Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, April 11, 2008
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 10, 2008
Domenici pans Yucca-only approach
New Mexico senator touts recycling
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Political support for a Yucca Mountain repository eroded further on Wednesday when a leading Senate advocate of nuclear power said it has become "foolhardy" to plan to store used nuclear fuel at the Nevada site.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the strategy to place spent nuclear fuel underground has become badly outdated in light of advances in waste reprocessing that could wring more energy from the assemblies.
Even after nuclear fuel has been recycled, the resulting waste products might not need to be placed in the Nevada volcanic ridge, he said.
At that point, the waste would be less toxic and could be stored safely in salt formations in New Mexico or elsewhere.
"The current strategy of limiting our options to a permanent repository for the disposal of spent fuel is deeply flawed," Domenici said. He said he was writing a bill that would alter the "Yucca only" approach.
"I'm talking about a bill that will start over and draft new law that puts America on a new path for commercial waste," he said after a Senate energy and water subcommittee hearing on the Yucca Mountain budget.
The senator's comments are reflective of a shift among key lawmakers frustrated by a decade-long delay in developing the Yucca Mountain repository, and who now are more amenable to alternatives they say are becoming more viable.
In the meantime, the Department of Energy continues to work toward licensing and building an industrial site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas to handle 77,000 tons of waste generated by the government and commercial utilities.
At the hearing, senators praised DOE nuclear waste director Ward Sproat, saying he has put the Yucca program finally on a track.
But Domenici, a 35-year Senate veteran who has written a book on nuclear policy and authored key bills promoting the technology, said it might be too late.
"I am not saying that Yucca should go away, but I am saying you don't need Yucca" for managing power plant fuel, he said.
"It would never have been the direct policy of the country for Yucca if you were going to have recycling like we are talking about. I want to make it very clear that I would not stop Yucca flat now," Domenici said. "I wouldn't just say cut it off because it may be used for something," perhaps burial of waste from Navy ship reactors, other military nuclear waste and other highly radioactive material that cannot be recycled.
Domenici said he was writing a bill that would divert a portion of the nuclear waste fund being set aside to build Yucca Mountain.
Some of the funds in the account, which now totals $21 billion, would be steered to finding and developing reprocessing sites, and temporary nuclear fuel storage nearby.
The bill would direct the Department of Energy to negotiate with interested communities.
Domenici is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year and was uncertain whether his bill would go anywhere. He said he is shopping it to senators and influential members of the House.
"This one I am really going big on," he said. "I don't know whether we can get this done while I am still a senator. ... But I want to lay down at least a cornerstone to what I think is absolutely imperative."
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PolitickerNV
April 10, 2008
Seismic Shift: Senator Pushes New Mexico -- Not Yucca Mt. -- As Alternate Site for Nation’s High Level Nuclear Waste Dump
By Joseph K. Cooper
(Washington D.C. – April 9, 2008) Congresswoman Shelley Berkley today issued the following statement in response to Senator Pete Domenici’s (R-NM) call for a look at New Mexico as an alternate site for burying nuclear waste now thought to be headed to Yucca Mountain. Domenici’s statement that salt domes in New Mexico could be used in place of Yucca Mountain to store high level nuclear waste came this afternoon during a Senate hearing on funding for the proposed repository 90 minutes outside Las Vegas. Also testifying at the hearing was Ward Sproat, Director of the Energy Department’s nuclear waste office. In his remarks, Sproat called for a $100 million increase in funding for Yucca Mountain over the previous year. The Congresswoman’s statement on the hearing is as follows:
“Senator Domenici today dropped a bombshell on the DOE when he said we should be looking at New Mexico as an alternative to Nevada for high level nuclear waste disposal. The myth that Yucca Mountain is the only place we can store this radioactive waste has been shattered by the senior Senator from New Mexico. He calls Yucca Mountain a box canyon because its failures cannot be overcome, including an $80 billion price tag and the risk to 50 million Americans from decades of nuclear waste shipments to Nevada.
“Ward Sproat’s testimony is a swan song for President Bush’s plan to turn Nevada into a nuclear waste dump. His comments cement the fact that the only waste piling up at Yucca Mountain are the billions of dollars that have been spent on this hole in the Nevada desert.
“Although Senator Craig is wrong to continue targeting Nevada, he is right when he admits that reprocessing waste going forward does not eliminate our nation’s waste problem. Unfortunately under this administration, all roads lead back to Yucca Mountain and that is why I will continue fighting to see that funding is cut for this $80 billion mountain of radioactive pork.
“Experts agree that we can safely leave waste at the plants where it is produced, in secure dry-cask storage, for the next 100 years. On-site storage avoids the risks of transporting this toxic garbage, not once, but possibly multiple times, and leaves open the option to end Yucca Mountain while we look for real solutions to this problem.”
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CNET News
April 10, 2008
Will the U.S. recycle nuclear materials for fuel?
by Michael Kanellos
The U.S. does not recycle nuclear waste from power plants because it could be used for weapons, but that might change.
Pete Domenici, the Republican Senator from New Mexico, said the country should start to examine the benefits of recycling fuel, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
France and most other nuclear energy-producing countries recycle fuel. Doing so cuts down the amount of fuel that needs to be mined, as well as the amount of nuclear waste that needs to get buried.
Domenici also said he wants to introduce legislation that would create more nuclear depositories, possibly in New Mexico. The Department of Energy has invested billions of dollars over several years in trying to build a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The project, however, faces strong opposition.
No nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. in decades, but global warming, as well as higher prices for coal and natural gas, have revived the industry. An estimated 31 applications for building new nuclear plants in the United States are expected to be filed in the next few years. The applications, though, will likely draw strong opposition.
A few start-ups are also tinkering with nuclear fusion, which produces much less waste than nuclear fission, the basis of nuclear plants today. (Nuclear plants basically create heat, which is used to create steam to crank a turbine.)
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NEI Nuclear Notes
April 10, 2008
Senator Domenici on Used Fuel and Yucca Mountain
by David Bradish
Is the nation beginning to head a new direction on how to manage its used nuclear fuel? Here's the direction Senator Domenici thinks we should go:
The Senate’s longtime champion of nuclear energy said today that other communities, not just Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, should be considered for storing the nation’s nuclear waste.
New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici’s comments this morning reflect Washington’s deep frustration over the Department of Energy’s endless delays at Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry has quietly been soliciting other communities as potential hosts for a repository, and Domenici said he would introduce legislation that would free up money from the Yucca Mountain account to do just that. Doing so would represent a major policy shift on Yucca. The multi-billion-dollar Yucca fund is considered sacred, having been built from fees collected from ratepayers in states with nuclear energy.
Domenici’s comments came as both Senate and House appropriators this week are considering Energy’s budget requests for the coming year. The department promises to meet its summer deadline for submitting the long-awaited license for the waste dump at Yucca.
In his comments, Domenici said he no longer believes focusing solely on a permanent repository in Nevada is the way to go, fearing the Yucca only strategy that does not include efforts to recycle waste is “deeply flawed.” “I believe this path will prove to be the highest cost solution and it fails to take advantage of recycling,” Domenici said. “We should pursue a comprehensive waste strategy led by an approach to recycle spent nuclear fuel with the remaining waste to be put in either Yucca Mountain or another suitable site such as deep salt formations,” such as a site in New Mexico that now stores less toxic waste.
We'll see where this goes.
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Wall Street Journal Blogs
April 10, 2008
Moving Mountains: A New Option for Nuclear Waste?
Posted by Keith Johnson
If the revival of nuclear power in the U.S. depends, in part, on where to store radioactive waste, would an end-run around Yucca Mountain be the answer?
That’s the latest stratagem from New Mexico Sen. Pete Dominici, who volunteered his state as a possible site for deep geological storage of spent fuel, given the decade-long struggle to get Nevada’s Yucca Mountain site moving. He’s drafting new legislation to get around the “Yucca only” approach—and to foster recycling of spent fuel to reduce waste. The Las Vegas Sun reports (hat tip):
In his comments, Domenici has said he no longer believes focusing solely on a permanent repository in Nevada is the way to go, fearing the Yucca only strategy that does not include efforts to recycle waste is “deeply flawed.” “I believe this path will prove to be the highest cost solution and it fails to take advantage of recycling,” Domenici said. “We should pursue a comprehensive waste strategy led by an approach to recycle spent nuclear fuel with the remaining waste to be put in either Yucca Mountain or another suitable site such as deep salt formations,” such as a site in New Mexico that now stores less toxic waste.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid has long opposed Yucca Mountain, and cut the Department of Energy’s already-limited funding last year. After Wednesday’s hearing on the new budget for the nuclear repository, Sen. Reid said “American taxpayers have already spent too much money on a dangerous project that has already proven to be too costly and too controversial…The dump will never be built, and the Energy Department knows it.”
In much of Europe, nuclear power has steamed ahead either thanks to fuel re-processing, or temporary storage of spent rods in reactor pools. Britain, which hopes to launch its own nuclear revival, is putting off the entire storage question until new reactors are built. Other countries, such as Spain, have explored above-ground storage of long-term radioactive waste, which would present a stop-gap solution to the storage issue—even though Spain’s Socialist government still wants a German-style nuclear moratorium.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma introduced legislation earlier this year to try and fast-track Yucca Mountain, including provisions that the waste would be “retrievable” for 300 years to help allay environmental concerns.
So the big question is: Will Sen. Domenici’s offer of New Mexico as a new nuclear repository finally break the atomic logjam?
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UW Daily
April 10, 2008
Revisiting recycled nuclear power
By Mike Noon
“Nuclear” has a negative connotation for most people in the United States. This is especially true in the Pacific Northwest, which is home to the famous site in Hanford, Wash. The decision to locate a nuclear plant and test location right next to a large river, which may have seemed like a great idea in the 1940s, has brought untold trouble to Columbia River residents.
Even so, nuclear power is always included in discussions about the United States’ energy policy. Proponents envision atomic energy replacing fossil fuels, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and providing a stable power source for future generations. Opponents point to the increased risk of nuclear proliferation, the chances of a serious nuclear accident and the hazardous waste that is produced.
The controversy arises from our focus on nuclear power as an energy source. Why spend so much money and effort on improving atomic energy when there are already more viable alternatives in solar, wind and biofuels? Both sides may be able to agree if we focus on nuclear waste reduction rather than on power generation.
The United States has more than 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. For perspective, that amount would fill an area the size of a football field 10 feet high. This waste is currently being stored at the dozens of nuclear plants across the United States. This type of storage was intended to be short-term, and the waste would eventually be transported to a stable repository operated by the government. That repository is the controversial Yucca Mountain site in Nevada that has repeatedly delayed opening due to technological hurdles and local opposition.
Even if the repository does open, it will be near full capacity. The site is designed to only hold about 70,000 metric tons of waste, meaning that the current 50,000 metric tons accounts for most of the storage space. Within a decade, Yucca Mountain could be full.
The large volume of waste produced can be traced to existing U.S. policy. Nuclear reactors use about 5 percent of their energy in the enriched uranium fuel before being replaced. This spent fuel is then discarded as “waste,” though it still contains a considerable amount of useable fuel. The reason for this is that traditional reprocessing methods produce weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct, posing a serious proliferation risk. Newer methods are better able to extract the uranium without producing enriched plutonium.
Expanding the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel can vastly reduce the amount of waste, but will not reduce the radioactivity of the waste. Current nuclear reactors produce significant quantities of transuranic elements — those heavier than uranium — that can stay radioactive for thousands of years. However, there are ways to reduce this hazard.
The fast neutron reactor is one of the more unique designs because it can create more nuclear fuel than it consumes. One of the side effects is that it can reduce the transuranic elements to less radioactive forms that stay hazardous for hundreds, rather than thousands, of years.
A combination of spent fuel reprocessing and fast neutron reactors can considerably reduce the problems of nuclear waste in the United States. But there is little guarantee that companies will adopt these technologies due to the expense. The solution may be to ban or significantly increase the price of uranium mining.
Nearly 50 percent of U.S. uranium fuel comes from decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons. The reprocessing of existing spent fuel is estimated to provide almost 30 additional years of fuel. A ban or significant price increase in new uranium fuel would still allow for several decades of operation for existing plants while encouraging the implementation and development of waste reducing technologies.
Nuclear power is not the energy panacea that many have claimed. However, through effective application of technology and policy, it can be used to reduce hazards associated with nuclear waste. Although this is not a perfect solution, it may be an area where both advocates and opponents of nuclear energy can find some agreement.
--[Reach columnist Mike Noon at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]
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Scripps News
April 10, 2008
More drilling, please
By DEROY MURDOCK
Scripps Howard News Service editorials
How much more pain must Americans endure before our masters in Washington let oil companies punch a few holes in the Alaskan tundra? Must we shiver pennilessly in the dark before we may extract new domestic petroleum deposits? Or shall we simply keep buying $111 barrels of oil from people who want us dead?
In case Congress missed the news, three U.S. airlines went broke last week. Aloha, ATA, and Skybus blamed in part unaffordable fuel as they grounded their jets. Aloha said sayonara to 1,900 employees, NBC News reports. ATA's demise destroyed 2,200 jobs, while Skybus sacked 450 workers, atop the 80,000 positions lost across the economy as unemployment spiked from 4.8 percent in February to 5.1 in March.
Losing these airlines likely will boost plane-ticket prices, which already have climbed alongside fuel bills. Since April 4, 2007, a gallon of jet fuel has risen 62 percent to $3.22. The International Air Transport Association calculates that jet fuel will cost airlines worldwide an extra $56 billion in 2008 versus 2007. Having ditched complimentary meals, movies, and even pillows on many flights, there is little left for embattled carriers to curtail, as their chief expense goes sky high.
What's next? Bring your own seat belt?
The situation on land is equally grim.
Independent truckers have staged work stoppages to showcase their plight. Typical big-rig drivers who spent $837 to fill 250-gallon fuel tanks a year ago pay $1,189 today -- up 42 percent.
As of Monday, automobile drivers paid a record average of $3.33 per gallon for self-serve gasoline, up 53 cents in 12 months, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Faced with this real, human suffering, the Democratic Congress manages merely to whine about oil companies' "obscene" profits.
"This whole situation has been nothing more than manipulation around greed," Rep. John Larson (D - Connecticut) bellowed at a March 31 House hearing.
Politicians and journalists who obsess over "X-rated" oil profits leer at numerators, not denominators. Take industry giant Exxon/Mobil. Its profits are like a pair of size-22 shoes: Massive in isolation, but much more modest when parked beneath Shaquille O'Neal's 7'-1" frame.
Exxon's $40.6 billion profit for 2007 is dwarfed by its $404.5 billion revenue and $199.5 billion crude-oil expense. Of course Exxon's sales have swelled: Americans pay more for gasoline as OPEC charges record cartel prices for crude, and rising global demand exceeds stagnant supplies. While Exxon's 10 percent profit outpaces the oil industry's 8.3 percent average gain, Coca-Cola's 20.7 percent profit margin and Microsoft's 27.5 percent turnover should make Exxon's executives jealous. When will Congress denounce Coke and Microsoft's "corporate pillage?"
For once, Congress should behave constructively:
-- Approve new Alaskan oil drilling already. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's pertinent parcel covers just 2,000 acres -- a veritable raindrop in the Olympic swimming pool that is Alaska's 365-million-acre territory. ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels could match or replace for 19 years the 1.5 million barrels of Saudi oil that America imports daily.
No one wants to rape Alaska's wilderness. Environmentally friendly techniques direct numerous drill bits sideways, like covert tentacles, from a handful of surface holes. Allegedly fragile caribou seem quite aroused by all this. Their Central Arctic Herd has quintupled from 6,000 in 1978 to 32,000 today. Meanwhile, petroleum development hums at Alaska's nearby Prudhoe Bay.
-- Deregulate the construction of new oil refineries, something unseen since 1976.
-- To encourage new atomic-power plants, stop debating and start storing radioactive waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain facility. In return, give Silver State residents free electricity.
-- If it's too much to drill more offshore oil, at least withdraw more natural gas. At worst, gas leaks neither blanket beaches nor smother seagulls.
Planes, trains, and automobiles someday may operate on fuel squeezed from shredded junk mail and pulverized rap CDs. Until then, refined petroleum propels vehicles today. And yet oil languishes beneath our sovereign soil, even as Americans go jobless and our republic meanders into recession.
Will we finally grow up and harness our resources, or will we childishly weep over imaginary threats to wildlife, dispatch supertankers of cash to the Middle East, and watch our petrodollars sponsor bomb belts and exploding aircraft?
Merely asking this question illustrates how desperately this nation needs adult supervision.
(Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock(at)gmail.com)
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Carlsbad Current-Argus
April 10, 2008
Senator rebukes proposed WIPP budget cut
By Kyle Marksteiner
CARLSBAD — A proposed 10 percent budget cut for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has drawn additional complaints from a New Mexico senator, who chastised top Department of Energy officials at a hearing Wednesday.
WIPP, a nuclear repository, is located about 27 miles east of Carlsbad.
"Your budget cuts the number of waste shipments, reduces investment in groundwater monitoring upgrades and results in the layoff of as many as 70 employees," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management James A. Rispoli. "Given the limited progress in waste management efforts in the complex, the department should be looking for ways to expand successful efforts like WIPP, not cut them back."
Rispoli introduced his portion of the DOE's budget to the subcommittee on Wednesday.
President Bush's proposed FY2009 federal budget would see cuts of about $23 million to WIPP's budget. The proposal is for $211.5 million; Congress provided $236.7 million in the FY2008 omnibus appropriations bill.
Domenici, according to a press release, pledged to fully fund WIPP within the FY2009 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill.
"I believe DOE has under funded the critical operations at WIPP," he said in a prepared statement. "The proposed 10 percent cut will reduce the rate of waste shipments to WIPP. Slowing waste shipments to WIPP means that the material will remain where it was created and delivery milestones will be missed. I am concerned that it will make it harder for facilities like Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet their cleanup milestones."
The FY2009 budget funding would support the National Transuranic Waste Program managed by the Carlsbad Field Office, including the operation of WIPP as a repository for defense-generated transuranic waste.
Rispoli's presentation listed the accomplishments of the DOE's Office of Environmental Management. The FY2009 budget request, he noted, supports up to 21 contact-handled transuranic shipments and up to five remote-handled shipments to WIPP a week.
Dave Moody, the DOE's Carlsbad Field Office manager, said the local office would likely have to trim some staff if the proposed cuts take place.
"We'd try to do as much as possible by attrition," Moody said. "The bottom line is that we've ramped up to a certain level (of shipments per week) and we don't want to drop off."
WIPP, Moody noted, has reached an optimum operations level.
"WIPP has been extraordinarily successful," he said. "And I believe we will continue to be so with the appropriate level of funding."
Moody said he is generally supportive of Bush's budget, and he understands the difficulty Washington officials face.
"From that standpoint, I'm supportive," he said. "But from the standpoint of sustaining progress, this budget does not sustain progress."
Domenici also noted that he believes the budget does not provide adequate funding to meet the milestones noted between DOE and New Mexico for cleanup at Los Alamos.
The senator also noted that he is in favor of nuclear power and expanding its use.
"However, I believe the current strategy of limiting our policy options to a permanent repository for the disposal of spent fuel is deeply flawed," he said. "I believe this path will prove to be the highest cost solution and it fails to take advantage of recycling, which would maximize our energy resources and minimize our waste requirements."
Instead, the senator suggested pursuing a comprehensive strategy led by an approach to recycle spent nuclear fuel "with the remaining waste to be put in either Yucca Mountain or another suitable site such as deep salt formations just like the WIPP site."
For the past few months, Carlsbad officials have been seeking federal support in expanding the area's interests in nuclear recycling and in hosting a potential repository for non-defense nuclear waste.
Domenici said he will introduce legislation calling for a portion of the nuclear waste fund to support the development of spent fuel storage and reprocessing. The proposal will also seek to make the government a partner in sharing the costs of developing model licenses for commercial reprocessing facilities and authorize the DOE to enter into long-term service contracts with private businesses to construct and operate reprocessing facilities.
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Herald Times Reporter
April 10, 2008
Towns: Plants should pay for storing nuclear waste
Herald Times Reporter
TWO CREEKS — Residents living near two nuclear power plants told their elected representatives on Wednesday they don’t want to be a “dumping ground” for radioactive waste.
But if the plants must store their waste on site, then towns should be compensated, residents said.
“When this plant was being built, they promised us that there would be no storage out there,” said Kenneth Duveneck, town of Two Creeks chairman, referring to the nearby Point Beach Nuclear Plant.
Duveneck, other officials from the towns of Two Creeks and Carlton and fellow residents met at Two Creeks Town Hall with representatives for U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold and U.S. Rep. Tom Petri and Steve Kagen. Manitowoc County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer and fellow state Reps. Frank Lasee and Garey Bies were also in attendance.
Point Beach and Kewaunee Power Station, in Carlton, already or plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods in dry cask storage bunkers at their facilities along Lake Michigan.
The dry storage is being used due to dwindling space in pool storage inside the plants and delays in opening the federal government’s national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Each town is seeking to be paid $250,000 per year and $40,000 per cask as long as the plants use onsite dry storage for nuclear waste. The funds would come from a nuclear waste fund paid into by utilities for Yucca Mountain. After five years, the towns would renegotiate terms with the plants.
Residents contend that having nuclear waste stored in their town while the plants wait for storage elsewhere is a safety hazard.
“Nobody wants (nuclear waste) to go through their town, their village, their roads, but we are stuck with it,” said Linda Sinkula, Carlton town clerk.
Residents also are seeking to collect a higher ratio of state shared revenue.
Under the state’s shared revenue program, the state collects a utility tax from power companies and distributes the revenue to areas where the plants are located.
But town officials said they each receive 19 percent of shared revenue collected from each plant while the remaining payments unfairly are dispersed to other areas of the state.
“We are trying to focus this issue on people who have control over this,” said David Hardtke, a Kewaunee resident. “You people represent government.”
Residents asked their congressional representatives to press federal regulators and the state Legislature for changes and demanded to receive a written response within 60 days.
The representatives in attendance said there would be a response but they could not say when.
Mark Kanz, local affairs manager for Kewaunee Power Station, said on Thursday the compensation sought by the towns is "really a state and local issue and it sounds like they are getting the right people involved."
The dry cask storage planned for construction at the Kewaunee plant within the next few months was approved with local, state and federal permits. The town of Carlton approved a building permit for the storage facility last year, he said.
"Anything and everything that is being done there is going to be monitored by the federal inspectors and really should not be of any concern to any of the local residents in terms of safety," Kanz said, noting plant staff will have additional tests to show federal regulators they can safely store the waste.
Point Beach has used dry storage for waste since 1995 with the intent that the government will have "a long-term storage facility," Sara Cassidy, plant spokeswoman, said on Thursday.
Point Beach’s first generating unit went into commercial service in 1970 and is licensed to operate until 2030. Its second unit came online in 1973 and is licensed to operate until 2033.
Last year, We Energies sold the plant to FPL Energy, of Juno Beach, Fla., in a deal worth about $1 billion.
Kewaunee Power Station officials expect to apply later this year for a 20-year extension of the plant’s operating license to 2033. Dominion Resources Inc., of Richmond, Va., acquired the 568-megawatt plant from Wisconsin Public Service Corp., of Green Bay, and Alliant Energy, of Madison, in summer 2005.
--The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Prague Post
April 10, 2008
Deeper underground
With towns rejecting nuclear waste storage, European alternative sought
By Markéta Hulpachová
Vítezslav Duda has been charged with an unenviable task.
As managing director of the government’s Nuclear Waste Repository Authority (SÚRAO), Duda is responsible for staking out a viable location for an underground facility to store the country’s growing stock of highly radioactive nuclear waste. Currently stored onsite at the country’s two nuclear power plants, the waste should find a permanent home by 2065, when the government expects storage facilities to start running out of room.
Following the example of other countries that rely on nuclear energy, SÚRAO has plans for a deep geological nuclear waste repository, where spent fuel could be stored in chambers deep underground.
The initial geological research was straightforward enough, Duda said, and by 2003 the sturdy granite massif that underlies much of the country had allowed SÚRAO scientists to pinpoint six eligible locations for the 500-meter (1,640-foot) dig.
Yet, when talking up the government’s plans to the mayors of the potential host municipalities, Duda slammed into a wall of resistance from locals, which postponed further negotiations for the following six years.
“We are trying to convince the municipalities, but it’s not going too well. The repository is still regarded as a danger and a threat,” he said. “People typically want things to stay as they are. They would probably react negatively to a new supermarket in their area, let alone a nuclear waste repository.”
As a number of the chosen municipalities have voiced their disapproval to SÚRAO’s plans through public referendums, Industry and Trade Minister Martin Ríman recently offered up an alternative solution to the country’s nuclear waste conundrum.
Instead of following the European Union’s current consensus, which leaves each member state responsible for its own nuclear waste disposal, Ríman said it may be possible to pool the waste into several deep geological waste repositories serving the entire EU.
“It’s exactly the type of problem the EU should engage itself in,” he told the radio station Frekvence 1 last month. “I consider it nonsense and ... a waste of economic resources for each [nuclear waste producing state] to spend billions on building its own repository. Two or three would suffice for the whole of Europe.”
Ríman said that he plans to raise this alternative on an official level in May, when Prague plays host to the European Nuclear Energy Forum.
While wary of their political feasibility, Duda and other nuclear experts agree that a small number of repositories would be all that Europe needs.
Constructing two or three storage sites would be analogous to the situation in the United States, Duda said, where plans are under way to store spent fuel from a proportional amount of nuclear plants at a repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
In addition, technological advancement in the use of sophisticated reactors to recycle spent fuel is expected to slow future production of nuclear waste, said Phil Metcalf, head of the radioactive waste and spent fuel repository unit at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Even with the way things are now, you’re not talking about a massive amount of matter,” he added. “A power plant typically produces 50 to 100 tons of spent fuel [per year], which is not a lot in terms of volume.”
Even if Ríman’s new EU-embracing view takes hold, it may still be too early for the selected Czech towns to breathe a sigh of relief. According to Ríman, the abundance of geologically favorable territory makes the country an ideal candidate for hosting a potential European repository.
“It could very well happen that one of those two or three repositories ends up in the Czech Republic,” he said.
As Duda points out, finding a country willing to host a repository site will not be easy. While several member states, including Poland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the Baltic states may express interest in a joint repository, few would agree to build it on their own land.
“When it comes to these types of sensitive questions, Europe’s integration efforts have not advanced far enough to unite the interests of individual nations,” Duda said, adding that the situation was further complicated by laws prohibiting the importation of nuclear waste, which have been adopted by virtually all EU states.
People power
Whatever course of action the government decides to take, the success of the country’s nuclear waste disposal program depends on public approval, Metcalf said. Although the staunch opposition of the six towns may seem like an insurmountable obstacle, the experience of countries like Sweden and Finland, where repository projects are already under way, suggest public acceptance is a matter of time.
“In Finland, there was a lot of communication with the communities until they started to feel comfortable,” Metcalf said. “This seems to be the recipe for success.”
From an ecological perspective, most experts agree that deep geological repositories pose little risk. Confined by layers of casing made of durable materials such as copper, the spent fuel is stacked into solid rock tunnels deep underground, where it gradually loses radioactivity.
“In the course of 1,000 to 10,000 years, the levels of radioactivity become comparable to original uranium,” Metcalf said. “We’ve been storing spent fuel for 50 years and there’s been no sort of real problem.”
Bound by a clause in the government’s official agenda, which lists “transparent communication with municipalities” as a requirement for future repository negotiations, the Industry and Trade Ministry and SÚRAO continue to court their mayors, sending them on informational excursions to Swedish research facilities and offering substantial financial incentives to the towns.
“We’re not in pre-1989 times anymore, when the state didn’t care about citizens’ opinions or damaging the environment,” said Industry and Trade Ministry spokesman Tomáš Bartovský. “The times are different. Citizens have the right to halt the construction of state projects, but a fear that the state will bulldoze their opinions lingers on. That is not the case.”
--Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com
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KRNV
April 09, 2008
Reid expects dishonest report on Yucca Mountain
Nevada Senator Harry Reid and the rest of a Senate sub-committee will hear about the progress on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump today on Capital Hill. The heads of the project are set to testify before the committee, but Senator Reid says he does not expect an honest report. Reid says he is holding out hope that budget cuts will ultimately kill the project.
"We've cut money. I cut a $100 million out of it last year. I'll continue to cut that down. They simply can't do this job, and they haven't done it in the past and everyone knows that."
The sub-committee is also expected to bring up a conflict of interest issue today. The Department of Energy says Yucca Mountain paid millions of dollars to a law firm that stands to benefit from the project.
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Las Vegas SUN
April 09, 2008
Senate nuke energy champ wants alternative to Yucca Mountain
By Lisa Mascaro
WASHINGTON - Here’s a news flash: The Senate’s longtime champion of nuclear energy said today that other communities, not just Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, should be considered for storing the nation’s nuclear waste.
New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici’s comments this morning reflect Washington’s deep frustration over the Department of Energy’s endless delays at Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry has quietly been soliciting other communities as potential hosts for a repository, and Domenici said he would introduce legislation that would free up money from the Yucca Mountain account to do just that. Dong so would represent a major policy shift on Yucca. The multi-billion-dollar Yucca fund is considered sacred, having been built from fees collected from ratepayers in states with nuclear energy.
Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley was the first of Nevada’s lawmakers to seize on the comments as a further sign that “the true waste piling up at Yucca Mountain is the billions of dollars that have been spent to date on this hole in the Nevada desert.”
“Senator Domenici today dropped a bombshell on the DOE when he said we should be looking at New Mexico as an alternative to Nevada for high level nuclear waste disposal,” Berkley said in a statement. Domenici suggested the type of geography found in his home state could be considered for a repository of waste from utility plants alongside.
“The myth that Yucca Mountain is the only place we can store this radioactive waste has been shattered by the senior Senator from New Mexico,” Berkley said. “He calls Yucca Mountain a box canyon because its failures cannot be overcome, including an $80 billion price tag and the risk to 50 million Americans from decades of nuclear waste shipments to Nevada.”
Domenici’s comments came as both Senate and House appropriators this week are considering Energy’s budget requests for the coming year. The department promises to meet its summer deadline for submitting the long-awaited license for the waste dump at Yucca.
In his comments, Domenici’s said he no longer believes focusing solely on a permanent repository in Nevada is the way to go, fearing the Yucca only strategy that does not include efforts to recycle waste is “deeply flawed.” “I believe this path will prove to be the highest cost solution and it fails to take advantage of recycling,” Domenici said. “We should pursue a comprehensive waste strategy led by an approach to recycle spent nuclear fuel with the remaining waste to be put in either Yucca Mountain or another suitable site such as deep salt formations,” such as a site in New Mexico that now stores less toxic waste.
He said his legislation would free up a portion of the waste fund for storage and recycling sites.
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Pahrump Valley Times
April 09, 2008
TORCHING THE RULEBOOK?
$100m Yucca contract open to scrutiny
DOE SPOKESWOMAN SAYS HIRING LAWYERS 'SERVES THE DEPARTMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST'
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Federal inspectors Thursday faulted the Department of Energy for picking a law firm with conflicts of interest to work on the Yucca Mountain Project without fully documenting the reasons why the firm was selected.
A contract potentially worth more than $100 million to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius was opened to scrutiny because the firm also represents more than a dozen utilities suing the government for missing deadlines on the Nevada nuclear waste project.
The Energy Department inspector general said DOE's hiring of the firm was inconsistent with its past practice of excluding bidders with conflicts.
DOE officials said Morgan Lewis was the only firm with adequate experience for the job, and that safeguards were put in place against the conflicts. But at the end of a four-month probe, auditors concluded that DOE's decision-making was not fully documented and could not be fully reviewed.
"Given the controversial nature of the Yucca Mountain Project, the history of allegations concerning conflicts of interest and the likely public scrutiny... of the contract, we found the absence of such documentation disturbing," Inspector General Gregory Friedman said at the outset of a 15-page report. "In our view, the public interest would have been better served had the department done more to document the key decision points related to this procurement."
While criticizing aspects of DOE's selection process, the inspector general stopped short of recommending the contract be voided.
Opponents of the Yucca project were not as restrained.
Attorneys for Nevada filed documents at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking to have Morgan, Lewis disqualified from participating in Yucca license hearings, based on the audit findings.
Further, the five Nevada lawmakers in Congress called on the Energy Department to recuse the firm.
"This report makes clear that DOE blatantly violated its own policies in order to award a $100 million sweetheart deal to a firm drowning in special interest conflicts," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "When DOE learned that its own policies prevented the awarding of this no bid contract to Morgan Lewis, they just torched the rulebook."
The Energy Department through a spokeswoman rejected the state's demand and said the firm is staying on the project.
"Nothing here warrants the recusal of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius from representing DOE in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding," spokeswoman Megan Barnett said in a statement.
"While the IG observed that DOE did not develop documentation in such a manner as the IG would have preferred, that sort of documentation is neither required nor consistent with the type of procurement conducted here," Barnett said. "We are confident that our retention of (Morgan Lewis & Bockius) serves the department and the public interest."
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a major international firm with a thriving nuclear practice, was hired last fall to handle licensing. The firm signed a five-year contract, with five additional one-year options, carrying a potential maximum payout of $109 million that legal experts said would be a record for a nuclear proceeding.
DOE properly followed requirements to obtain conflict of interest waivers and to demand the firm erect fire walls between its work for the government and for the utilities, the inspectors report said.
A separate team of lawyers in a separate location was assigned to the DOE contract. Documents were kept in a secured room and computer network security restricted access to Yucca Mountain material, auditors confirmed.
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Pahrump Valley Times
April 09, 2008
Goedhart mounts District 36 re-election effort
By MARK WAITE
PVT
Incumbent Nevada District 36 Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, plans to pursue some of the same water initiatives that failed in his first term if he's reelected to a second term in November.
A bill Goedhart introduced in the 2007 legislative session, which would have required the top administrators for a governmental agency, like the National Parks Service, to sign off on a protest of water right transfers, never made it out of the government affairs committee.
Goedhart said the committee chairwoman, Marilyn Kilpatrick, D-Las Vegas, was instructed not to bring the bill to a vote. He charged Las Vegas Democrats wanted to be able to continue seizing rural water rights.
"This time I'm going through the Senate. I'm going to get it through the Senate," Goedhart said. "Now it has to be voted on the floor. Did you know the Southern Nevada Water Authority has filed on tens of thousands of acre feet of water in northern Nye County?"
Goedhart said the Nevada Division of Water Resources hasn't enforced the doctrine of forfeiting water rights after five years of failing to prove beneficial use, against fellow government or quasi-government agencies. He said the SNWA has been sitting on Nye County water rights for 30 years.
Goedhart would also like to see a law permitting a local governing body to request the state water engineer suspend the forfeiture provision for a water rights holder whose rights are over the perennial water yield.
"Right now in Pahrump, I know people that are spending tens of thousands of dollars in power bills pumping water just to show beneficial use," Goedhart said. "This law just exacerbates the waste of a precious resource."
Goedhart said he isn't introducing the water rights bills as a personal favor to his employer, the Ponderosa Dairy, where he is currently a commodities broker. He said government agencies protested water rights of 12 different people in Amargosa Valley. The protests also threaten to hamper the alternative energy industry, he said.
"If you have these protests disallowing any movement of diversion, place of use or type of use, you've just killed a fledgling industry before it was able to be created. We're talking in Nye County about an opportunity to have over $1 billion in investment in renewable energy," he said.
The Democratic control of Congress and Sen. Harry Reid's position as Senate Majority Leader mean "in all likelihood Yucca Mountain is dead," Goedhart said.
That means Nye County will have to diversify its tax revenues and can't count on payments equal to taxes from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of Yucca Mountain, Goedhart added.
Goedhart has been an opponent of the Yucca Mountain project for 10 years, which puts him more in line with state government, but at a different stance than Nye County, which has had a policy of constructive engagement with DOE over the project.
A couple of other changes in state law Goedhart would like to pursue include allowing a nurse practitioner with over three years experience not to have to work with a collaborating physician to fill a need for medical care in rural Nevada counties of fewer than 100,000 people.
He also wants to allow solar power producers to use alternative fuel sources, like natural gas pipelines, when the sun isn't shining.
News reports have been critical of Gov. Jim Gibbons, who has requested budget cuts due to declining revenues.
Goedhart said it's not actually a budget cut. "It's a reduction in the rate of growth. That's what everyone fails to mention. We're still spending about 16 percent more this biennium than we did the last one," he said.
Some state officials argued in the last session the projections by the Nevada Economic Forum Indicator Group of a 21 percent increase in the budget were too optimistic, Goedhart said. The economy retracted and now the revenue increase was scaled back from 21 percent to 16 percent, he said.
The last session, Goedhart said he was able to see a companion bill passed tightening up protections against child predators; increasing the powers of the Nevada Ethics Commission; allowing impact fees to be used for extending infrastructure; and bringing a higher visibility to the need for Highway 160 improvements east of Mountain Springs Pass.
Goedhart felt it was useful being on the transportation and judiciary committees the last session. He'd like to be appointed to the commerce and labor committee next session, if elected, and would be willing to give up the judiciary committee post if necessary.
Goedhart predicts more requests by constituents of big government in the 2009 session, who want more from the taxpayer's wallet.
An official campaign kickoff has been scheduled for 7 p.m., May 3, at the Seibt Desert Retreat RV Resort, on Highway 160 and Leslie Street.
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ANSTO
April 08, 2008
Aussie Synroc in US technology deal
ANSTO's Synroc technology is to be demonstrated as a way to clean up radioactive waste at the United States (US) Idaho National Laboratory.
Dr George Collins, ANSTO's Chief of Research, said a US$1.4 million deal was signed between ANSTO Inc (ANSTO's US arm) and Battelle Energy Alliance - the management and operating contractor for the Idaho National Laboratory - to demonstrate the benefits of Synroc technology in treating waste stored at the site.
"ANSTO will provide a demonstration of how to immobilise a range of legacy wastes, using hot isostatic pressing (HIP), a technology which ANSTO applies to the cleanup of radioactive waste," said Dr Collins.
One waste of particular interest is referred to as calcine. The Idaho National Laboratory has around 4,400 cubic meters of radioactive calcine material arising from the reprocessing of spent naval fuel, which is in a powder form not unlike laundry detergent.
"For this waste, two alternative methods will be demonstrated - one simply HIPing the calcine, the other HIPing a calcine-synroc mix. During the demonstration phase, no radioactive material will be handled with many of the tests to take place in Australia, at ANSTO," he said.
"HIP places high heat and pressure evenly around an object to solidify the contents and reduce its size by up to a half, ready for storage," explained Dr Collins. "In this case, the object will be steel cans filled with radioactive waste, either the calcines as currently stored at the Idaho Lab or calcines mixed into a special powder using ANSTO's synroc technology.
"The synroc process is designed to produce a product which will last for hundreds of thousands of years without breaking down, which is important for the storage of highly radioactive material," he said.
Once the cans and its contents are compacted and reduced in size, they would be placed in specially shielded containers and safely stored in a specially designed nuclear waste storage facility.
In an agreement with the State of Idaho, the United States Department of Energy must have the radioactive calcine material 'road ready' by the end of 2035 so it can be disposed of at another site - possibly the planned Yucca Mountain geological repository in Nevada.
"This is a great opportunity for ANSTO to demonstrate its expertise in preparing radioactive material for long-term storage," concluded Dr Collins.
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OhMyGov!
April 07, 2008
by Tarkan Rosenberg
DOE continuing to make strides on nuclear waste cleanup The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management is continuing efforts to clean up nuclear waste left over from Cold War-era weapons production. It recently released a "roadmap" that seeks to outline strategies for a safer and more efficient cleanup process at the nation's 16 remaining waste sites, to be implemented over the next ten years.
The roadmap aims specifically to examine technologies applied in the storage and transportation of waste consisting mainly of plutonium, uranium and spent nuclear fuel. The document also focuses on remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater, strategies to safely deactivate and decommission aging waste storage facilities, and methods for reducing health hazards for the office's 34,000-member workforce.
During the Cold War, safety procedures and waste storage methods at the nation's multiple nuclear weapons facilities were largely inadequate and deficient. Waste was often stored in underground carbon steel containers whose integrity over many decades has been compromised due to corrosion, allowing toxic material to leak into the air and groundwater around those sites.
The Office of Environmental Management was established in 1989 as part of an effort to centralize management of the DOE's waste sites and to deal with enhancing the safety and effectiveness of remediation. According to Mark Gilbertson, EM's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Engineering and Technology, the program originally managed 105 sites, of which 89 have been cleaned thus far.
"Originally the cleanup program was in the area of 2 million acres overall-the area [in terms of size not location] of Rhode Island and Delaware combined," says Gilbertson. "We have about two hundred storage tanks...about 88 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste. We deal with enough nuclear waste that would fill a superdome."
The new roadmap acts as a guide for how to best deal with the remainder of the waste as safely and efficiently as possible.
"We highlight [in the roadmap] what the nature of our technical risks and uncertainties are with the program and then lay out strategies that we would like to implement as we move into the future. We have things in there like how do you better remove waste from the tanks...how do we determine how waste would perform over long periods of time."
Methods for waste removal
One novel method is slated to be used at the 586-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation, situated along the Columbia River in the southeastern part of Washington State. The site currently houses 53 million gallons of liquid waste in massive underground tanks, and the Department of Energy is shelling out $690 million a year there for the construction of a vitrification plant that will be used to solidify the highly toxic contents of those tanks.
As Gilbertson explains, the tanks' most potent contents consist of a peanut butter-like mixture of sludge and salt cake-sodium nitrite and nitrate crystals formed as a result of evaporation over several decades' time. The sludge and salt cake are separated from the more "inert materials" by adding water and agitating. After the sludge is separated from the less potent matter, it is blended with liquid glass-a process that allows it to solidify and "become very stable over long periods of time."
Once the glass hardens it is placed inside stainless steel containers, most of which will be placed inside tunnels dug into stone foundations at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Another waste isolation pilot plant exists in New Mexico, where the tanks are placed inside salt foundations. "When they close up the tunnel," says Gilbertson," the salt creeps around and entombs it." The idea is for the material to eventually decay, although he readily admits it is a process that can take "years and years and years and years and years."
History of the Hanford Site
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was originally the site of the world's first full-scale plutonium reactor, built in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project. It produced plutonium used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 and later housed nine reactors that supplied weapons-grade material for three-quarters of the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. It was officially decommissioned in 1990, and the waste tanks have remained at the site since.
The Environmental Protection Agency considers Hanford to be the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere and cleanup efforts there have been expensive and problematic, according to Pamela Brown Larsen, executive director for Hanford Communities, an independent organization that acts as liaison between local communities and the regional DOE office.
"There were five different chemical separation processes used during the plutonium production years," she says. "And so the waste that was generated is more complicated, more complex than what was generated, for example, at the Savannah River Site (South Carolina)...or by nuclear weapons production in France or England. It's taken longer for them to figure out how to deal with these 53 million gallons."
Another problematic aspect of cleanup at Hanford revolves around extensive soil contamination, which Larsen explains occurred when close to 500 billion gallons of liquid "that wasn't as contaminated" were poured into massive ditches near the processing facilities. For years, workers at the site went under the assumption the liquid would simply evaporate-since Hanford is located in an arid desert climate-and that "rain and surface water would not move those contaminants through the soil into the groundwater."
However, the liquid has not evaporated and the fear now exists that groundwater could be contaminated and seep into the Columbia River, which supplies drinking water to nearly one million people in surrounding communities and may well threaten sensitive fish habitats.
"It's the life-blood of the Northwest," Larsen states. Though she points out that currently Columbia is considered a "Class A" river and the water has been deemed safe for consumption.
DOE Cleanup Program Status
To date, the Department of Energy has spent a total of $75 billion on nuclear waste remediation. Environmental Management's budget for 2008 is $5.7 billion and the DOE is asking for $5.5 billion in 2009, according to the department's current Congressional Budget Request. Yet, according to Larsen, the budget appropriation for Hanford falls far too short.
"The challenge at Hanford is that there is so much money required to just keep the lights on and keep everything safe and assure that there's no further harm to the people and the environment," she says.
Larsen says the total budget slated for Hanford in 2008 is close to $1.9 billion, of which roughly half is dedicated to soil remediation and the other half to the waste tank program and construction of the glass facility. However, the 2009 budget cuts the amount slated for soil cleanup by about $35 million, and Larsen stresses the overall Hanford budget needs an additional $200 million in 2009 to remain effective.
"At this point in time, we're very concerned that the budget cuts are going to result in the cleanup being delayed or taking significantly longer," she says.
Yet, Larsen is quick to point out the new roadmap will have a significantly positive impact on the Hanford project, citing the necessity to examine new technologies to deal with the cleanup effort.
"Given the complexity of the contaminants that need to be cleaned up," she says, "there has been a need to develop new technology to address those contaminants. There's been such good progress at Hanford, we're very hopeful that progress will continue."
Asked about concerns the project may be indefinitely delayed due to budget problems, Larsen replied: "We're not willing to accept that."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 06, 2008
Geoff Schumacher: McCain bad for Nevada -- but he'll still win here
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, comes across as feisty, pragmatic and independent-minded. Although McCain agrees with George W. Bush on many issues, such as the Iraq war, he contrasts favorably with the doctrinaire president.
I don't think the Republicans have had a presidential candidate like McCain since the last nominee from Arizona, Barry Goldwater.
Of course, McCain's maverick streak has alienated many within his party who would prefer that he toe the ideological line. For example, McCain agreed with most of the positions espoused by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his cohorts during the 1990s but McCain wasn't comfortable with the hyper-partisan, scorched earth strategy, so he didn't join the crusade.
Instead, McCain defied the Gingrich-led partisans by seeking common ground with the devils across the aisle. He co-sponsored legislation with Democrats on issues such as campaign finance reform and immigration.
But make no mistake: Contrary to the claims of his right-wing critics, McCain is a conservative. In fact, as Jonathan Rauch argues persuasively in the May issue of The Atlantic magazine, McCain makes a stronger claim to the true conservative mantle, as espoused by 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke, than most of the flame-throwers in the forefront of the party.
In an earlier age, McCain might have been described as a worthy opponent, someone you scrap with during the day and have a drink with in the evening.
That said, McCain would be an inferior choice for president at this time in history. It's clear to me the Democratic candidates better represent the direction the country wants and needs to go in the wake of the disastrous Bush administration.
McCain also would be particularly bad for Nevada. During a brief stop in Las Vegas recently, he defended two long-standing positions that can't possibly sit well with a significant majority of Nevada voters.
First, McCain defended his support for building a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. McCain seems to embrace the "it's gotta go somewhere, why not the wasteland of Nevada" position that so enrages those of us who have made this state home and do not consider it a wasteland. Despite the fact that McCain has for decades lived in the West and represented an adjacent state, he doesn't seem to grasp the complexity of the nuclear waste issue or the legitimate scientific reasons why Yucca Mountain is not a suitable location. His vague suggestion that he's open to new scientific information on Yucca Mountain was about as convincing as Bush's professed commitment to "sound science" in 2000.
McCain also defended his support for a ban on college sports betting. He said he introduced such a bill several years ago after college coaches told him of "the enormous temptation before their young athletes." On this issue, too, McCain seems unable or unwilling to look beyond the surface.
Sports book directors and state gaming regulators make a compelling case that Nevada's system is a benefit to the cause rather than a detriment. Nevada sports books are the most likely agents to identify and expose the fixing of a collegiate contest. This, in fact, happened when a point-shaving scheme involving Arizona State basketball players was revealed by Las Vegas sports books that observed unusually heavy bets on several games in 1994.
Here's the frustrating thing: Despite McCain's views on these seemingly huge issues, I predict he'll win Nevada in November.
Nevada Democrats enjoy a registration majority right now, reflecting excitement about the prospect of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton cleaning the neocons out of Washington and withdrawing from Iraq. But voting trends in Nevada in recent years suggest that McCain has an advantage anyway.
Consider our last gubernatorial election. Jim Gibbons, the GOP candidate, handily defeated the Democrat, Dina Titus. Now, neither candidate set the world on fire, but Titus clearly was more knowledgeable and experienced on just about every level.
All Gibbons did was promise to not raise taxes. That's all he did, but it was the ticket to an easy win.
It stands to reason that Nevada voters will overlook McCain's stances on Yucca Mountain and college sports betting in favor of his moderate/conservative worldview. President Bush's pro-nuke position didn't hurt him much in Nevada. And if history means anything (again, look at Gibbons), McCain's military resume will serve him well here.
What will unfold in Nevada, I fear, is a state-level version of the 1972 presidential election, when Republican Richard Nixon trounced Democrat George McGovern during an era when Vietnam War/civil rights-fueled conventional wisdom suggested a liberal landslide.
And just as history shows Nixon to have been a horrible choice, modern-day Nevadans aren't proving to be savvy judges of political character. They elected Gibbons, who seems to be working feverishly to earn the title of Nevada's Worst Governor Ever. He might already be there after just more than one year in office. Nevada also elected Bush twice, and he's made an open-shut case for joining the ranks of the Worst Presidents Ever.
Nevadans who vote for McCain instead of Obama, the most likely Democratic nominee, will be out of step with a rare opportunity to restore idealism and common purpose to the national political discussion. Even worse, they will be voting for the status quo in Iraq, which can't possibly be the best option.
Let's hope Nevada's electoral votes don't stand in the way of a Democratic victory.
A clarification
In last Sunday's column, "UNLV and the Pitfalls of Globalism," I cited CBS television in reporting the enrollment of UNLV to be 18,000. This figure is a slightly outdated tally of the university's count of full-time-equivalent students. A full-time equivalent, or FTE, is calculated by dividing all semester credit hours by what is considered to be a full-time load. For undergraduates, a full-time load is 15 credits. The FTE is a common metric in the academic world. UNLV's FTE total for fall 2007 was 20,021, down 1 percent from fall 2006. If all students are counted, regardless of how many courses they take, UNLV's fall 2007 enrollment was 28,477.
--Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is Stephens Media's director of community publications. He is the author of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas" and "Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue." His column appears Sunday.
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Las Vegas SUN
April 06, 2008
Letter from Washington:
Majority Leader Clinton? Senate insiders say, ‘Nah’
By Lisa Mascaro
Washington — There’s a story in town that won’t go away.
It shows up in different forms, morphing slightly to fit the political calculus of the day, but always ends with the same punch line: Sen. Hillary Clinton will not be president but will replace Harry Reid as Senate majority leader.
Sometimes it comes up as a suggestion, as in: Reid should offer Clinton his spot as a way for her to gracefully bow out of the presidential race.
Other times as a backroom deal between the two, as rumor had it during the heady days before the 2006 election that swept Reid to power.
Sometimes it is simply the wishful musing of bloggers unhappy with Reid’s style. Last week it appeared both as an op-ed piece by a former Republican Party operative writing in The Wall Street Journal and an April Fool’s joke in Nevada.
As enticing as it may be to envision such a dramatic end to this drawn out Democratic Party presidential nominating contest, those close to the Senate say it just isn’t going to happen.
Consider the pieces of this puzzle.
Would Clinton even want to run the Senate? She has amassed a certain unmatchable star power in the chamber. She has bodyguards. Many question what she would gain other than the headaches that come with the majority leader’s job.
Even more, would the Senate have Clinton as leader? One reason senators stand by Reid is because he stands by them. Reid gives his committee leaders wide latitude to conduct their affairs and protects his caucus from tough votes.
Remember last year, when Reid’s credentials as majority leader were called into question in the op-ed pages of The Washington Post after he blurted out that the Iraq “war is lost.” All 50 Democrats, including pro-war independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, signed a letter to the editor in the next day’s paper supporting him as their man.
Clinton would need to convince the old bulls of the Senate as well as the newer members, including many who have thrown their presidential endorsements to Sen. Barack Obama, that she would care for them as Reid does.
Plus, Clinton would need to climb over those next in line — Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, now the majority whip, and fellow New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who is on Durbin’s heels in the No. 3 position.
All of this includes one dicey assumption: Reid would step down.
Sure, Reid may have bad days in the Senate, and his work as leader may be scuffing up his reputation back home, where he faces reelection in 2010. But one thing Reid is not, those who have watched him know, is a quitter.
If the truculent boy from Searchlight, who fought so much as a kid he became an amateur boxer before going on to wrestle with the Mob in Nevada and a president in Washington, was ever going to walk away from something, would this be it?
Besides, Reid seems to be having fun. When he holds forth in the Senate halls, he banters with the playful confidence of someone who knows how it’s all going to work out. More than ever, as leader, he can do what he wants for Nevada, from bringing in money for projects to stopping a Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
Why would he give up all that now?
People say they’ve learned long ago never to say never in Washington. That is smart advice. But for now, when you ask around here whether there is any truth to the story that won’t go away, the answer is always the same: No.
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Longview Daily News
April 06, 2008
Private-public partnership for nuclear storage
The federal government has had a difficult time delivering on its promise to take possession of the more than 77,000 tons of radioactive waste that has accumulated at commercial reactors around the nation. Although Congress settled on a site near Yucca Mountain in Nevada in 1987, project officials say the repository remains almost a decade away from completion.
The best achievable opening date now is 2017, 19 years beyond the original deadline for opening the repository.
The good news for the nation's 131 nuclear utilities - including the idled Trojan plant near Rainier, where roughly 4,700 tons of radioactive waste await shipment to the repository - is that Energy Department officials have come up with a plan that could speed this project's completion. They've suggested that the commercial nuclear industry join the government in a private-public partnership to manage the construction of this repository. It would be modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public utility. Proponents of the plan believe the partnership could provide the stability this project has been lacking.
It likely would provide the steady flow of funds needed to keep the project moving forward. Annual budgets have become an issue in recent years because political opponents of the Yucca Mountain repository in Congress have managed to slow the flow of funds. The money to get this done is there - more than $20 billion the commercial utilities have collected from their ratepayers over the years to pay for the construction of the national repository.
Collecting this money was part of the government's contract with utilities. It's one reason why the government cannot simply walk away from its obligation to build the repository. Indeed, some utilities already have brought suit over the missed 1998 deadline. As of last year, the government had paid more than $243 million in legal damages.
The government's potential liability, should it fail to build a national repository, has been estimated at $60 billion.
Another incentive for getting this repository up and running is the new look many in government are giving nuclear power. President Bush has made the construction of new nuclear plants a priority of his second term. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have introduced a bill that would authorize more than $3.7 billion in subsidies for new plants. As a practical matter, we're unlikely to see the dawn of a new era of nuclear power until the government makes good on its promise to take possession of the waste left over from the previous era.
Establishing a private-public partnership to manage construction may be the way to assure that the government meets its new, 2017 deadline for completion of the waste repository.
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Pahrump Valley Times
April 05, 2008
Back Then
20 years ago this week
Amargosa Valley once again is making an effort to strike a blow for a bigger tax base by seeking to annex Yucca Mountain.
An earlier effort was sidetracked with the creation of Bullfrog County, which carved 144 square miles out of Nye County atop Yucca Mountain. However, Bullfrog was found unconstitutional and has passed into history.
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BurlingtonFreePress
April 05, 2008
My Turn: The high cost of cheap power
By Claire Ayer
When the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was built, Vermont had 40 years to prepare for its closing in 2012. Vermonters put hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank for decommissioning costs and sent millions of dollars to the federal government to support a federal repository for our nuclear waste. In 2002, Entergy Nuclear acquired the plant and, since 2006, it has run Vermont Yankee at 120 percent of its designed capacity. Now, Entergy wants the operating license extended another 20 years, which the Legislature must approve.
The benefits of continuing operation are obvious: Yankee supplies one-third of Vermont's electricity at a good price, employs 600 Vermonters, and pays taxes to Vernon and the state.
The Legislature needs the best possible information to decide whether the electricity generated for Vermonters will be worth the financial, public health and safety risks posed by the continued operation of the aging nuclear plant. First we need a comprehensive and independent analysis of the plant. The governor recently asked Vermonters to accept a review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- the same NRC that had recently given the plant approval when pictures of the collapsed cooling tower hit the newspapers last year. In 2007, the chairman of the NRC promised to relicense every nuclear reactor in the country, and the Office of the Inspector General criticized the NRC's investigative process, claiming that it takes the industry's word on safety issues. No wonder Vermonters worry that NRC approval is simply a rubber stamp. That's why the Legislature is calling for a truly thorough and independent audit.
When Vermonters approved the construction of Entergy's plant, we understood that the federal government would remove the dangerous nuclear waste generated by the plant. Vermonters paid millions to the federal government to build Yucca Mountain, but the facility hasn't opened yet and probably never will. Lethal nuclear materials remain on the flood plain of the Connecticut River. We are calling for scientists to look throughout Vermont for a less inappropriate place to store the high-level nuclear waste for the foreseeable future.
When the plant does shut down, its operator is responsible for decommissioning the plant, which means removing all the nuclear waste and contaminated materials including the reactor core, the building, and even the soil underneath it. Recently we learned that Entergy Nuclear, a multibillion-dollar corporation from Louisiana, is restructuring in order to distance itself from the liability associated with the Vermont plant. While profits will flow out of state to parent company Entergy, the liability will remain with the Vermont-based plant to be renamed SpinCo. When SpinCo. closes, Vermont may not be able to sue Entergy for decommissioning expenses. In that case, taxpayers would have to pay.
The cost of decommissioning is estimated to be $800 million in 2012, but Entergy's decommissioning fund has just over half that amount. The Senate has passed a bill that requires the parent company, Entergy Nuclear, to guarantee full funding to clean up the site after the plant shuts down. Regardless of Entergy's future in this state, Vermonters and their Legislature must be diligent about planning for a safe and sustainable energy future. That future includes encouraging a range of homegrown renewable energy options, reducing our home energy bills, and growing jobs for Vermonters. The governor vetoed a bill doing just that last year.
Now is the time for thoughtful, well-informed debate, and rigorous policies that keep the lights on and ensure safety and economic security for Vermonters.
--Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, of Weybridge serves on the Senate Government Operations and Finance committees.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 04, 2008
Law firm's Yucca pact with DOE criticized
Inspectors say agency ignored conflicts, documentation
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Federal inspectors on Thursday faulted the Department of Energy for picking a law firm with conflicts of interest to work on the Yucca Mountain Project without fully documenting why the firm was selected.
A contract potentially worth more than $100 million to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP was opened to scrutiny because the firm also represents more than a dozen utilities suing the government for missing deadlines on the Nevada nuclear waste project.
The Energy Department inspector general said DOE's hiring of the firm was inconsistent with its past practice of excluding bidders with conflicts.
DOE officials said Morgan Lewis was the only firm with adequate experience for the job, and that safeguards were put in place against the conflicts. But at the end of a four-month probe, auditors concluded that DOE's decision-making was not fully documented and could not be fully reviewed.
"Given the controversial nature of the Yucca Mountain Project, the history of allegations concerning conflicts of interest and the likely public scrutiny... of the contract, we found the absence of such documentation disturbing," inspector general Gregory Friedman said at the outset of a 15-page report.
"In our view, the public interest would have been better served had the department done more to document the key decision points related to this procurement," the inspector general said.
While criticizing aspects of DOE's selection process, the inspector general stopped short of recommending the contract be voided.
Opponents of the Yucca project were not as restrained in critiquing DOE's handling of the matter.
Attorneys for Nevada filed documents at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking to have Morgan Lewis disqualified from participating in Yucca license hearings, based on the audit findings.
Further, the five Nevada lawmakers in Congress called on the Energy Department to recuse the firm.
"This report makes clear that DOE blatantly violated its own policies in order to award a $100 million sweetheart deal to a firm drowning in special interest conflicts," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
"When DOE learned that its own policies prevented the awarding of this no bid contract to Morgan Lewis, they just torched the rulebook," Berkley said.
The Energy Department through a spokeswoman rejected the state's demand and said the firm is staying on the project.
"Nothing here warrants the recusal of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius from representing DOE in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding," spokeswoman Megan Barnett said in a statement.
"While the IG observed that DOE did not develop documentation in such a manner as the IG would have preferred, that sort of documentation is neither required nor consistent with the type of procurement conducted here," Barnett said.
"We are confident that our retention of (Morgan Lewis & Bockius) serves the department and the public interest," Barnett said.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a major international firm with a thriving nuclear practice, was hired on Sept. 26 to handle licensing for the proposed nuclear waste repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas that is being designed to store 77,000 tons of high level waste.
The firm signed a five-year contract, with five additional one year options, carrying a potential maximum payout of $109 million that legal experts said would be a record for a nuclear proceeding.
DOE properly followed requirements to obtain conflict of interest waivers and to demand the firm erect firewalls between its work for the government and for the utilities, the inspectors report said.
A separate team of lawyers in a separate location was assigned to the DOE contract. Documents were kept in a secured room and computer network security restricted access to Yucca Mountain material, auditors confirmed.
--Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@ stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 04, 2008
Editorial: Fox and the henhouse
The Department of Energy's bungling on the Yucca Mountain project continues.
Or is "bungling" too nice a word?
On Thursday, the DOE's inspector general revealed that the agency had failed to properly document why it chose a law firm riddled with conflicts of interest as the recipient of a $100 million contract to help prepare a license application for the nuke dump.
The firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, represents 11 nuclear utilities that are suing the government for not having already taken the spent waste off their hands.
In other words, the DOE hired a firm representing those with a vested interest in pushing the Yucca Mountain project to prepare the application that must be approved before the dump can open.
Fox, meet the henhouse.
All this, even though another firm with no such conflicts had been rejected by DOE officials, who provided no rationale for the decision.
"We found the absence of such documentation disturbing," said the investigator's report. "In our view, the public interest would have been better served had the department done more to document the key decision points relating to this procurement."
A DOE spokeswoman said the agency's actions were within the law.
"While the IG observed that DOE did not develop documentation in such a manner as the IG would have preferred," said the DOE's Megan Barnett, "that sort of documentation is neither required nor consistent with the type of procurement conducted here."
Public interest? What's that?
Of course, such dissembling should come as no surprise to most Nevadans.
"It's painfully clear," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "that the Energy Department continues to set aside public interest and security in its rush to turn Nevada into the nation's nuclear dumping ground."
But as long as it was all legal ...
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 04, 2008
Letter: Yucca Mountain safe and secure
I challenge you to publish true facts on Yucca Mountain instead of the negative statements made by politicians and others. The following are some facts you should use.
1. The millions of dollars of our taxes spent to date to construct this storage site. Thousands of dollars given to Nevada.
2. The contributions to the economy of Las Vegas that was vital to Las Vegas in the early stages of development of this storage site.
3. The continued contribution to Las Vegas economy when the site is in operation. The government would be totally wasting millions of our tax dollars if this site were not put into operation.
4. List of the politicians who supported locating the storage site in Nevada instead of New Mexico.
5. Several years ago the Nevada governor protested Department of Energy proposed layoff of the employees assigned to this project.
6. Yucca Mountain method of storing nuclear waste is the safest and securest method known to date.
7. The present temporary storage of nuclear waste is far from being safe or secure.
I offer my services "free of charge" to assist one of your reporters in preparing a newspaper article on this subject.
Arnold H. Young
Reno
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 04, 2008
Senators must stand together on clean energy future in state
Appeals to secure federal support for a coal-fired power plant proposed by Sierra Pacific Resources creates unnecessary confusion in Washington about Nevada's energy priorities and aims to promote an entrenched coal industry in the state at a time when the push should be to develop alternative and clean-energy infrastructure.
While U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has opposed a proposed coal-fired power plant in Ely, U.S. Sen. John Ensign is advancing a plan to add the Ely Energy Center to a U.S. Department of Energy demonstration project on ways to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground.
Ensign's plan likely would speed development of technology to screen greenhouse gas emissions and take coal-burning in Nevada to the next step. This state's energy future, however, lies in clean alternatives to fossil fuels. That is where the state ought to focus its efforts. And that includes plans to ask for federal funding.
A legitimate argument can be made for outfitting established plants with this yet-to-be developed carbon-capture technology. The plants must be used while and until the research and development phase of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass production bears greater fruit. Plans to phase out the coal plants should be on engineers' drawing boards right now.
Ensign's vision of the United States as the "Saudi Arabia of coal" is a portrayal of pure exoticism and capitulation to the coal industry. There is no likelihood that coal-burning technology ever can be made truly clean. It will forever be a problem for the environment, and as heavy users of scarce water resources, a problem for conservation.
Ensign's plan ultimately serves to maintain the status quo for producing and using energy from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, scarce funds can be spread only so far. The plan would slow the rate of developing alternative industries.
This state's representatives in Congress work together on so many important policy projects, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project among them. It is too bad they are split on the issue of generating energy.
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American Lawyer
April 04, 2008
Yucca Report Critical of Energy Department's Contract With Morgan, Lewis
Inspector general calls awarding of lucrative contract 'disturbing'
Nate Raymond
The American Lawyer
The Department of Energy has awarded a $109 million contract to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, despite still-existing conflicts that kept the firm out of a similar engagement nine years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the Energy Department's inspector general. Morgan, Lewis will represent the department at hearings related to the opening of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site.
The inspector general, Gregory Friedman, called the Energy Department¹s failure to document its change in policy "disturbing." The department awarded Morgan, Lewis the lucrative contract in September 2007, following an informal bid process that Friedman called "other than competitive." Friedman's investigation began in December at the request of the Nevada Congressional delegation, which has been highly critical of the Yucca Mountain project.
The report says in selecting Morgan, Lewis, the department went with a firm that "represented utilities in the spent nuclear fuel litigation against the government." Yet in 1999, as The American Lawyer has previously reported, the department rejected a bid by Morgan, Lewis when a similar contract for legal services related to Yucca Mountain was awarded. At the time, the report says, the department "excluded firms [including Morgan, Lewis] with this conflict from participating in a similar contract."
Morgan, Lewis represents 14 utilities with regards to contracts they signed with the government to dispose of their spent nuclear fuel, according to disclosures the firm made Sept. 24. It represents 11 clients in suits against the department, a spokeswoman says.
The Nevada delegation called for the Energy Department to disqualify Morgan, Lewis, or for the firm to withdraw from the contract.
The Energy Department said Thursday that "nothing here warrants the recusal" of Morgan, Lewis, and a firm spokeswoman said it would not withdraw from the contract.
The report found that although Morgan, Lewis had a conflict, the Energy Department appeared to have followed conflict-of-interest requirements in awarding the contract. It also noted that Morgan, Lewis had implemented a conflict mitigation plan.
But the inspector general was critical of the department¹s failure to document its apparent change in procurement policy.
"In our view, the public interest would have been better served had the department done more to document the key decision points relating to this procurement," Friedman wrote.
In 1999 the department issued a call for bids for a 10-year contract worth $15-20 million. Four firms competed, including Morgan, Lewis. The upcoming May issue of The American Lawyer will report on the bid process and those firms involved in the Yucca project from 1999 to today.
Morgan, Lewis¹s contract with the Energy Department runs through 2011 and will pay the firm $47.7 million. The department has the option to extend the contract for another five years and up to $61.2 million. Jay Gutierrez, head of Morgan¹s energy practice, is the overall lead on the project.
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Platts
April 04, 2008
OIG: Lack of information on DOE contractor pick `disturbing'
Washington (Platts)--3Apr2008
DOE's lack of documentation on its selection of a legal services contractor for the repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada is "disturbing," DOE's Office of Inspector General said in a report released April 3. DOE hired Morgan, Lewis, and Bockius LLC last year to help prepare a repository license application that the department wants to send to NRC in June. DOE had hired the same firm in 2001 to assess the program's safety conscious work environment. Its consideration of Morgan Lewis for the 2007 contract reversed an earlier DOE prohibition against hiring law firms to work on the repository program whose utility clients had sued the federal government over DOE's failure to begin disposing of their spent fuel by a 1998 contract date. OIG said DOE did not document its rationale for that apparent shift in procurement strategy or its comparative analysis of bids that led to its selection of Morgan Lewis. OIG said thorough documentation was especially important "given the controversial nature of the Yucca Mountain Project; the history of allegations concerning conflicts of interest; and, the likely public scrutiny of any Yucca Mountain Project legal services contract." The OIG did not say it found a conflict of interest, prompting DOE spokeswoman Megan Barnett to say that nothing in the report prevents the firm from representing the department in a Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding at NRC.
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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