Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, April 18, 2008

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, April 18, 2008
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Congressman Jon Porter
April 17, 2008

Nevada asks NRC to reject plan for nuclear dump drip shields

LAS VEGAS – Nevada is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject an Energy Department plan to install metal alloy shields to prevent water from dripping onto radioactive waste canisters in the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

In a letter Tuesday to NRC Chairman Dale Klein, Bob Loux, chief of the state Nuclear Projects Agency and the administrator of state opposition to the Yucca project, called the idea of robots installing expensive and heavy drip shields made of rare metals “highly speculative.”

“DOE's claim that Yucca Mountain can meet applicable post-closure health and safety standards is precariously balanced on one slender and implausible assumption – that 11,500 titanium-palladium alloy drip shields will be installed a hundred years or more from now,” Loux says in his three-page letter. “There is no safety net underlying this assumption.”

Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman, responded saying the Energy Department looked forward to a review following submittal of a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“The design of the repository and the department's safety case will be included in the license application,” Benson said. Project officials say they expect to file the application by June 30.

Loux's objjection is based on an April 3 technical exchange between federal and state scientists who met in Las Vegas to consider plans for Yucca Mountain, the national nuclear waste dump proposed for a site 90 miles northwest of the city.

Plans call for entombing 77,000 tons of spent commercial reactor fuel now piling up around the country, as well as high-level radioactive waste from defense activities, in tunnels some 1,000 feet beneath the ancient volcanic ridge.

Project officials propose using titanium-palladium alloy plates to protect waste canisters from water that is expected to inevitably seep into the repository over the course of tens of thousands of years.

But Loux said Energy Department calculations show the proposed titanium-palladium alloy drip shields will corrode, eventually allowing water to compromise the waste containment canisters and release radiation exceeding “by a factor of ten” health and safety standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Loux also said that installing the 5-ton shields drip shields a century from now may not be feasible. Robots to do the work have yet to be invented, he said, and they would have to operate in radioactive, hot, rock-strewn tunnels.

What's more, the amount of titanium needed for 11,500 drip shields “would consume about a third to half of the world's current annual titanium production,” Loux wrote.

“The availability of such quantities of this material a hundred years or more in the future is not something that anyone can assure with any confidence,” he wrote. “That is even more the case with palladium, which is classified as a rare metal.”

Also Tuesday, Nevada's congressional delegation issued a statement calling for the Energy Department to sever ties with the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius regarding any additional work on the Yucca Mountain Project because of conflicts of interest.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, and Republicans Jon Porter and Dean Heller, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman asking him torecuse the law firm because of conflicts cited in a recent inspector general's report.

“While the inspector general acknowledged that the department 'checked the boxes' in its procurement and did not break any laws, he also explained that DOE failed to provide adequate documentation of its decision to hire Morgan Lewis,” the letter reads.

The Energy Department inspector general said DOE's hiring of the firm under a contract potentially worth more than $100 million was inconsistent with its past practice of excluding bidders with conflicts.

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Nevada Appeal
April 17, 2008

State asks NRC to reject plan for Yucca drip shields

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Nevada is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject an Energy Department plan to install metal alloy shields to prevent water from dripping onto radioactive waste canisters in the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

"DOE's claim that Yucca Mountain can meet applicable post-closure health and safety standards is precariously balanced on one slender and implausible assumption - that 11,500 titanium-palladium alloy drip shields will be installed a hundred years or more from now," Loux says in his three-page letter. "There is no safety net underlying this assumption."

Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman, responded saying the Energy Department looked forward to a review following submittal of a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"The design of the repository and the department's safety case will be included in the license application," Benson said. Project officials say they expect to file the application by June 30.

Loux's objection is based on an April 3 technical exchange between federal and state scientists who met in Las Vegas to consider plans for Yucca Mountain, the national nuclear waste dump proposed for a site 90 miles northwest of the city.

But Loux said Energy Department calculations show the proposed titanium-palladium alloy drip shields will corrode, eventually allowing water to compromise the waste containment canisters and release radiation exceeding "by a factor of ten" health and safety standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Loux also said that installing the 5-ton shields drip shields a century from now may not be feasible.

Robots to do the work have yet to be invented, he said, and they would have to operate in radioactive, hot, rock-strewn tunnels.

What's more, the amount of titanium needed for 11,500 drip shields "would consume about a third to half of the world's current annual titanium production," Loux wrote.

"The availability of such quantities of this material a hundred years or more in the future is not something that anyone can assure with any confidence," he wrote. "That is even more the case with palladium, which is classified as a rare metal."

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, and Republicans Jon Porter and Dean Heller, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman asking him to recuse the law firm because of conflicts cited in a recent inspector general's report.

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Post-Bulletin
April 17, 2008

Xcel requests operating extension, more storage for nuclear plant

By Dawn Schuett
Post-Bulletin
Rochester MN

WELCH -- If it receives regulatory approval, Xcel Energy could extend operations at the Prairie Island nuclear plant by 20 years and increase the number of storage containers on site for nuclear waste.

Xcel Energy submitted an application Tuesday to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew the operating licenses for the plant's two 538-megawatt reactors. The current 40-year licenses expire in 2013 and 2014.

Xcel Energy also plans to file a "certificate of need" with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to increase the generating capacity of each reactor by about 80 megawatts for a total of nearly 1,240 megawatts, and for the addition of 35 used fuel storage containers at the plant. There are now 24 containers.

Dave Sparby, acting president and chief executive officer of Xcel Energy's Northern States Power subsidiary, said the Prairie Island plant generates about 20 percent of the electricity used by its customers in the Upper Midwest.

It's operated "safely, reliably and economically for 35 years," he said. "Our analysis shows that continuing to operate the Prairie Island reactors is a cost-effective option for meeting our customers' growing demand for electricity while helping us accomplish state policymakers' environmental objectives for carbon reductions."

Community response

Leaders of the Prairie Island Indian Community, which is 600 yards from the storage containers at the nuclear plant, say they question the wisdom of the proposed re-licensing and the possible increase of nuclear waste stored on site.

The tribal council favors the removal of nuclear waste from the storage units at the plant to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, the future of that proposal is in doubt.

"We're extremely concerned about the prospect of re-licensing the Prairie Island plant, or any nuclear power plant, at this time," said tribal council president Ron Johnson. "Until the federal government makes good on its promise to solve the nuclear waste storage issue, it is irresponsible to consider expanding the use of nuclear power in Minnesota or any state."

Sparby said the proposed license renewal and increased capacity "complement Xcel's efforts to greatly expand wind resources and conservation on our system."

By 2020, Xcel must use renewable resources to generate 30 percent of its energy.

"We are committed to achieving a well balanced portfolio of energy resources that best meets our customers' needs and accomplishes the state's environmental goals," Sparby said.

Xcel Energy will post the license renewal application on its Web site at www.xcelenergy.com after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepts it.

Additional information about the license renewal process is available on the NRC's Web site at www.nrc.gov, and more information about the Prairie Island plant is available on Xcel Energy's Web site at www.xcelenergy.com.

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Republican Eagle
April 17, 2008

Letter: Tribe questions relicensing plant

The Prairie Island Indian Community has very serious concerns about the proposed re-licensing and the potential increase in the amount of nuclear waste to be stored indefinitely near our tribal community. With no concrete solution to the storage problem, we question the wisdom of extending the life of this or any nuclear power plant.

The Prairie Island plant is located next door to the Prairie Island Indian Community. Twin nuclear reactors and two dozen large cement nuclear waste storage casks currently sit just 600 yards from our homes.

If the plant is relicensed for an additional 20 years, a total of 65 casks would be necessary. Each storage cask contains 40 spent fuel assemblies, which represents approximately 25 tons of nuclear waste.

Until the federal government makes good on its promise to solve the nuclear waste storage issue, it is irresponsible to consider expanding the use of nuclear power in Minnesota or any state.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are 125 temporary nuclear waste storage sites throughout the country, with more than 169 million Americans living within 75 miles of one of these temporary facilities. Prairie Island is among the closest.

Twenty-five years after Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and mandated the establishment of a national repository, the future of the nation's nuclear waste disposal program remains very much in doubt.

The proposed spent-fuel repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has suffered numerous setbacks and now may never open.

Ron Johnson
Welch

--Ron Johnson is president of the Prairie Island Tribal Council.

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Medill Reports
April 17, 2008

Ban on new Illinois nuclear reactors may be lifted

by Phil Taylor

For the first time in more than 20 years, new nuclear reactors could be considered for an Illinois town near you.

Lawmakers in the Illinois House are expected to vote this week on an amendment to the Public Utilities Act that would lift the long-standing state moratorium on new nuclear reactors. Under the current ban, new reactors cannot be built without the “demonstrable technology” to safely store the high-level radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants.

So far, no such technology exists, and best-case scenarios by the federal Department of Energy suggest a proposed nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada won’t be operable until 2017. But lawmakers such as amendment sponsor, Rep. JoAnn Osmond (R- Antioch), say this is no reason to discount the benefits of nuclear energy.

Even if the amendment passes, it would take several years for any plant proposals to pass the licensing and financial hurdles necessary to begin construction of a new reactor. In addition, global demand for reactor parts has grown and supplies are prohibitively tight.

Illinois currently has 11 operating nuclear reactors that produce about 45 percent of the state’s electricity. Warrenville-based Exelon Nuclear, which operates all but one of the reactors, said it has no plans to expand nuclear power in Illinois.

“We don’t have any plans to build new plants in Illinois,” said company spokeswoman Krista Lopykinski. “We really are not involved in any details of it.”

Exelon’s recently approved early site permit at its Clinton, Ill. plant was filed to clear the way for the possibility of future projects, however, Lopykinski said.

Still, environmental activists and at least one legislator are complaining that the amendment was rushed through the house public utilities committee earlier this month.

The committee held a hearing on April 2 with little warning and not enough public comment, said Jonathan Goldman, executive director of the Springfield-based Illinois Environmental Council.

“It always concerns us when they try to sneak something through,” Goldman said. The council was unaware of the amendment until a half hour before it was approved in a 10-2 committee vote, he said. The action could be considered by the full House as soon as Thursday. The amendment would then move to the state senate, sponsored by Sen. Michael Bond (D-Grayslake).

“Hopefully, we’ll have a few days to talk to the individual legislators,” Goldman said. “This is a pretty major change that would be taking place.”

Rep. Al Riley (D-Matteson), one of two committee members to vote against the amendment, said he wasn’t ready to support such a sweeping proposal.

“I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something we made a mistake about,” said Riley. “That’s not the way you bring up something so controversial.”

Riley said Illinois voters should have more time to weigh-in on nuclear power, since they will be sharing the risks.

“Here’s an example of something that needs public scrutiny, both from the general public and advocacy groups,” he said. “It needs full participation among all the stakeholders.”

“Everyone is a little concerned,” said Osmond, whose district includes a nuclear plant in Zion that was shut down in 1998, due in part to a poor safety record. “Are safeguards there? I believe they are.”

Similar nuclear debates are taking place in other states as well. A bill to overturn California’s three-decade-old ban on new nuclear reactors was defeated last year. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin state legislature is debating whether to lift its 26-year nuclear reactor ban.

Osmond said each new nuclear plant could generate 1,500 to 2,000 new jobs and help the state keep pace with rising energy demands. The U.S. is projected to need between 30-50 percent more energy by 2030, she said.

Nuclear power is produced using the heat released from nuclear fission. Enriched uranium atoms are split in a chain reaction inside a reactor core. The heat converts water to steam, which powers an electromagnetic turbine to create electricity.

Advocates tout nuclear energy as a potential solution to global warming because it produces virtually no greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal-fired power plants. A federal energy bill was passed in December earmarking $20.5 billion in loan guarantees for construction of new reactors and uranium enrichment. Nuclear plant construction costs are estimated to be between $3 billion to $9 billion each.

With federal aid on the table, power companies now await state approval.

“Thirty years from now, I don’t want to say we didn’t look into this,” Osmond said. “I think we have to look to the future.”

The U.S. currently has 104 nuclear power plants that generate 20 percent of the country’s energy, but no new plants have been built since 1996.

Long-standing concerns over contamination, terrorist attacks and waste storage remain. David Kraft, director of the Chicago-based watchdog group Nuclear Energy Information Service, said today’s safeguards against radioactive contamination and terrorism are not foolproof.

“For the nearest foreseeable future, all of this waste is going to have to remain onsite,” Kraft said. Nuclear waste is currently stored at each of Illinois’ six nuclear power facilities. In Zion, about 1,000 tons of nuclear waste have been stored since the nuclear plant shut down in 1998.

In 2006, Exelon was sued by the state of Illinois for failing to report that its Braidwood nuclear plant had been releasing wastewater containing traces of radioactive tritium into groundwater surrounding the plant since 1996. Trace amounts of the element were detected in residents' tap water supply, but at levels well below the federal drinking water limits.

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Senator Harry Reid
April 16, 2008

Reid Calls on DOE to Recuse Conflicted Law Firm on Yucca

Nevada Senator Harry Reid called on the Department of Energy (DOE) this week to recuse the law firm – Morgan Lewis & Bockius – from any additional work on Yucca Mountain because of conflicts of interest recently acknowledged by the DOE’s Inspector General. “The Department set aside the Competition in Contracting Act to give Morgan Lewis this contract, potentially worth over $100 million, in a closed no-bid process that only involved two other law firms. With inadequate explanation, the Department reversed its policy of excluding from consideration any law firm that represents utilities in spent nuclear fuel litigation,” wrote Senator Reid in a letter signed by the entire Nevada Delegation.

Reid and his colleagues in the Nevada delegation further wrote, “The Department of Energy does not serve a specific industry, it serves the country and the American public. It is utterly disingenuous for the Department to claim that there are no other law firms with extensive experience in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regulatory process that do not have a conflict of interest. For that reason, we request you to immediately terminate the Department’s contract with Morgan Lewis, and begin a competitive procurement process if the firm’s replacement is deemed necessary to comply with current law.” Click here to read the letter signed by the entire Nevada Delegation and sent to Samuel W. Bodman, Secretary of the DOE.

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Congress of the United States
April 15, 2008

Nevada Congressional Delegation Calls on DOE to Recuse Conflicted Law Firm

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign, along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, Jon Porter, and Dean Heller, today called on the Department of Energy (DOE) to recuse the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius from any additional work on Yucca Mountain because of conflicts of interest recently investigated by the DOE's Inspector General.

A copy of the letter signed by the entire Nevada Delegation and sent to Samuel W. Bodman, Secretary of the DOE, follows:

Dear Secretary Bodman:

As you may know, the Department of Energy's Inspector General recently completed a review of alleged conflicts of interest involving the Department's legal services contractor for the Yucca Mountain Project. We write today to request that you recuse this law firm – Morgan Lewis & Bockius (Morgan Lewis) – from any additional work related to the Yucca Mountain project.

In the Inspector General's report on this investigation, he noted that by selecting a law firm "which represented utilities in spent nuclear fuel litigation against the Government," the Department "accepted a firm with a conflict of interest." It is our view that the Department of Energy made a mistake in waiving this conflict of interest, and in so doing did not serve the public interest. While the Inspector General acknowledged that the Department 'checked the boxes' in its procurement and did not break any laws, he also explained that DOE failed to provide adequate documentation of its decision to hire Morgan Lewis.

The Department set aside the Competition in Contracting Act to give Morgan Lewis this contract, potentially worth over $100 million, in a closed no-bid process that only involved two other law firms. With inadequate explanation, the Department reversed its policy of excluding from consideration any law firm that represents utilities in spent nuclear fuel litigation. In 1999, the Department's policy was that it "cannot afford a public perception that its licensing decisions regarding the repository were influenced by a firm that owes loyalties to the nuclear utilities." However last year, the Department hired Morgan Lewis – a law firm with at least a dozen lawsuits against DOE involving spent nuclear fuel acceptance issues – to help prepare its license application for Yucca Mountain. The Department might have checked the boxes in hiring Morgan Lewis, but it is clear that the public interest was disregarded to hire a law firm favored by the nuclear energy industry.

The Department of Energy does not serve a specific industry, it serves the country and the American public. It is utterly disingenuous for the Department to claim that there are no other law firms with extensive experience in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regulatory process that do not have a conflict of interest. For that reason, we request you to immediately terminate the Department's contract with Morgan Lewis, and begin a competitive procurement process if the firm's replacement is deemed necessary to comply with current law.

Should you have any questions, please contact Dayle Cristinzio/Alex McDonough (Senator Reid, 202-224-3542), Pam Thiessen (Senator Ensign, 202-224-6244), David Cherry (Congresswoman Berkley, 202-225-5965), Shannon Meade (Congressman Porter, 202-225-3252), or Greg Facchiano (Congressman Heller, 202-225-6155). We appreciate your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid
U.S. Senator

John Ensign
U.S. Senator

Shelley Berkley
U.S. Representative

Dean Heller
U.S. Representative

Jon Porter
U.S. Representative

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 16, 2008

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Nevada calls plan deficient

DOE's future installation of drip shields challenged

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

A Department of Energy plan to install thousands of titanium alloy drip shields in the distant future to keep water from corroding nuclear waste canisters inside Yucca Mountain has failed to convince Nevada officials that a repository, if built there, would be safe.

"NRC should reject out of hand any application from DOE that relies on highly speculative installation of drip shields," Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency wrote in a letter Tuesday to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Dale Klein.

"DOE's claim that Yucca Mountain can meet applicable post-closure health and safety standards is precariously balanced on one slender and implausible assumption -- that 11,500 titanium-palladium alloy drip shields will be installed a hundred years or more from now. There is no safety net underlying this assumption," Loux says in his three-page letter.

Loux's conclusion is based on information that surfaced April 3 during a technical exchange between federal and state scientists in Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain is 100 miles northwest of the city.

"DOE's own calculations show that, without thousands of these titanium-palladium alloy drip shields to ward off dripping water and retard the inevitable corrosion of the waste packages, the project radiation dose to the public from leaking waste containers would soon exceed the EPA standard by a factor of ten," Loux wrote, referring to health and safety standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

An Energy Department spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project, Allen Benson, responded to Loux's assertion, saying in an e-mail Tuesday that the department "looks forward to the review process."

"The design of the repository and the department's safety case will be included in the license application for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review," Benson wrote.

In his letter, Loux noted that installing expensive drip shields a century from now probably won't be possible because plans rely on using robots that have yet to be invented to install the 5-ton shields by remote control in hot, rock-strewn tunnels that will be highly radioactive.

What's more, the amount of titanium needed for 11,500 drip shields "would consume about a third to half of the world's current annual titanium production," Loux wrote.

"The availability of such quantities of this material a hundred years or more in the future is not something that anyone can assure with any confidence. That is even more the case with palladium, which is classified as a rare metal," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Nevada's congressional delegation issued a joint statement Tuesday calling for the Department of Energy to sever its ties with the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius regarding any additional work on the Yucca Mountain Project because of conflicts of interest.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman asking him to recuse the law firm because of conflicts cited in an inspector general's investigation.

"While the inspector general acknowledged that the department 'checked the boxes' in its procurement and did not break any laws, he also explained that DOE failed to provide adequate documentation of its decision to hire Morgan Lewis," the letter reads.

The Energy Department inspector general has said DOE's hiring of the firm under a contract potentially worth more than $100 million was inconsistent with its past practice of excluding bidders with conflicts.

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

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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 16, 2008

Commission to hear report on Yucca Mountain project transportation

The Lyon County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to hear a report on the planning process for the Yucca Mountain Project and transportation of nuclear waste at its meeting Thursday.

Gary Lanthrum, the Director of the Office of Logistics Management/National Transportation, will give a presentation on the planning process for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository and the national transportation of nuclear waste, including used of Section 180(c) funds, TAD (transportation, age and disposal) canister use and other issues.

The Office of Logistic Management (OLM) is a division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). The OLM is responsible for designing and developing a safe, secure, efficient and comprehensive transportation system, divided into national transportation and Nevada transportation infrastructure. It has been preparing a comprehensive national spent fuel transportation plan.

The plan now is for most of the spent nuclear fuel shipments to be conducted in canistered form.

This report is designed to be a follow-up to a presentation and meeting that other OLM officials conducted with commission last year, in which planned rail transportation through parts of Lyon County was a major focus.

The agenda summary for this item says, "The purpose of this interaction is to give Lyon County a point of contact in the National Transportation organization and to personally address any questions that Lyon County may have."

The plan of the Department of Energy is to establish a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, consolidating the storage of spent nuclear fuel from 121 sites around the country into one location, with Yucca Mountain chosen due to its remote location.

The Lyon County Commission meeting starts at 9 a.m. Thursday (April 17) in the commissioners chambers inside the Lyon County Administrative Complex in Yerington (27 So. Main St.).

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Slate
April 15, 2008

the green lantern: Illuminating answers to environmental questions.

Not in My Back Yucca

What are our alternatives for storing radioactive waste?

By Brendan I. Koerner

It seems like the good citizens of Nevada would sooner elect an orangutan as governor than let the federal government fill Yucca Mountain with radioactive waste. Can't blame them, I guess, but that spent nuclear fuel has to go somewhere. What, then, are the alternatives to stashing it beneath Yucca Mountain?

For the moment, the only real option is to leave the waste where it was created, encased in metal cylinders and stowed in concrete bunkers. Barring the machinations of some truly ingenious evildoers, that approach should get us safely through the next century or so. Unfortunately, we'll still have another 9,900 years to go until the waste becomes no more radioactive than unmined uranium. So, we better hope that over the next 100 years, our nation's best and brightest figure out a feasible workaround—one that may involve proton beams or (the Lantern kids you not) extremely hardy microbes.

Before we get to the gee-whiz proposals, though, a little Yucca Mountain background is in order. Though the facility has been in the works since the Reagan administration and has already cost upward of $8 billion, there's a good chance it will never store a spoonful of waste. The state of Nevada has vowed to litigate the project to death, citing concerns over the potential for groundwater contamination and the prevalence of earthquakes in the area. (Nevada's point-by-point anti-Yucca dossier can be found here [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2003/pdf/alternatives.pdf].)

Strict rationalists pooh-pooh the Silver State's concerns, pointing out that the odds of a catastrophe are vanishingly small. But when it comes to the specter of radiation, people are rarely comforted by actuarial arguments. Unless the government can prove that Yucca Mountain's storage casks won't leak a speck of waste over the next 10 millenniums—a scientific impossibility—Nevadans generally want nothing to do with the project. (The Lantern sees both sides of the argument—he likes to think of himself as a proud man of reason, but he also remembers being seriously freaked out by Chernobyl as a child.)

As a result of Nevada's litigiousness—as well as Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's political maneuvering—the opening of Yucca Mountain has already been delayed for a decade. The best-case scenario now has the facility opening sometime around 2020; the Lantern guesses, however, that the project is kaput, especially if there's a Democrat in the White House come January. (Both Clinton and Obama are opposed to Yucca Mountain; McCain is not.) But Yucca Mountain's woes may not be a great tragedy, seeing as how the project would solve little over the long term: According to a high-ranking official at Argonne National Laboratory, the nation will need nine Yucca-sized waste repositories by 2100, assuming that nuclear-power generation increases by 1.8 percent annually.

The good news is that we've got a viable stopgap solution: dry-cask storage. After nuclear fuel rods have been used up, they're cooled in pools of water. After five years of such cooling, they can be placed in sealed casks made of heat-resistant metal alloys and concrete. This technique is currently used at 31 locations nationwide, all of which must be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC asserts that there has never been a single incident at any of these sites.

The conventional wisdom is that these dry-cask storage sites will suffice for at least the next 100 years. But they'll fill up at some point, and some worry over their vulnerability to terrorist attacks, natural catastrophes, or theft. The whole rationale for Yucca Mountain was to secure all high-level nuclear waste in a single, safe location; with that project now imperiled, what's a nuclear nation to do?

Trust with every fiber of our beings that science keeps marching forward. Nevada's anti-Yucca dossier neatly summarizes this optimistic attitude: "It is almost inconceivable that progress in waste treatment and disposal methods will cease over the next century." There are several promising techniques in the pipeline, starting with accelerator-driven transmutation of waste, in which proton beams are used to reduce a substance's half-life. ATW is a favorite of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who gives it a shout-out on his anti-Yucca Mountain page. But skeptics claim that ATW is far too expensive and laborious, and will never be able to handle anything more than a token amount of waste.

There is also great interest in using microbes to either trap dangerous isotopes in calcite deposits or cleanse uranium from groundwater. And chemists at Northwestern University recently announced that layered metal sulfides show promise for the remediation of certain types of nuclear waste.

While these cleanup techniques are at least several decades away from commercial viability, we already know how to recycle nuclear waste. Nuclear recycling is every bit as controversial as Yucca Mountain, however. Several European nations currently use the PUREX process, in which spent fuel is bathed in nitric acid so that uranium and plutonium can be extracted. But PUREX isn't used in the United States because of its high cost, as well as the perceived risk of weapons proliferation.

Many in the American nuclear-power industry favor the development of UREX+, a recycling process that ostensibly addresses these concerns. The end products could then be used in advanced burner reactors. But UREX+ has plenty of critics (PDF), who contend that the process is neither as clean nor as proliferation-resistant as it's cracked up to be.

Perhaps our best hope for resolving all this he-said, she-said rancor is the development of nuclear fusion plants, which will theoretically produce waste that remains extraordinarily lethal for mere decades, as opposed to millennia. Hey, you never know—though the Lantern puts the odds at slightly less than those of a robotic horse winning the Kentucky Derby.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this space every Tuesday.

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Minnesota Public Radio
April 15, 2008

Xcel requests extensions on nuclear plant licenses

Xcel Energy plans to expand power generation and extend the life of its Prairie Island nuclear plant.

St. Paul, Minn. — Xcel Energy is applying to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for permission to produce nearly 10 percent more power at Prairie Island.

The company is also applying to extend the licenses of its two reactors there for 20 years. The plant's current licenses expire in 2013 and 2014.

Mike Wadley, Xcel's site vice president at Prairie Island, says the company will need to add 35 containers for spent fuel. There are already 24 containers at the site.

He says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed operating licenses of half of the 100 nuclear plants in the country.

Wadley says in spite of political opposition, the federal government is moving to set up permanent storage at Yucca Mountain.

"The health of the environment from continued use of nuclear power in our country is going to cross the political aisle, and come to some common ground that we need some solution for waste," said Wadley.

The Legislature could review the storage issue. Xcel hopes its applications will be approved by 2010.

Xcel officials say the Prairie Island plant generates about 20 percent of the electricity used by Upper Midwest customers.

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Progressive Railroading
April 14, 2008

STB to take its time to review proposed Yucca Mountain line in Nevada

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has adopted a longer-than-usual procedural schedule to review the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) application seeking authority to build and operate a nuclear waste-hauling rail line in Nevada.

The 300-mile Caliente Line would connect an existing Union Pacific Railroad line near Caliente to a proposed geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. The DOE would use the proposed line to transport spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to the geologic repository, where the materials would be disposed. The DOE also would provide common-carrier rail service to communities along the line.

"Because the DOE application is extensive and replies to it may be numerous, the board finds that the standard construction application timetable is inappropriate," the STB said in a procedural schedule announcement released Friday. "Accordingly, the board has established a longer schedule that will provide all parties ample time and opportunity for the submission of comments."

The STB will accept notices of intent to participate in the proceeding until May 7 and comments on the application until July 15. The DOE's reply is due Aug. 29.

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Southtown Star
April 14, 2008

What to do with toxic waste?

Marlene Lang
A small group of Native Americans, professors and government officials met last week in Nevada to exchange information on nuclear waste issues as they relate to Native Americans.

I was there. You could tell, roughly, the Natives and the green people from the not-necessarily-green because the men in one group had ponytails and the others wore ties. The leader of the forum crossed cultures by sporting a long black ponytail and a tie.

It was not his Native dress, I presumed, after he confessed that his diet regularly included rabbit hunted on the Nevada desert.

I paid my way to this powwow out of concern about where all the leftover radioactive waste from the nuclear power plants - which provide much of the Southland's electricity - will go if it is not left standing idly around the Chicago suburbs in scary concrete containers that resemble mausoleums.

I've previously written about the plan to store this toxic garbage inside Yucca Mountain, an hour-and-a-half drive outside the booming, 2-million-soul metropolis of Las Vegas. The plan has been in the works for many years, and as Steve Frishman, a state-contracted geologist with a small gray ponytail, said, "It's unbelievable that it's been held off this long."

The forum was to include a limited group tour of the Yucca Mountain site, currently consisting of a very tax-costly tunnel and rails. The mountain is being prepped to serve as the nation's permanent nuclear waste dump.

The university forum organizer contacted the U.S. Department of Energy - which oversees the project in spite of the site's existence on treatied Shoshone land - to set up the tour. But the DOE never got back to the Western Shoshone organizer, and the tour was canceled. This action mirrored the tradition of the U.S. government's violation of the Ruby Valley Treaty with the Western Shoshone, which in 1863 limited government uses of the land to a five-item list, none of which were radioactive waste dump.

There is no greater insult to another human being than to simply ignore him or her. How rude of the DOE. But the forum went on, tour or no tour, insult or not.

The discussion was disturbing. Chicagoans and Native Americans alike should be alarmed. One of the big issues discussed week was the transportation of radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, if the site receives the approval being sought by the DOE from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Kenny Anderson, of the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, said flatly, "What happens if it crashes and radiation is released into the area?" He added, "Our small area would be affected, and so would Las Vegas."

Note to readers: Some of that waste will embark on its happy train ride West from a nuclear power plant near you.

I had no idea how huge Las Vegas was. It's not just a strip of casinos; this is a sprawling desert suburb with a population that exceeds its reasonable need for water in the future by two or three times, state officials told me.

If an accident happens while the nation's nuke waste is being quietly trucked and railed in, the water supply for the great desert playground could be contaminated.

Anderson said, "They'll make a new Vegas somewhere else, but we're gonna be here."

What if Lake Michigan became contaminated in the transport process? We all know they can't make a new Chicago. You might feel as apt to stay here as the Paiute do in Nevada.

The plan for Yucca Mountain moves ahead, even as Nevada and the tribes fight it.

It appears Nevada was chosen for the dump site because it was the easiest political target, with few electoral votes, and it had a sparse Native population. The nuke waste transportation plans, I learned, evade Oklahoma, sending trucks in a circle that avoids Oklahoma because the Indians there have too much attitude.

The Natives of Nevada may have copped the attitude.

One young native woman, a Paiute tribal council member, swore she would continue to fight, even if the waste dump was approved. "I went away, got educated, and I came back to make a difference because I care," Kami Miller said.

Like South Siders, they like baseball in Nevada. Miller went on to say, "I'm one of those batters that likes to aim past the fenceline. I'm going over the fenceline. I will continue to fight."

The waste won't go away, and it's time to think about alternatives to an otherwise clean means of creating electricity. There is stuff left over, friends, and Native Americans don't want it making their kids sick any more than you want it killing yours.

--SouthtownStar columnist Marlene Lang can be reached at blackbird lang@yahoo.com

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DesMoinesRegister
April 13, 2008

Editorial: Energy options: Balancing the trade-offs

COAL

The United States has lots of coal, and the price has been cheap. That's why coal generates half of U.S. electricity.

Trade-offs for coal have included the work-force dangers and landscape damage wrought by mining, and, in recent years, mounting concerns about the health impacts of toxic emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and mercury. Plant owners have continuously improved technology to cut emissions.

Still, coal has remained attractive because of its low cost - until fears grew about climate change. Burning coal is the largest man-made contributor of carbon-dioxide increases in the atmosphere.

A growing roster of states and nations have rejected new coal-fired plants. Yet the United States is experiencing its biggest wave of coal-fired power-plant construction since the 1970s. MidAmerican Energy's 790-megawatt facility in Council Bluffs, which opened last year, was part of that wave.

That's a ripple, though, compared to the tidal wave of coal-plant construction in China, which is building the equivalent of two coal-fired plants a week.

It's hard to forecast just how much carbon regulation will drive up the cost of burning coal. The cheaper the cost, the more nations will be tempted to keep burning it.

A report by the Energy Watch Group lists six countries as controlling 85 percent of global coal reserves: the United States (the leader, with 30 percent of the total), Russia, India, China, Australia and South Africa. While cautioning about the poor quality of data, the report predicts peak global production around 2025, at about 30 percent above current levels.

NATURAL GAS

Over the past couple of decades, natural gas became the U.S. fuel of choice for power plants. It emits less carbon dioxide than coal, and plants are generally cheaper to construct and operate. Natural gas is expected to gain another 3 percentage points of the generation pie over the next decade as more states ban new coal plants.

However, it's no longer so attractive. Costs have increased sharply. And the high dependence of Florida, Texas, the Northeast and Southwest on natural gas for electricity generation has increased potential for supply interruptions.

Increasing demand in Canada will limit imports from there. It was expected that delivery of liquefied natural gas from overseas would fill the gap, but construction of terminals has met resistance.

Plus, turning to overseas markets mirrors the pitfalls of U.S. dependence on foreign sources for oil: relying on uncertain supplies at uncertain prices from sometimes unstable or hostile nations.

NUCLEAR

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review nine applications to build nuclear plants, the first such filings in 30 years. No applications have been accepted for review from the Midwest, although projects in Michigan and Missouri are listed as possibilities.

Construction of nuclear plants screeched to a halt after the partial meltdown of a unit at Three Mile Island in 1979. But nuclear plants are getting another look because they emit no greenhouse gases. And the safe operation of plants since '79 has eased concerns.

One problem, of course, is safe storage of the waste. A national nuclear-waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was supposed to start taking shipments a decade ago, but opposition has stalled it.

Investment analysts remain wary. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. projects nuclear plants coming on line in 2015-16.

WIND

It represents a huge, still largely untapped resource for clean power and can help diversify fuel sources.

The big problem, of course, is variability: The wind doesn't blow all the time. So flexibility is required to increase or decrease generation from other fuel sources.

Iowa led all states in 2007 in the percentage of its electricity generation that comes from wind, at 5.5 percent. That percentage will have to increase substantially if states are to meet their adopted requirements of 25 percent or more of electricity generation from renewable sources.

Many of the best wind-energy sites are far from population centers or major transmission lines, so significant transmission upgrades will be required.

SOLAR

It has many of the same advantages and disadvantages as wind. It is abundant and clean, but the sun doesn't always shine.

Solar is not yet as cost-competitive as wind on a large-scale basis. Solar thermal power plants, including one whose 1.2 million mirrors would cover nine square miles, have been proposed in California, but none is operating.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

No, it's not a fuel, but many experts say it should be treated that way in planning for future electricity needs. Utility managers and environmentalists agree: The cheapest unit of fuel is the one you don't have to produce. Tougher building codes and efficiency standards for appliances would reduce demand projections.

--Sources: North American Electric Reliability Corp. 2007 Long-Term Reliability Assessment; Coal: Resources and Future Production, Energy Watch Group.

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Herald Times Reporter
April 12, 2008

Towns: Plants should pay for storing nuclear waste

By Kristopher Wenn
Herald Times Reporter

TWO CREEKS — Town residents and officials living near two nuclear power plants told their elected representatives 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. Reps. Tom Petri and Steve Kagen. Manitowoc County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer and fellow state Reps. Frank Lasee and Garey Bies also were in attendance during the Wednesday event.

"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.

Point Beach and Kewaunee Power Station, in Carlton, already plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods in dry cask storage bunkers at their facilities along Lake Michigan.

The dry storage is being used because of 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 federal nuclear waste fund paid into by utilities for Yucca Mountain. After five years, the towns would renegotiate terms.

Residents contend that having nuclear waste stored in their town while the plants wait for storage elsewhere is a safety hazard. 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 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 didn't indicate a timeframe.

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," plant spokeswoman Sara Cassidy said 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.

--Kristopher Wenn: (920) 686-2132 or kwenn@htrnews.com

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Nevada Appeal
April 11, 2008

Nevada should profit from Yucca gold mine

Chuck Muth
Special to the Appeal

OK, before Bob Loux - Nevada's high-priced, taxpayer-funded anti-Yucca Mountain lobbyist - again tries to misrepresent my position, the purpose of this column is to encourage open discussion of the Yucca Mountain project, not advocate in favor of it. Discussion is good, because as we all know, there are two sides to every story.

To get started, let's list some of Nevada's more pressing problems: A budget shortfall, lack of water, high energy costs and education. Next, let's establish that nuclear waste pellets are currently being stored safely at nuclear power plants all across the country, and have been safely shipped from military bases to waste repositories for years. These are facts.

Now consider a story in this week's Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal. According to the paper, there is a worldwide shortage of uranium. Uranium was selling for just $7 a pound in 2000, but it's now going for around $73 a pound - after hitting a high of $140 a pound last summer. And consider that the technology now exists to extract uranium from what is currently considered worthless nuclear waste.

So how much is the nation's "worthless" nuclear "waste" now worth? The Courier-Journal reports "the uranium that could be recovered from the waste could be worth $7.6 billion." That's $7.6 BILLION, with a capital "B." And to put that in a bit of perspective, Nevada's current budget shortfall is less than $1 billion.

Hello?

Now suppose Nevada, in exchange for agreeing to store the nation's nuclear "waste" at Yucca Mountain was to receive "title" to that nuclear waste currently valued at $7.6 billion. And suppose Nevada, in exchange for agreeing to store the nation's nuclear "waste" at Yucca Mountain, was selected as the site for the nation's nuclear reprocessing center, complete with all the high-paying, tax-generating jobs that would come with it.

Then suppose, as part of the deal, a nuclear power plant was built at Yucca Mountain, with the understanding that Nevada's citizens would get dirt cheap electricity from the plant.

Then suppose, in exchange for agreeing to store the nation's nuclear "waste" at Yucca Mountain, the feds would build a water pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to Yucca Mountain. And then suppose we used the power at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Power Plant to desalinate the ocean water being piped in and use it to solve the state's water crisis rather than sucking all the water out of the ground in rural Nevada and piping it to Las Vegas.

Desalinization pipe dream? Hardly. As UNR Prof. Nicholas Tsoulfanidis pointed out in an op/ed appearing in the Reno Gazette-Journal this week, the desalinization process is not complicated. "Known as reverse osmosis, it separates freshwater from seawater," writes Tsoulfanidis. "A nuclear reactor generates the heat to do it." The professor adds that other countries are already using desalinization technologies and that such a facility in Nevada "could supply copious amounts of water for our state's economy and growing population."

And considering all the jobs and people who would be working at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Reprocessing Center, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Power Plant and the Yucca Mountain Desalinization Facility, we'd be crazy not to insist on the feds establishing a world-class Yucca Mountain Nuclear Technology University here, as well.

So when you consider these absolutely enormous potential benefits for the state of Nevada, isn't it time we stopped listening without question to paid anti-Yucca lobbyists such as Bob Loux and started listening to the other side of this story?

And just for the record in the interest of full disclosure, neither I nor any business or organization I'm affiliated with has taken a dime from the nuclear industry or the Department of Energy. Unlike Mr. Loux, I'm not being paid for my position on Yucca Mountain. Wish it were otherwise. My kids could use some new shoes.

--Chuck Muth, of Carson City, is president and CEO of Citizen Outreach and a political blogger. Read his views Fridays on the Appeal Opinion page or visit www.muthstruths.com. You can e-mail him at chuck@chuckmuth.com

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Pahrump Valley Times
April 11, 2008

Domenici Bows Out

Yucca loses more ground

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Political support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository eroded further on Wednesday when a leading Senate advocate of nuclear power said it has become "foolhardy" to continue plans to store radioactive used power plant 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 may 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 the site 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 may 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 have been talking about.

"I want to make it very clear that I would not stop Yucca flat now. I wouldn't just say 'cut it off,' because it may be used for something."

Other uses might include 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 that 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 will 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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Pahrump Valley Times
April 11, 2008

Back then

20 years ago this week

The Amargosa Valley Town Advisory Board indefinitely tabled a proposal that Nye County annex Yucca Mountain into its jurisdiction.

On a recommendation by county consultant Steve Bradhurst, the council backed down from its recommendation for the area -- which is being studied as the possible site for the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

"I think the consensus is that they didn't want to aggravate some of the congressmen from Las Vegas," board member Gary Sivertsen said.

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Kitsap Sun
April 11, 2008

Jay Ambrose: The Verdict of Our Grandchildren

Al Gore, folk hero, sat before a congressional committee recently, said global warming is the worst crisis the world now faces, contended the United States was doing nothing about it, and put himself in the place of our grandchildren.

"What in God's name were they doing," he had them asking. "Didn't they see the evidence? Didn't they realize that four times in 15 years the entire scientific community of this world issued unanimous reports calling upon them to act? What was wrong with them?"

Maybe something like that will happen, but there's another possibility as well, that the best informed of those grandchildren will look back on Gore, his posturing, his mendacity and his evasion of real answers and ask, "What in the world did he think he was doing when he told this whopper of a lie about the 'entire scientific community,' and where was he on one of the most important solutions to the perplexities he posed, the use of nuclear energy?"

"Didn't it occur to him," they might ask, though not unanimously nor in a report, "that scare-mongering exaggerations could actually make his entire message seem bogus and that pie-in-the-sky hopes were no immediate replacement for solutions readily at hand?"

These grandchildren — all grown up now, and in possession of facts unearthed by careful historical research — will note that U.N. reports on global warming hardly represented all scientists. They will point out that some of the scientists who participated in them argued with the summaries, that forecasts in the reports differed in significant respects from Gore's own forebodings and that a great many climatologists — not a handful of mavericks — questioned predictions of catastrophe awaiting us.

But then these grandchildren will say, yes, there were any number of reasons besides potentially dangerous climate change to begin relying more on energy sources other than fossil fuels, and that windmills and solar panels weren't about to do the work all by themselves, or even a very significant fraction of it. They'll agree with Gore's enthusiasm for technological investigations as a way of perhaps providing new means of doing the job, but will note that whenever he got the chance, Gore pooh-poohed a solution that could at the very least help tide us over until some of those other solutions had become something other than heartfelt imaginings.

"Nuclear energy was clearly the way to go," they will say, "despite Gore's concerns about its expense and the chance of terrorists raiding plants for weapons materials."

The expense, they will note, was many times less than the economic cost of dramatically reduced fossil-fuel consumption brought about by penalty systems, and nuclear plants, they will observe, were extraordinarily well-protected against possible raids by terrorists. Building the plants in Iran? Yes, the West should have watched out for that.

These grandchildren — who got smarter and smarter as they got older and older — will note that at the time Gore was trotting about shouting his alarms, the production of nuclear energy was exceptionally safe and efficient, capable of producing enormous amounts of the energy the United States would need in the decades to come and that the waste issue was largely bogus. You could get rid of it at the officially designated disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada with hardly anything to worry about and with ways of recovering it for hundreds of years if anything started to go amiss.

But then, these grandchildren would understand, there were the anti-modernist, facts-forlorn superstitions of some environmental extremists and their unquestioning followers, and one of these superstitions was that anything with the word "nuclear" in it was the work of evil forces.

If you were Al Gore, and these activists were among your chief supporters (and you were built that way more than a little bit yourself), you just might cheat on your grand campaign to save the world. You just might dodge this truth even as you were preaching calamity by those who dodged truth.

"Too bad, too sad," the grandchildren will say.

--Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.

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KOB-TV
April 11, 2008

Domenici offers plan for nuclear waste sites

By: Eyewitness News 4

Senator Pete Domenici is trying to convince members of Congress to ship nuclear waste to New Mexico.

The senator brought up the idea as the Senate and the House try to hammer out a new energy budget for 2008.

During the hearing this week, Domenici said the federal government should look at options other than Yucca Mountain in Nevada for storing nuclear waste.

Domenici said the country needs more regional locations, and he even offered up New Mexico as a possible spot for the waste.

Domenici said the extra shipments would not be stored at WIPP near Carlsbad. He said that he would prefer some other place in the state that has deep salt formations.

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Heartland Institute
April 11, 2008

Kentucky Bills Would End Moratorium on Nuclear Power Plant Construction

Written By: E. Jay Donovan
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Three Kentucky legislators have introduced legislation in the state House and Senate to end a 25-year moratorium on nuclear power plant construction in the state.

The moratorium was enacted in 1984 and banned the construction of any new power plants until a national containment facility for spent nuclear fuel becomes operational.

Yucca Mountain in Nevada is the designated national storehouse for spent nuclear fuel. Although the U.S. Department of Energy reports an extremely safe Yucca Mountain facility can be operational within a decade, political and legal maneuvering by nuclear power opponents has put the facility in limbo.

Becoming More Attractive

Although no licenses for the construction of any new nuclear power plants have been issued since the 1970s, several factors are making nuclear power a more attractive option.

Technological advances make nuclear power more cost-competitive with coal, especially with recent moderate increases in coal prices. Next-generation nuclear power plant design, such as pebble bed reactors, makes nuclear power an inherently safe technology with no realistic threat of safety breakdowns.

Pressure by environmental activist groups for reduced greenhouse gas emissions also makes nuclear power more politically acceptable than in years past. Nuclear power is currently the only economically feasible option for zero-emission power production.

Making State Competitive

With at least 25 applications now in the pipeline for nuclear construction licenses in states other than Kentucky, state Sens. Bob Leeper (I-Paducah) and Charlie Borders (R-Russell) and state Rep. Steven Rudy (R-West Paducah) have sponsored the companion Senate and House bills that would open Kentucky for modern nuclear technology.

The legislators propose replacing the requirement of a national spent fuel facility with a requirement that any new nuclear power plant comply with all federal safety standards.

Leeper emphasizes Kentucky should be on an equal footing with other states as energy companies roll out new nuclear power plant proposals.

Growing Environmentalist Support

Though the idea is still controversial, many environmental groups are starting to believe nuclear power is a viable option for replacing or supplementing coal- and gas-powered energy plants. In a state like Kentucky, where 90 percent of electricity is generated from coal, environmental groups are especially receptive to nuclear power.

"The scope of the problem requires us to look at all of the options," Tony Kreindler, spokesman for the environmental activist group Environmental Defense, told the Courier Journal.

Dr. Jay Lehr, science director of The Heartland Institute, believes states would be wise to do more than just "look at" nuclear power as an option.

"Nuclear power is in fact the proven energy of the future, and we should never have taken a three-decade hiatus in building nuclear plants while the rest of the world continued doing so," Lehr said.

"There are now 444 nuclear power plants in the world, and there has never been a single fatality in any of them," Lehr noted. "Add to that America's 200 nuclear-powered ships plying the oceans of the world the past 50 years without a single accident, and you have clearly one of the safest forms of energy in the world.

"Nuclear power is much more economical than wind and solar power," said Lehr, "and we have virtually an unlimited world supply. If the United States begins to reprocess its fuel rods as every other nation of the world does, we will reduce our waste by 95 percent.

"The Kentucky legislature has an opportunity to remove an archaic barrier to the construction of nuclear power plants," Lehr continued. "Some 231 new nuclear plants around the world are already in some stage of planning and construction."

--E. Jay Donovan (ejd38@hotmail.com) writes from Tampa, Florida.

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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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