storage are incurred only once, like the engineering work, or installation of a crane to get the cask in and out of the spent fuel pool, officials said. But costs rise again at the point where the reactor that generated the fuel becomes too old to run, and is torn down; at that point, the entire expense of the guard force and the maintenance workers are attributable to the waste.
That has already happened in California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Michigan. Jay Silberg, a lawyer who represents some of the utilities, said some companies that had sold reactors were suing the government and maintaining that they could have gotten a higher price if their plants had not come with the waste attached.
Each reactor typically creates about 20 tons of waste a year, which is approximately two new casks, at roughly $1 million each. If a repository or interim site opened, clearing the backlog would take decades, experts say. At present, waste is in temporary storage at 122 sites in 39 states.
The Energy Department has launched an initiative to gather the waste and run it through a factory to recover re-usable components, which would allow centralized storage, but that program’s prospects are highly uncertain.
The government has spent $11 billion on Yucca Mountain, Mr. Sproat said. The project has dragged on so long that some of the research data is stored on obsolete computers that must be replaced, program officials said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 16, 2008
Ensign endorses McCain as senator's momentum builds
Backing is another sign of GOP support
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- With Sen. John McCain all but having clinched the Republican nomination for president, Sen. John Ensign on Friday said he will back the Arizona senator.
Ensign's endorsement is another sign of Republican leaders coalescing around the candidate they now see as a sure thing, even though rival Mike Huckabee has refused to throw in the towel.
McCain "has the conservative record of fiscal discipline and strong national defense of which Republicans can be proud," Ensign said.
Ensign could not be reached late Friday after his endorsement was announced in a statement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans where the Nevadan is chairman.
A poll released Thursday by Rasmussen Reports shows McCain with a nine-point lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton in Nevada, 49 percent to 40 percent, but losing the state when matched against Sen. Barack Obama, 50 percent to 38 percent.
On an issue of Nevada interest, McCain has supported construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, contrary to the position of Ensign and other top Republicans in the state.
Republican Reps. Jon Porter and Dean Heller have displayed varying levels of enthusiasm about McCain, who has been viewed with suspicion among conservatives for his positions on illegal immigration, tax cuts and campaign financing.
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, also has not announced an endorsement.
McCain also has supported banning college football and basketball betting at Nevada sports books, although he has said he won't pursue action unless another college gambling scandal occurs. Nevada casinos no longer worry about McCain and sports betting, the industry's top Washington lobbyist, Frank Fahrenkopf, said this week.
--Stephens Washington Bureau writer Sara Spivey contributed to this report.
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St. Cloud Times
February 16, 2008
Xcel seeks to boost output at Monticello nuclear plant
By Kirsti Marohn, kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com
MONTICELLO — Xcel Energy is seeking approval to expand the generating capacity at its Monticello nuclear plant by almost 12 percent.
The energy utility has applied to the state Public Utilities Commission for a certificate of need for the project, which would increase the 600-megawatt plant's capacity by about 70 megawatts.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also would need to approve the project.
The expansion would involve increasing the amount of steam produced in the reactor and upgrading equipment that converts the steam into electricity, Xcel said.
The changes would be made inside existing buildings and the plant's overall footprint would not increase.
The Monticello plant began operating in 1970.
Its operating license recently was renewed and expires in 2030.
Xcel estimates the expansion's price tag at between $100 million and $135 million.
Company officials argue that's far less than the cost of building a new coal, gas or biomass plant.
Xcel also plans to seek a license extension and permission to expand capacity at its Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing.
Company officials have continued to say they believe nuclear power, which does not produce any greenhouse gas emissions, should continue to be part of the state's mix of energy resources.
Critics say nuclear plants are a target for terrorists and a safety risk as they age and begin to wear out.
They note that the question of what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear plants continues to vex policymakers. The future of a proposed federal repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada remains uncertain.
The Monticello plant earned good grades last November from federal investigators who signed off on emergency procedures at the plant.
In January 2007, the plant shut down for two weeks after a 35,000-pound control box fell about 6 inches onto a pipe carrying radioactive steam.
The steam pipe didn't break or leak, but an investigation showed the design of the box was inadequate and some of the welds holding it in place were undersized or of insufficient quality.
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Las Vegas SUN
February 15, 2008
Mitt who?
By Michael Mishak
The Nevada Republican establishment is now coalescing around Sen. John McCain.
Sen. John Ensign, state party chairwoman Sue Lowden and Nevada’s two GOP national committee representatives, Joe Brown and Beverly Willard, have endorsed McCain in the Republican primary.
McCain’s archrival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, won the Jan. 19 Republican caucuses here but dropped out of the race last week. McCain finished in third place in Nevada, just behind Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
The following quote from Lowden stands out in the McCain campaign’s press release: “I urge all Nevada Republicans to consider the numerous issues we share in common as a Party and move beyond our differences to focus on winning the general election in November.”
Unstated are those differences. First and foremost is McCain’s support for Yucca Mountain. We wrote about that and some of the others in a piece last year, before McCain abandoned a fledgling campaign here to bolster one in the critical state of New Hampshire.
For the record, Nevada Rep. Jon Porter had endorsed Rudy Giuliani before his exit from the race. Rep. Dean Heller told the Review-Journal’s Washington Bureau this month, just before Romney’s exit, that he preferred Romney over McCain.
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Minnesota Public Radio
February 15, 2008
Xcel asks to increase generation at Monticello plant
by Tim Post
Xcel Energy wants to make more electricity at its nuclear power plant in Monticello. Company officials asked state regulators to allow more power generation to meet a growing need for electricity in Minnesota. The plan has at least one Minnesota environmental group worried about the ongoing challenge of storing nuclear waste.
St. Cloud, Minn. — Xcel officials say their plan to make more power in Monticello would require minor changes, relatively speaking.
The company's Brian Zelenak says the first step would be to rearrange the nuclear fuel rods in the reactor's core to create more heat.
"They are moving fuel rods that have more life left from the core of the reactor to the outsides of the reactor. And by doing that, they have a higher burnup inside the reactor, and because of that they are able to produce more steam," says Zelenak.
More steam would mean the plant could make 70 megawatts of additional power. That's enough for 70,000 homes. The plant already makes 600 megawatts of electricity.
The plan would cost Xcel up to $135 million, but company officials say that's hundreds of millions of dollars less than it woulc cost to build a new plant to make the same amount of power.
It could be a year or more before state and federal regulators make a decision on the plan.
Making more power would also mean that in the next 20 years, the plant would need to store 30 percent more spent radioactive fuel.
That has some environmental groups concerned.
"There are some facets of nuclear power that are very attractive when you're looking at it relative to climate change and global greenhouse gases," says Paul Aasen with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. "But there is this big issue with storage of spent fuels that has not been resolved yet."
Xcel Energy is currently building a three-acre facility at its Monticello plant, to store spent fuel in steel containers inside concrete vaults. But the company hopes that in the future, the federal government will take the radioactive waste off their hands.
The long-promised option, a nuclear waste storage facility at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, has been delayed for years. And government officials say it could be nearly a decade before the facility is able to accept nuclear material.
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St. Cloud Times
February 15, 2008
Xcel seeks to boost output at Monticello nuclear plant
By Kirsti Marohn
kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com
MONTICELLO — Xcel Energy is seeking approval to expand the generating capacity at its Monticello nuclear plant by almost 12 percent.
The energy utility has applied to the state Public Utilities Commission for a certificate of need for the project, which would increase the 600-megawatt plant's capacity by about 70 megawatts.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also would need to approve the project.
The expansion would involve increasing the amount of steam produced in the reactor and upgrading equipment that converts the steam into electricity, Xcel said.
The changes would be made inside existing buildings and the plant's overall footprint would not increase.
The Monticello plant began operating in 1970.
Its operating license recently was renewed and expires in 2030.
Xcel estimates the expansion's price tag at between $100 million and $135 million.
Company officials argue that's far less than the cost of building a new coal, gas or biomass plant.
Xcel also plans to seek a license extension and permission to expand capacity at its Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing.
Company officials have continued to say they believe nuclear power, which does not produce any greenhouse gas emissions, should continue to be part of the state's mix of energy resources.
Critics say nuclear plants are a target for terrorists and a safety risk as they age and begin to wear out.
They note that the question of what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear plants continues to vex policymakers. The future of a proposed federal repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada remains uncertain.
The Monticello plant earned good grades last November from federal investigators who signed off on emergency procedures at the plant.
In January 2007, the plant shut down for two weeks after a 35,000-pound control box fell about 6 inches onto a pipe carrying radioactive steam.
The steam pipe didn't break or leak, but an investigation showed the design of the box was inadequate and some of the welds holding it in place were undersized or of insufficient quality.
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DOE
February 15, 2008
Senior DOE Official to Highlight DOE’s Efforts to Advance the Yucca Mountain Project
WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, February 18, 2008, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Ward Sproat will deliver remarks on the Yucca Mountain Project during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions Annual Winter Meeting. Director Sproat is expected to update the commissioners and attendees on Yucca Mountain program priorities for 2008.
Yucca Mountain was approved by the Congress and President Bush as the site for the Nation’s first permanent spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste geologic repository in 2002.
WHO: Director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Ward Sproat
WHAT: Deliver remarks on the Yucca Mountain Project
WHEN: Monday, February 18, 2008
10:30AM EDT
WHERE: Renaissance Washington Hotel
Grand Ballroom Central
999 Ninth Street NW
Washington, DC
Media contact(s):
Angela Hill, (202) 586-4940
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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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