Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, December 1, 2008
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Burlington Hawk Eye
November 30, 2008
Nuclear plant seeks renewal
33-year-old power plant draws little criticism, excitement in current times.
By Dave Dewitte
The Cedar Rapids Gazette
PALO -- In its first 33 1/2 years of operation, Iowa's only nuclear power plant has generated more electricity than excitement.
After some operational issues that brought heightened scrutiny in the early 1980s, the Duane Arnold Energy Center north of Palo has received passing marks from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in recent years.
It has been upgraded from its original output of 535 megawatts to 613 megawatts.
Now, federal regulators are trying to figure out if the plant will be good for another 20 years.
FPL Energy, which took over as the plant's majority owner in January 2006, filed an application on Sept. 30 to renew its operating license, slated to expire in 2014, until 2034. The application began a license renewal process that is expected to take 22 months, require public input and cost its owners $20 million.
The intense scrutiny by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, involving about 24,000 inspection hours by the agency, is intended to answer many questions. Perhaps the largest of them: "Can this plant go another 20 years safely?" The answer is an emphatic "yes" from Rich Anderson, site vice president of Duane Arnold Energy Center for FPL Energy. While the public's natural reaction might be that the plant has run down considerably over 33 years, Anderson says the plant has actually improved over the years through the installation of better equipment, improved industry practices and predictive maintenance plans that identify issues before they become problems.
"The plant's being maintained to a high state of performance," Anderson said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission already has approved about 49 nuclear plant license extensions and has 17 pending, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Two of the extensions were approved at plants in Florida owned and operated by FPL Energy.
While protesters greeted the plant's opening in 1975 because of concerns about possible radioactive releases, objections to the plant's renewal likely will be few.
Out of the three environmental organizations that have been most active on Iowa energy issues in the past year, none has decided to object to the license extension application yet.
One reason: The front-burner issue in environmental protection is now global warming. Nuclear power plants don't emit greenhouse gases, and therefore don't contribute much to the problem.
"The facility is there. It's been functioning successfully, and it seems to be well-managed," said attorney Carrie LaSeur, executive director of Plains Justice, an Iowa-based public interest law center based in Mount Vernon. The group probably won't fight the extension because its resources are heavily committed to fighting applications for coal-burning power plants that are heavy emitters of greenhouse gases.
LaSeur does have concerns about the extension. Perhaps the largest is that spent nuclear fuel rods keep piling up in what she grimly called a "nuclear waste dump." The U.S. Department of Energy has so far not been able to provide a promised permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel. If it eventually succeeds in opening the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, nuclear industry officials say that site won't be able to hold all of the projected nuclear waste needs.
Beginning in 2003, the operators of Duane Arnold Energy Center began moving bundles of spent nuclear fuel rods in metal canisters from underwater storage on an upper floor of the nuclear power plant into specially designed thick concrete bunkers outside the building.
Local Sierra Club activists Wally Taylor and Pamela Mackey Taylor say the group is undecided, but they don't consider nuclear power the answer to the nation's clean energy challenges. They say nuclear power is a non-renewable fuel that will run out in about a century, and that it generates greenhouse gases in the mining, processing and transportation that true renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power do not.
The Iowa Environmental Council hasn't weighed in on the issue, said Nathaniel Baer, the group's energy program director.
Duane Arnold Energy Center was a vital power lifeline to the Cedar Rapids area during the June floods, which knocked out two coal-burning power plants in Cedar Rapids. It provides 10 percent of the power consumed in Iowa, enough to power about 480,000 homes, FPL officials say.
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Chattanooga Times Free Press
November 30, 2008
East Tennessee makes push for nuclear fuel recycling site
By: Dave Flessner
Where others see only radioactive waste, engineers at TVA and the Department of Energy envision another source of needed energy.
Most of the potential energy in the nuclear fuel used to generate nearly 30 percent of the electricity in the Tennessee Valley remains untapped in spent fuel pools or dry casks at the Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Browns Ferry nuclear plants, said Sherrell R. Greene, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s nuclear technology programs.
“We basically discard over 90 percent of the energy value that is still left in the fuel bundles after they are used,” Mr. Greene said. “This spent nuclear fuel is potentially a very valuable resource for our country.”
But figuring out how to recycle nuclear fuel safely at an economical cost remains a challenge, Mr. Greene concedes. Although other countries reprocess nuclear fuel, the United States abandoned the technology in 1977 to help curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons that use the plutonium generated in reprocessing fuel.
Critics of nuclear reprocessing complain such technologies are too expensive and create and disperse more dangerous materials than they recycle.
Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, grew up near the Nuclear Fuel Services’ reprocessing plant in western New York that operated from 1966 to 1972. She said cleaning up the plant’s radioactive wastes that could leak into the Great Lakes is projected to cost at least another $10 billion.
“Reprocessing creates more waste, and the fact that the Department of Energy is even considering repeating this mistake is very depressing,” she said.
CLOSING THE FUEL CYCLE
President George W. Bush pushed his Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and joined the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership as a way for the United States to develop new and better technologies to reprocess nuclear fuel to reduce the volume of radioactive wastes and generate more energy. The Department of Energy announced in October it favored some type of nuclear fuel reprocessing, but agency officials did not choose among competing technologies.
Oak Ridge is among 13 sites being considered for a reprocessing facility where spent nuclear fuel from America’s 104 nuclear plants could be shipped. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory spent $92 million in fiscal 2008 on nuclear power research.
President-elect Barack Obama has not specified his plans for the global nuclear partnership. He said during his presidential campaign that he favors more nuclear power despite his opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada as a storage site for nuclear wastes.
Frank von Hippel, a former advisor to President Jimmy Carter who stopped previous reprocessing programs three decades ago, said he thinks the current partnership program will end in an Obama administration.
“The emphasis on the United States building a nuclear reprocessing facility should die, and I believe it will die under President Obama,” said Mr. von Hippel, co-director of the program on science and global security at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. “There is no urgent reason to do this and, for now, I believe we can safely store spent fuel in dry casks at the reactor sites until we have better and safer technologies.”
TVA, DOE PARTNERSHIP
U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., a member of the House subcommittee on Energy and Water, said he favors nuclear reprocessing and thinks East Tennessee can play an important role in developing the technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Any reprocessed fuel could generate power for TVA at an existing plant or potentially at a proposed fast reactor plant on the Clinch River, the site of an abandoned DOE breeder reactor project from the 1970s, he said.
Rep. Wamp prefers any reprocessing facilities be built in either South Carolina or Idaho, rather than in Oak Ridge.
“If you really want to reduce our carbon footprint, the single greatest step is nuclear energy,” he said. “The only liability is what do we do with spent fuel. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory can demonstrate at the micro level the reprocessing of that fuel. TVA can demonstrate on the macro level how that can be done within an energy system.”
TVA and the Department of Energy signed a memorandum of understanding in April to work on the development and testing of new technologies.
Jack Bailey, a senior vice president of TVA and chairman of a Nuclear Energy Institute task force working on standards for a reprocessing demonstration project, said the industry is working toward a one-step licensing process for new plants similar to what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is using for new nuclear reactors.
Mr. Bailey said reprocessing nuclear fuel can reduce the volume and toxicity of spent nuclear fuel while recapturing more of its energy. Spent fuel from America’s nuclear plants now would fill a football field 10 yards deep, but it could be reduced to wastes filling only one end zone, he said.
“We’re not talking about a lot of volume, considering we’ve been producing nuclear power for more than 30 years,” he said. “But it could be a much smaller volume if we are able to reprocess the fuel.”
Mr. Bailey said the United States developed the technology to reprocess nuclear fuel back in the 1940s and 1950s, but it was commercialized by French and Japanese companies after the United States halted any reprocessing efforts to try controlling nuclear proliferation.
The United States halted such reprocessing because it created plutonium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons.
“The world is doing it without us and we can’t stop them, so we need to figure out the best way to do it and move that forward,” Mr. Bailey said. “Let’s not be a laggard; we need to be a leader.”
As a federal corporation, TVA uniquely is positioned to work with the Department of Energy on the project, Mr. Bailey said. The proposed fast reactor at Clinch River could be built and paid for by the DOE to use reprocessed fuel. But TVA might buy the power and operate the facility, he said.
Such proposed plants would generate about 350 megawatts each, or about one third the size of a nuclear reactor at Sequoyah or Watts Bar, officials said.
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
* Enrichment — The process of increasing the ratio of uranium-235 atoms to uranium-238 atoms to make a more stable mixture usable as nuclear fuel in atomic reactors
* Reprocessing — The process of separating the usable from the unusable constituents of spent nuclear fuel after the fuel pellets have been used in a reactor to generate heat and ultimately electricity.
* Waste storage — 57,380 metric tons of radioactive uranium from America’s 104 reactors primarily is stockpiled at the plants, either submerged in open pools of water or sealed in steel and concrete casks. DOE has designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent waste repository and was to begin storing wastes there in 1998, but a series of legal challenges and environmental reviews have blocked such storage.
WHAT’S NEXT
* At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy will conduct a hearing on nuclear fuel reprocessing alternatives for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership at the New Hope Center, 602 Scarboro Road, in Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge is one of 13 sites being considered for a GNEP facility, which could include a fuel recycling center, a fast reactor or a research center.
* At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Princeton Professor Frank von Hippel will speak on why he thinks nuclear reprocessing is too risky during a presentation at the University Center Auditorium at UT in Knoxville.
* Jan. 20 — President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn into office. The new administration is expected to begin considering options for nuclear waste storage and reprocessing.
* Early 2009 — Congress is expected to decide on a budget request of $302 million for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative for fiscal 2009 and considers research and operating budgets for nuclear fuel options for fiscal 2010.
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Nevada Appeal
November 28, 2008
Loux says government has never offered Nevada money to accept nuke dump
By Geoff Dornan
Nevada Appeal Capitol Bureau,
Nuclear Projects director Bob Loux said this week there is no truth to recent claims Nevada can get millions from the federal government for dropping its fight to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
“There is no money,” he said. “There has never been any money.”
The rumor, which has surfaced periodically over the past two decades, can be traced to legislation introduced in 1987 by Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La. That plan offered the state that agreed to take the dump $100 million, plus $50 million a year during construction, another $100 million once it opened and $100 million a year until it was filled with waste.
The proposal was immediately rejected by then-Congressman now Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., then-Gov. Richard Bryan and the rest of Nevada’s delegation. They said it would have thrown out all environmental safeguards and suggested the bill was simply “bait” to see if Nevada would bite.
The legislation never received a hearing and died in the Senate Energy Committee, which Johnston chaired.
“The state, if it even entertained such an idea, would completely consent to the project and be unable to enforce any health and safety regulations,” Loux said Tuesday. “And the DOE (Department of Energy) has never built any facility for radioactive materials that hasn’t leaked. Never one.”
Loux said the entire issue should be moot anyway: “We’ve got a president who has said he essentially is going to kill the project.”
Most recently, the rumor was resurrected by conservative activist Chuck Muth, who conducted a poll of area residents asking them if they would rather take millions in federal money in trade for the dump or pay higher taxes to balance the state budget.
Predictably, those contacted said they would rather not have their taxes raised by a wide margin.
“The comparisons are completely crazy,” said Loux.
He said there is no appetite in the state to accept the dump despite the results of what he termed “this phony push poll.”
Loux said studies have indicated the mere existence of the dump would have “a huge economic impact on the state even without any accidents.”
He said people moving to southern Nevada are often looking for a better quality of life as well as jobs and “a nuclear dump outside Las Vegas doesn’t fall into that category.”
Muth, who operates Citizen Outreach, said he was referring to a new amendment put forward last spring that would give Nevada hundreds of millions of dollars to accept the dump.
“There is no money because the amendment was never voted on,” he said. “But if the Senate voted and approved the amendment, there would be money.”
He said there was no vote because Reid refused to bring the amendment to the floor for a vote.
Muth said he disagrees with Loux that even considering the offer would forfeit Nevada’s rights to block the dump.
“Engaging in constructive dialog doesn’t give up your rights,” he said.
Loux, however, said he doesn’t understand why Muth and others are willing to believe the federal government would come through even if it did promise the state money.
“Here you’ve got guys who wouldn’t trust the federal government on any other issue as far as they could throw them and, yet, some how on this issue, they believe they can trust them — which is incredible irony.”
• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.
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Pahrump Valley Times
November 28, 2008
County concerned over future of millions in PETT program
By Mark Waite
PVT
Nye County commissioners Monday voted to approve an annual $11.5 million contract to renew the payment equal to taxes, or PETT, received from the U.S. Department of Energy for the property value of Yucca Mountain.
DOE will provide 43 percent of the amount, $4.95 million, before Jan. 31, 2009, as the federal government is operating under a continuing funding resolution. The balance will be provided when the DOE receives the remainder of it's 2008-2009 fiscal year funding.
The last five-year PETT agreement expired this year. It has served as an essential cash cow for Nye County that funds a wide variety of county projects. There was some sign of concern over the level of continued, future funding from the incoming presidential administration.
The agreement was submitted under protest as the county will have to pay almost $100,000 per year in possessory use taxes due from Bechtel-SAIC, the contractor for the Yucca Mountain project for the last three years. That company was replaced by USA Inc., a joint venture, last May.
Assistant County Manager Pam Webster said the DOE wants Nye County to pay a maximum of $100,000 for each of the last three years in possessory use taxes. The county will agree to pay for the 2008-09 tax and attempt to negotiate those of previous years.
Nye County Commission Chairman Joni Eastley, was upset over the required payment.
"This is a multi-billion-dollar corporation and we have to pay their damn taxes for them. Commissioner Eastley votes aye, and it just galls me to have to do that," she said by conference call from Tonopah after the vote.
During an interview after her relection as District 2 commissioner Nov. 4, Eastley expressed concerns over continued funding of PETT as President-elect Barack Obama said publicly he opposes the Yucca Mountain project.
Nye County was offered a five-year agreement by DOE increasing PETT payments by $250,000 every year, from $11.5 million in the 2008-09 fiscal year to $12.5 million by 2013. But commissioners in July 2007 voted to turn down that offer, in hopes of doubling that amount, to $29 million by 2013.
Rick Spees from the Washington, D.C., law firm of Akerman Senterfitt, had been hired to negotiate the PETT agreement as part of his monthly $17,500 fee for representing Nye County in Congress.
Last February, commissioners decided to settle for the original DOE offer, then asked to have PETT funding taken out of a line item on the 2008-09 appropriation budget.
Congress cut the Yucca Mountain budget last year from $494.5 million to $386.5 million. The present payment for 2008-2009 was based upon 2.5 percent of total funds appropriated for nuclear waste disposal activities, but not less than $11.5 million as long as the total appropriation to the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is equal to or greater than $357 million.
Further cuts in the program by the Obama administration could reduce that $11.5 million county allocation.
Last February, Spees said, "If we don't have a new agreement, then we are totally at the mercy of the new department to give us whatever number they want next year."
Commissioners Monday acted on an Oct. 30 letter from Edward Sproat III, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, who said Nye County and the U.S. Department of Energy are mutually interested in reaching a long-term agreement covering PETT payments.
Darrell Lacy, Nye County director of nuclear waste and federal facilities, said possessory use taxes have been an unresolved issue in the five-year renewal agreement. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court ruling said the county can't tax federal property but can tax federal contractors for use of that property.
"The two major issues are the changing administration and the possessory use tax, which are keeping us from reaching a settlement right now," Lacy said.
Nye County received its last PETT payment in January,
Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis, the county's liaison on nuclear waste, said the DOE doesn't want to approve a five-year contract with a new administration set to take office in January 2009.
The county is also operating under a continuing resolution to fund its oversight of the Yucca Mountain project for 2008-2009, in which the DOE provided $3 million, and another $1 million for on-site representation.
"We're looking forward to a long and continuing relationship with Nye County. A relationship with Nye County is of paramount interest to us," Allen Benson, DOE director of external affairs said.
Benson and Lacey were both waiting to see who Obama appoints as energy secretary. Then there will be a new appointment to replace Sproat as head of OCRWM.
Oversight funding for the Yucca Mountain program was cut under the Clinton administration in 1996 and 1997 but PETT payments continued.
"As long as the law is in place, we are required under the law to make these payments, and we will do that," Benson said.
After the brief commissioners' conference call, Lacey was asked to elaborate further on the future of PETT funding.
"I think the bigger question is funding for the Yucca Mountain project as a whole. I mean, if they have funding consistent with prior years, I think they would be willing to continue to pay us PETT. I don't think there's an argument on their part to pay us PETT. The big question before us is what kind of funding do we get from the new administration?" Lacey said.
He referred to comments made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who vowed the Yucca Mountain project will die a slow and painful death. But Lacey added Congress will have to change the law before meddling with PETT.
"This is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. It has been approved. It's not something that can be unilaterally changed by any one person," Lacey said.
County Manager Rick Osborne added, "I believe when (Obama) gets all the facts in front of him it's going to be difficult for him to eliminate Yucca Mountain as being the designated repository."
Lacey said during a recent DOE conference, delegates asked what to do about nuclear waste stored at DOE sites like Hanford, Wash., the Savannah River Site, Ga., and Oak Ridge Tenn., if there is no nuclear waste repository.
In another matter, county commissioners voted to amend a contract with water rights attorney George Benesch to represent Nye County in protesting an order by the state engineer issued Nov. 4, denying any applications to move water rights closer to Devil's Hole in Amargosa Valley.
"It's just in my opinion an arbitrary and capricious ruling. It's important we appeal this to protect our rights and the existing water rights applications we have in this area," Lacey said.
Webster said Benesch will charge probably $10,000 to $20,000 for his legal representation on the protest.
Benesch was given a contract for up to $25,000 in September for consultation and evaluation of protests on cooperative water project applications and other water-related matters impacting Nye County. His rate is $200 per hour.
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Kankakee Daily Journal
November 28, 2008
Impact of nuclear waste disposal topic of public hearing Dec. 4
By Robert Themer
rthemer@daily-journal.com
815-937-3369
A nuclear waste reprocessing facility proposed for Grundy County will be among the options discussed at a Dec. 4 public hearing on the environmental impact of nuclear waste disposal.
The facility proposed at General Electric's Morris Operation, a storage site for more than 700 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, drew regional opposition during earlier hearings. The reprocessing technology GE wants to use at the site would burn off its most radioactive components and use them to generate electricity in a specialized reactor.
Thirteen months ago, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded GE $4.8 million to continue project planning. In October, the federal agency completed an analysis of reprocessing and other technologies to gauge "the potential environmental consequences of alternatives to the present U.S. open fuel cycle."
Although reprocessing reduces the amount of nuclear waste and removes the most radioactive components, it still generates nuclear waste that must ultimately be buried at a geological disposal site.
The proposed site, the long-delayed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, has yet to overcome local political opposition so spent fuel rods are stored in dry casks above ground across the country and in Illinois. In addition to the 700 tons stored at GE's Morris Operation north of Coal City, Exelon's Dresden plant is expected to have 1,324 tons stored on site by 2010, the Braidwood station stores 1,050 tons, and another 1,146 tons are stored in LaSalle County.
Exelon has four other plants in the state.
The draft impact statement is available online at http://www.gnep.energy.gov or by phone at (866) 645-7803.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Holiday Inn at 205 Remington Blvd. in Bolingbrook.
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Nashua Telegraph
November 28, 2008
Will Obama be pragmatic in energy policy?
By Morton Kondracke
Roll Call
President-elect Barack Obama is proving to be remarkably pragmatic and centrist as he tackles the global economic crisis. Big tests are yet to come on energy, however.
Will Obama tilt toward fossil-phobic environmentalists who heavily influence the Democratic Party, or do-it-all pragmatists like his apparent choice for White House national security adviser, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones?
Jones' present job is chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, which contends that offshore oil drilling, clean coal technology and nuclear power have to be part of America's energy policy.
On Oct. 20, Jones made it clear at a panel discussion I was part of that he regards energy policy as "an international security issue of the highest order," which suggests that he will make it part of his portfolio at the National Security Council.
He released a step-by-step "transition plan" for energy that included "aggressively" promoting energy efficiency and alternative fuel research, but also domestic oil and gas exploration and elimination of restrictions against nuclear power plants, new electric grids, and oil and gas pipelines.
Such ideas are anathema to many Democratic "greens" – including leaders in Congress – who want to close down the carbon economy and base the country's energy future strictly on renewables such as wind, solar and geothermal power, plus conservation.
In particular, Jones has aroused the ire of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for backing disposal of the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The power of the greens was also demonstrated by the toppling of Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the auto industry's longtime protector, as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
His replacement, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is a "green," and his coup was backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
After behaving like a leftish liberal for much of his political career – and becoming the darling of the left during the presidential campaign – Obama so far is fulfilling his self-assessment that he's a pragmatist, willing to try "whatever works."
His economic appointments – Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers in the White House, Christina Romer at the Council of Economic Advisers and Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget – have sent reassuring signals to terrified financial markets. And his heavily leaked selections for foreign policy posts – Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of State, Jones at the NSC and possibly current Defense Secretary Robert Gates – definitely lean toward the "realist" or "national interest" school of foreign policy, not the "liberal internationalist."
On policy, moreover, Obama has shown reassuring resilience, utterly abandoning his previous intention to follow the Franklin D. Roosevelt model of crisis governing.
FDR famously refused to involve himself in policymaking to deal with the Great Depression from November 1932 until his inauguration in March 1933 and refused to have any contact with outgoing President Herbert Hoover's administration.
At his initial press conference as president-elect on Nov. 7, Obama repeated the mantra that "the country has only one president at a time." Crashing financial markets and the impending "Great Recession" – or worse – changed his attitude.
A good case can be made that George W. Bush will go down in history as another Herbert Hoover, but if Obama means to be FDR, at least he's starting early.
The case for Bush as Hoover is this: Bush's carelessness about deficit spending and doubling of the national debt created a nationwide atmosphere of fiscal irresponsibility, leading to over-leveraging (that is, massive debt accumulation) by investment banks, homeowners and consumers.
Bush maintained a hands-off attitude as the housing bubble expanded to the bursting point, as banks invested in impossible-to-understand mortgage-backed securities, and rating agencies slapped triple-A ratings on all of them. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have been un-Hoover-like in expanding government power to rescue the financial industry – Wall Street – but have been reluctant to adopt similarly aggressive policies to deal with the "Main Street" effects, including unemployment and home foreclosures.
For unexplained reasons, the Bush administration also has refused to adopt solutions backed by Sen. John McCain during his presidential campaign – revising the "mark to market" accounting rule and limiting "short-selling" by speculators, both of which are depressing bank stocks.
If Bush won't do anything about those policies, Obama should, along with passing a huge new stimulus package including infrastructure spending and middle-class tax cuts.
As a pragmatist, Obama is signaling that he won't raise taxes on rich people immediately – though he wants to for "fairness" reasons – but he should just declare that policy to spur investment.
And when it comes to infrastructure, Obama should encourage private investment as well as public. Besides roads and bridges, he should encourage wind farms, solar panels – and nuclear plants and offshore oil rigs.
The basis of Jones' case is that the United States will be heavily dependent upon fossil fuels for the next 20 years, until not-yet-mature alternative sources and conservation methods are developed.
The pragmatic thing for Obama to do is "do what works" in energy as well as the economy.
--Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.
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Nevada Appeal
November 27, 2008
Loux says he wasn't unethical in changing salaries
By Geoff Dornan
Nevada Appeal Capitol Bureau
Attorneys for Bob Loux, the embattled director of the Nuclear Projects Office, say he never intentionally or unethically used his position in raising his and other salaries in his office.
“While he takes full responsibility for mistakes that may have been made and for errors in judgment, the allegations of improper or unethical conduct are faulty at their original premise,” said the response to the Ethics Commission complaint by attorneys Judy Sheldrew and Tom Perkins.
Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert, R-Reno, filed a complaint after Loux admitted during an Interim Finance Committee hearing he had raised his own salary and the salaries of his staff without permission.
The practice apparently started in 2005 and, as of this fiscal year, Loux was paying himself $151,542 — $37,454 more than his authorized salary, according to the budget office. Over that period, he and seven others in his office reportedly received $195,790 more than they were entitled to. They used the salary money from a vacant position and grant money to cover the costs.
Those salaries have since been rolled back and the state is moving to collect the overpayments from previous years.
In the response to the Ethics Commission, Sheldrew and Perkins said the salaries reported by the budget office are incorrect, that Loux — for example — wasn’t being paid $151,000 this year but $132,100 — about $10,000 less than the governor.
They said the salaries reported by the budget office are incorrect, that Loux — for example — wasn’t being paid $151,000 this year but $132,100 — about $10,000 less than the governor.
Other salaries were also incorrectly reported, his attorneys said.
Referring to the redistribution of the unused salary money, they said Loux believed he had the authority to move that money to change those salaries.
That authority is contained in state law that made employees in the governor’s office — where Nuclear Projects is located — non-classified. That was designed to permit the governor to set salaries of those reporting within his office. According to Sheldrew and Perkins, Gov. Kenny Guinn established two guidelines: Salaries were to stay within the available budget and no staff person’s salary was to exceed that of the governor himself.
The redistribution of salary savings, Sheldrew said, “resulted from a series of misunderstandings by Loux and his staff accountant regarding his authority to direct such a reallocation.”
She said Loux believed he had that authority because of his understanding of the non-classified staff law. That law, however, says specifically that the governor can set salaries within his office, not individual directors.
“No combination of these errors, however, would support a finding of unethical conduct,” the response said.
“The historical approval of the actions taken by the agency to balance the salary category in its budget over a period of many years combines with the total lack of any evidence of concealment or fraud to contradict any suggestion of an unwarranted benefit or ethical lapse,” it concludes.
The response argues those salaries were all made on standard personnel forms, approved by personnel and reviewed by the budget office, a “completely transparent” process.
But the response said for some reason, the 2005 Executive Budget failed to include the actual salaries being paid in the Nuclear Projects Office and that cost of living adjustments weren’t included. As a result, the salary category was under-budgeted and has been since.
The shortfalls were made up with existing funds within the agency “with the approval of the Office of Administration.”
A hearing is scheduled in December before the Ethics Commission.
While the Nuclear Projects Commission has decided to terminate Loux, he remains on the job until a replacement is hired. The commission did that because, after some 20 years of battling, the federal government is moving forward this year with its attempt to license and open the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump in southern Nevada.
--Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.
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The Tennessean
November 27, 2008
Foes slam nuclear waste plan
Oak Ridge is among recycling-site options
Anne Paine
A Bush administration project aimed at reprocessing nuclear waste in a global sharing arrangement is bringing opposition that's not always from anti-nuclear advocates as public hearings come to Oak Ridge and Paducah next week.
Both of those locations are potential receiving sites for what could be domestic and foreign waste. In the case of Oak Ridge, at least part of the highly radioactive materials could travel through Nashville.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer, has been working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the feasibility of the long-controversial practice of re-tooling nuclear waste.
This path — abandoned in years past over concerns about costs and its generation of bomb grade materials — is promoted today as a move toward recycling, removing plutonium from the waste to reuse to create electricity.
"If you 'recycle' plutonium, it doesn't help at all," said Professor Frank von Hippel, of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.
"You still have huge amounts of plutonium in the spent fuel, and you've created a lot of new waste streams."
Von Hippel, unlike some critics of what's called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is anti-reprocessing but not anti-nuclear. He's coming to Tennessee for the hearing in Oak Ridge and, also, a speaking engagement.
The Government Accountability Office estimated just the construction of a reprocessing plant would cost more than $40 billion, said von Hippel, a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology.
Most of the nuclear waste at commercial reactors around the country is stored on site. The federal government committed years ago to utilities that it would build a disposal facility and take the waste, but has hit obstacles with the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Reprocessing is seen as an option, though a disposal site would still be needed.
The global partnership supports research and eventual reprocessing as keys to advancing nuclear power and has issued a "draft programmatic environmental impact statement" that is the subject of the public hearings.
Reprocessing criticized
While more than $179 million has been allocated for the project and studies in the last two years, including about $894,000 for researching Oak Ridge and $664,600 for Paducah, the document deals with the overall possibilities rather than specific sites.
"That's a source of fuel," said Professor H.L. Dodds, head of the University of Tennessee engineering department, who backs GNEP.
Also, high-level nuclear waste would be reduced so Yucca Mountain could take all of it from around the country someday, instead of many sites being needed, he said.
Reprocessing occurs in several countries and has taken place for 60 years in this country for making nuclear weapons, he said.
"Nobody has died or been seriously injured," he said.
Contaminated sites where the work has taken place can easily be cleaned up, he said.
"Now we have new technology that's better and safer," he added.
Touted for its lack of global warming gases, nuclear power would benefit developing nations with growing electricity needs. Other countries, like the U.S., could assist with the waste, according to DOE project information.
The Partnership, which now includes Bulgaria, Jordan, Ghana, Senegal, China and 17 other countries, recognizes the potential proliferation or misuse of nuclear materials as issues that must and can be dealt with.
Von Hippel sees the answer in keeping nuclear waste where it is — at nuclear plants where security is tight — until a disposal site opens.
“We do need a spent fuel policy, someplace to send it,” he said. “We have time.”
When it comes to reprocessing, however, he said: “If everybody did it, the world would be a much more dangerous place.”
--Contact Anne Paine at 615-259-8071 or apaine@tennessean.com.
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Brattleboro Reformer
November 27, 2008
Consultant: Entergy needs to clarify VY spent fuel plan
By Bob Audette
Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- Before the Vermont Public Service Board issues a certificate of public good to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, it should demand that Entergy, which owns and operates the plant in Vernon, provide more information on its plans to handle spent fuel and low-level radioactive waste produced during operation, reported a consultant to the state.
"Spent nuclear fuel is perhaps the most dangerous radioactive waste of all in terms of its threat to human health and the environment," wrote Michael A. Mullet, who reviewed Entergy's plan to manage nuclear waste.
Mullet's report was one of five submitted to the state in relation to the PSB's and the state Legislature's review into whether the power plant should be allowed to enter into 20 years of extended operation in 2012.
Yankee's current license is set to expire that year.
In early 2006, Entergy applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license renewal to operate the plant until 2032. The NRC reviews the safety and environmental implications of allowing extended operation.
The state is assessing the plant's reliability and whether its continued operation would prove to be a benefit to Vermont residents.
Fission products such as strontium-90 and cesium-137 need to be isolated from the environment for 600 years, stated Mullett, and plutonium-239 remains dangerous between 240,000 and 500,000 years.
In two years, it is expected that nuclear power plants will have produced 62,000 metric tons of nuclear waste, he reported, an amount that may eventually reach 130,000 metric tons.
Plans to store up to 70,000 tons of waste at a federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been stalled by political, technical, financial and legal problems, noted Mullett.
It is hoped the repository will start taking waste in 20 years, or 22 years behind schedule. Until then, waste is being stored in the plant's spent fuel pool inside the reactor building and in dry casks outside of the facility.
"It is expected that Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee will require a second (storage site) as early as 2015," wrote Mullet.
As a result of the Yucca Mountain delays, waste accumulated at Yankee exceeds the space available in its spent fuel pool and without dry casks, Entergy would have to shut down the boiling water reactor at Yankee.
In its next filing to the state, wrote Mullett, Entergy should address the need to "significantly reduce the number and density of spent fuel assemblies stored in the ... pool and transfer a significant number of those assemblies to dry cask storage in order to reduce the risks of pool fires due to accidents or malicious acts."
The state should also ask Entergy to address the environmental impacts of storing waste in dry casks for 50 to 60 years, "or longer," and the company should clarify how much money will be needed to manage the spent fuel after shutdown, he wrote.
Because spent fuel funds and decommissioning funds are commingled, wrote Mullett, and because Entergy will most likely receive reimbursement from the federal government for its failure to take control of the waste, "the company must submit a comprehensive analysis of the sources and amounts of funding for spent fuel management."
Entergy is one of 60 utilities who have filed a suit against the federal government totaling $53 billion for its failure to start accepting waste in 1998.
If Yankee is closed in 2012, one of Entergy's decommissioning plans calls for spent fuel removal to begin in 2017. But because Yucca Mountain may not open until at least 2020, Entergy should be required to submit an updated plant related to a 2012 closure, stated Mullett.
"The 2012 shutdown scenario envisioned in ENVY's initial report to the NRC and PSB would appear to be too optimistic," he stated, adding Entergy should update the 2012 plan and supply a contingency plan if Yucca Mountain won't open until 2020.
"In order for the board ... to fully analyze the adequacy of ENVY's petition, the company must submit an analysis of these implications in the next round of prefiled testimony."
Entergy should also clarify how it plans to manage low-level radioactive waste generated by the plant, stated Mullett.
Low-level waste includes contaminated protective shoe covers and clothing, wiping rags, mops, filters, reactor water treatment residues, equipment and tools.
Yankee produces between 2,000 and 10,000 cubic feet of low-level waste each year, according to Mullett's report, and will have nearly 268,000 cubic feet by the time it is shutdown.
The state of Vermont is contracted with Texas, which is developing a disposal site on 16,000 acres in Andrews County. While the site has received a draft license, "There are still significant steps to be accomplished before the ... facility becomes a reality," wrote Mullett.
--Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.
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Pahrump Valley Times
November 26, 2008
Courthouse addition cost up to $5.4 million
By Mark Waite
PVT
Nye County Commissioners Tuesday voted 3-2 to approve a $476,362 change order to the courthouse addition project, driving the total cost to $5.4 million.
Commissioners Gary Hollis and Peter Liakopoulos voted against the change order, without commenting on their reasons.
The change order arose after an Oct. 30 meeting between the district attorney's office, judicial staff, JVC architects and B&H, contractors, to review the original design documents.
Pahrump Justice of the Peace Tina Brisebill requested an additional 2,000 square feet, which was recommended in a prior plan to meet 10-year growth projections, County Manager Ron Williams said.
The justice court will be extended 20 feet to the front of the building, and there will be five windows for court clerks to answer inquires from the public, he said.
B&H Construction estimated a cost of $217.50 per square foot for the additional space, or $411,292 for 1,891 square feet.
Fifth District Judge Robert Lane wanted another 248 square feet, a $65,070 addition.
Commissioner Joni Eastley asked why the proposals were being presented now. Commissioner Butch Borasky was concerned there would be more requests by county officials for changes.
Nye County Clerk Sam Merlino asked, "Now that everybody is expanding, what about my office?"
Merlino would like more space in Pahrump to store voting machines that would save her from having to ship them aboard U-Haul vehicles.
Williams said representatives of the Nye County district attorney's office also asked about more space.
"I have told the others, there's no money appropriated. Nobody is allowed any extra space to happen," Williams said. "I really don't want to see the board nix the whole project. I want to see it move forward."
Pahrump Justice Court Administrator Kathy Ivey said the the new justice of the peace office area would be just as crowded as the old one if the judge's chambers and courtroom were taken away.
Kent Jasperson will take office as the second Pahrump justice of the peace in January.
When it came to extra funds, Eastley mentioned her uncertainty over the county being able to continue funding improvements using the payment equal to taxes from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of Yucca Mountain, which provided the county with $11.5 million this year. President-elect Barack Obama wants to cancel the nuclear waste repository.
"Who knows what's going to happen with PETT agreements and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. I just want to make sure everybody has what they need," Eastley said.
Assistant County Manager Pam Webster wants the commissioners to replenish the money drawn out of a PETT capital projects endowment fund for the change order.
Commissioner Roberta "Midge" Carver asked, "Why doesn't money grow on trees?"
In a related matter, commissioners voted to hire a deputy clerk and a bailiff for the new justice of the peace.
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NRC
November 26, 2008
NRC’S PAPO Board to Hold Meeting to Discuss Handling of Classified Information in Yucca Mountain Hearings
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel’s Pre-License Application Presiding Officer (PAPO) Board will hold a case management meeting Dec. 2 in Rockville, Md., to discuss how classified information will be protected and handled during adjudicatory hearings on the proposed high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Representatives from the Department of Energy, the state of Nevada, and the NRC staff will attend the meeting at the ASLB hearing room at NRC headquarters, Two White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Other potential parties who have filed a notice of appearance may participate either in person or by video hookup in the NRC’s Las Vegas Hearing Facility, Pacific Enterprise Plaza, Building 1, 3250 Pepper Lane, Las Vegas, beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Members of the public are welcome to observe the meeting at either location. The meeting will also be Webcast on the Internet at http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=53642.
DOE submitted its application for the proposed repository June 3. The NRC staff formally docketed the application Sept. 8, and the agency published a notice of opportunity to request a hearing Oct. 22 in the Federal Register.
Because the application contains some classified information, DOE petitioned the Commission to issue a protective order governing access to and handling of that classified information during the Yucca Mountain hearings. The Commission subsequently referred that petition to the PAPO Board.
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Desert Valley Times
November 25, 2008
DOE moving ahead on Yucca licensing
Bob Challinor, Desert Valley Times
Despite opposition from 75 percent of Clark County’s population and public safety preparedness policy inadequacies, the Department of Energy is seeking licensing approval for its Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project.
The DOE filed an 8,600-page license application plus a final environmental impact statement in support of repository construction authorization with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission June 3. The NRC on Sept. 8 announced its intent to formally docket the license application, opening a comprehensive safety analysis review.
Currently, the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is conducting a technical review proceeding that includes legal hearings, all which are open to the public. Additionally, the Surface Transportation Board has scheduled a Dec. 4 public hearing in Las Vegas on the DOE’s application for rail transportation of high-level nuclear waste.
The NRC will make the final decision on whether the DOE is allowed to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project. DOE is required to obtain two licenses from NRC, one to construct the repository and another to accept nuclear waste. NRC is expected to reach a final decision on authorization to construct the repository in 2012.
Clark County, designated in 1998 as an “affected unit of local government” in regard to Yucca Mountain, has been monitoring DOE’s project through its Nuclear Waste Oversight Program and is one of several potential intervening parties. The county has taken the lead role in representing the City of Mesquite and other southern Nevada local governments.
Heading the county’s Nuclear Waste Oversight Program since 2001 is Irene Navis, planning manager with the county’s comprehensive planning department. Navis updated a Citizens Coffee audience of about 30 on Yucca Mountain Friday at city hall. One of the county’s responsibilities is public involvement and outreach.
The county also studies and comments on the scientific and technical aspects plus transportation plans and documents of the project. It analyzes, monitors and reports on potential Yucca Mountain impacts, coordinating its efforts with cities and tribes.
“We still have, after 20 years, 70 to 75 percent opposition to the repository,” Navis said. “People still have concerns and are not convinced DOE is on the right track.”
One of the reasons for public suspicion is DOE’s proposal to store 135,000 metric tons of nuclear waste for thousands of years at Yucca Mountain, an amount that exceeds the current federal cap of 77,000 metric tons.
The county has targeted impact concerns in 15 other areas – geology, earthquakes, Nellis AFB, worker safety, transportation, public health and safety, land use conflicts are some of the focus areas.
“The DOE environmental impact statement in 1999 said there were no negative impacts to Clark County.” Navin said. “Our study showed impacts to the contrary. There are stigma-related impacts on property values and tourism. There are also costs to first responders that the DOE couldn’t shake in the final EIS.”
In fact, there are 22 issues the county monitoring program is scrutinizing. Because the county is an “affected unit of local government,” it receives an annual appropriation from Congress to study and comment on the DOE’s program. Clark County shares that information with cities, such as Mesquite, which are included in the county’s Nuclear Waste Oversight Program. This is important because the federal government does not recognize any Clark County cities as “affected units of local government.”
Navin said there are gaps in DOE’s program relating to impacts on key areas such as health and public safety.
“In ongoing management of public safety, they have not dealt with how to handle emergency management,” she said. “They’ve said there was no need to build a hospital in Nye County (the location of Yucca Mountain) because Clark County has the UMC hospital. Have they considered whether UMC has the capacity to deal with the potential release of nuclear waste?
“We have to talk about the long-term performance of the repository. It’s not operated just for 50 to 100 years. It potentially is going to be operated 100 to 300 years. The shipments come the first 50 years, then they stop. But the work at the site goes on. The waste has to be placed. The federal government is concerned about the first five decades. We have to be concerned with the short-term and long-term performance of the program.”
One of the short-term impacts will be the transportation of the nuclear waste to the repository.
“We have to consider: is this beneficial to the public?” Navin said. “Should it be built? There is a 319-mile stretch of rail that is not going through the county. It’s mostly in Lincoln County, Nye and Esmeralda counties. The cost for the rail went from $1 billion to $3 billion two years ago. We think the cost will climb more.
“The pubic safety policy only concentrates on first responders along the transportation route. It only considers the designated route and offers only training and technical assistance. The numbers they’re talking about for this are laughable: $200,000 for the first year for the entire state and $100,000 afterward.
“In New Mexico, where the federal government promised benefits and support, the fire stations get $1,000 per station every two years. That might be enough for one haz-mat suit and a couple of helmets. That gives you an idea of the stellar benefits. We have our doubts that we’d be treated any differently.”
Navin said county concerns about nuclear waste transportation escalate because “DOE has never built a rail line or a repository before.”
But will DOE be able to railroad Yucca Mountain through NRC?
“There are two licenses required by the NRC,” Navin said. “One is the authorization to construct the repository. Then they have to get another license to accept waste. You have to get the first to get the second. Sometimes facilities have received the first license but not the second.
“NRC is not going to give DOE a pass on anything. They’re working to put DOE through its paces. DOE has never applied for anything through a federal agency before.”
Navin also said the DOE’s Yucca Mountain program is a disjointed puzzle.
“It’s all up in the air,” she said. “Nothing is a done deal. Nothing fits together as it’s supposed to. I think that’s why approval will be difficult. It’s one of the most stove-piped, segregated, non-communicative processes I’ve ever seen.”
She said government and utilities work as partners in other nations, but they’re adversaries in the U.S. Additionally, the American public has been hit with bail-outs and an expensive war; a federally-mandated project such as Yucca Mountain – something people in Nevada don’t want – would have to be funded by the people.
“I was surprised, even with all we have to worry about now, that Yucca Mountain has always come out number five through seven in Clark County priority surveys,” Navin said.
The public can keep itself informed through several sources. Here are some:
• www.accessclarkcounty.com
• www.co.clark.nv.us/Comprehensive planning/
• YuccaMountainPodcoast.htm
• www.monitoringprogram.com
• Clark County TV Channel 4
• Nuclear Waste Division E-Newsletter
• www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
• www.ymp.gov
• www.nrc.gov
• www.epa.gov
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Mesquite Local News
November 25, 2008
Short Meeting Set For Council Today
By Morris Workman
With the Thanksgiving holiday just days away, the Mesquite City Council intends to waste no time in getting through tonight’s regularly scheduled council meeting.
The 11-item agenda (10 if you exclude item number nine which is listed as “Intentionally Left Blank”) should make for a short meeting.
The lineup includes the introduction of the proposed “OHV Ordinance” which will address when and where ATV’s and other Off-Highway Vehicles can be used within the city.
Since it is only an introduction of the ordinance, there will likely be little discussion.
The other big item on the agenda is discussion of a new communication tower to be built by the city near the Virgin Valley Water District’s Scenic water tank.
The site is actually on BLM land, and required approval of the Bureau of Land Management.
The tower, which will be used for fire, police, and public works communications, is budgeted at $150,000.
The council will also vote on creating a Special Improvement District for the Solstice development on the west end of town.
The SID will allow Solstice to charge a special assessment on any properties they develop and sell, with new property owners paying what amounts to an extra “tax” on their property each year.
The SID money is used to reimburse Solstice for infrastructure costs, including roads and sewers.
On the Consent Agenda, the council will vote on two measures regarding the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.
Both items are for contracts regarding the federal project, including $15,000 for a contract with Aztec Communications for public relations work, and another $30,000 to Urban Environmental Research for monitoring of the project’s excruciatingly slow progress through the labyrinth of federal committees, departments, and hearings.
Both measures are expected to pass without comment.
Today’s council meeting is set to begin at 5 p.m. in the council chambers located above City Hall on Mesquite Blvd.
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Longview Daily News
November 25, 2008
Trojan decommissioning complete, but fuel rods remain
By Tony Lystra
Portland General Electric says it is largely finished decommissioning the former Trojan nuclear power plant bordering the Columbia River south of Rainier. Spokesman Steve Corson said the company finished tearing down Trojan’s “containment building,” which once housed the plant’s nuclear reactor, this fall.
“There are no plans to remove anything further,” Corson said.
The demolition, which involved smashing apart super-thick concrete walls, was one of the final steps in the decades-long process of removing buildings from the landmark plant after it shut down in 1993. The plant is the first large-scale commercial nuclear facility in the U.S. to be decommissioned, the company said.
All that remains of the nuclear facility, which began operating in 1976, are radioactive fuel rods, contained in concrete casks and guarded around the clock. Those, Corson said, will remain at the site until the federal Yucca Mountain radioactive storage facility opens in Nevada.
Federal regulators have not yet signed off on the long-delayed construction of the Nevada storage facility. The last of the fuel rod assemblies is scheduled to ship to Yucca Mountain in 2030, Corson said.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear how the 634-acre Trojan site will be used, he said.
“That is an open question,” he said. “We really have not made any decisions and don’t have any specific plans in place.”
Also an open question is the future of nuclear power in the U.S. and the Northwest, a hot topic during this year’s presidential campaign.
Opening another nuclear facility in the region seems unlikely during the next two decades, Corson said. In 1980, Oregon voters made it illegal to build a nuclear plant without voter approval and without a proper disposal facility for nuclear waste.
“We’re not going to be proposing a nuclear portfolio that we wouldn’t be legally allowed to build,” Corson said.
Still, he said, looking beyond the next two decades, “We’re going to have to need every tool in the toolbox,” he said.
PGE imploded Trojan’s 499-foot-tall cooling tower in 2006. Last year, the company demolished the so-called “power block,” which had contained the plant’s control room, electricity generating turbine and fuel storage areas.
The containment building, destroyed this fall, had held Trojan’s reactor, which has been buried at the Hanford nuclear repository in Eastern Washington.
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Annapolis Capital
November 25, 2008
Guest Column: Reactor a potential health risk
Joseph J. Mangano
Unistar Nuclear Energy is seeking federal approval to build a new nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs plant on the west bank of the Chesapeake Bay, just 45 miles from Washington, D.C., and 55 miles from Baltimore.
At 1,600 megawatts, the new reactor would be easily the largest in the United States - and, at $10 billion, perhaps the most expensive. Supporters claim it will go a long way toward meeting future energy needs - and would do so in a "clean" manner.
But, even though they don't emit greenhouse gases, nuclear reactors are anything but clean. To generate electricity, they must create more than 100 radioactive chemicals otherwise produced only by atomic bomb explosions.
This toxic mix includes iodine 131, which attacks the thyroid gland; strontium 90, which seeks out bones; and cesium 137, which enters muscle. Each causes cancer, and is especially hazardous to infants and children.
Many of these chemicals must be stored as waste, of which the new reactor would create 1,375 tons. This waste must constantly be cooled by water, for hundreds and thousands of years.
Nearly 30 years ago, the federal government proposed sending waste to a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. But this facility is bogged down in challenges, and may never open.
Nuclear plants are stuck with storing large amounts of waste, the equivalent of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs. Any loss of cooling water, from terrorist attack or mechanical failure, would result in a meltdown, releasing huge amounts into the air. The heavily populated Baltimore-Washington area could not be evacuated in time, and thousands would suffer and die from radiation poisoning and cancer.
Washington was one of the terrorist targets on Sept. 11, 2001. The 9-11 Commission subsequently concluded that nuclear plants are also terrorist targets. Thus, building a large new reactor so close to the national capital is a risk, both for U.S. security and for public health.
Some of the 100-plus chemicals cannot be contained as waste. For a reactor to operate, they must be routinely released into the air and water. They enter the food chain and also enter human bodies through breathing.
A quarter-century ago, when the existing Calvert Cliffs reactors had just begun operating, Calvert County's cancer death rate was 2.2 percent below the Maryland rate. Now the county rate is 16 percent higher.
Rates are high for whites and blacks, and are especially high for children and the elderly, who are most susceptible to radioactivity. Something has changed Calvert County from a low-cancer to a high-cancer area.
The county, a fast-growing area with about 90,000 residents, has no obvious health risks. Its population is well educated, its unemployment and poverty rates are very low, and its residents have access to medical care at the local hospital, plus world-class care in Washington and Baltimore.
Calvert's death rate for all causes is equal to the Maryland rate - except for cancer. Nearly 200 county residents die of cancer each year, and the 16 percent increase is a serious problem.
Officials should study why Calvert's cancer rate is so high, and should examine its exposure to radioactivity from Calvert Cliffs.
Adding a large nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs may carry an excessive public health risk. The more prudent course would be to develop sources of energy such as wind, solar and geothermal power. These are renewable, will last forever and will cause no harm to human health.
--The writer is the executive director of the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project.
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Chicago Public Radio
November 25, 2008
Changes May Be in Store for Commercial Nuclear Power in Illinois
Produced by Shawn Allee
Illinois was once the cradle of the commercial nuclear power industry. In fact, utilities built so many reactors the Prairie State is still number one in nuclear generation. In 1987, though, Illinois turned its back on that legacy. Concern over nuclear waste and high costs led to a ban on any new nuclear plants. Recently, one legislator suggested Illinois repeal that moratorium and consider a nuclear renaissance. As part of our series, Chicago Matters: Growing Forward, Shawn Allee of the Environment Report has the story.
Related: Local Thoughts on Lifting Ban on Nuclear Power Plant
For a relative newcomer to Illinois politics, representative JoAnn Osmond managed to shake up something that had been dormant for some time – the state’s nuclear policy. It all started with a problem in her northeastern Illinois district.
OSMOND: I represent Zion. Zion has a nuclear plant that has been closed for several years.
Last spring, the plant owner, Exelon, announced plans to tear down the Zion nuclear station. That got Osmond thinking.
OSMOND: After a public hearing we went out to dinner and we were sitting and talking to people from Exelon and I asked a question: 'Why are you not taking some of the parts away from Zion and putting them in other nuclear locations?' They said, 'There’s a moratorium, we’re not building any more nuclear plants in the state of Illinois.'
Osmond says she was stunned. As a politician, she hears plenty of gripes about energy prices. So, Osmond thought, why leave any energy source off the table – even nuclear energy.
OSMOND: I asked staff in Springfield to prepare a bill that would remove the moratorium. Of course they thought I was a little strange because nobody’s asked to remove a moratorium in quite some time.
Twenty one years to be precise – that’s how long the moratorium’s been around. Osmond got her bill together so fast, she blind-sided environmental groups.
DARIN: I got a call that this bill to potentially restart the nuclear power industry in Illinois was being heard in ten minutes in committee and I thought, wow, what a blast from the past.
That’s Jack Darin, head of the Illinois Sierra Club. By chance, the very day Osmond introduced her bill in committee, environmental groups happened to be lobbying in Springfield. So, she got a little blind-sided herself
OSMOND: It was standing room only and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is really going down fast.' This many people showing up is never in favor of a bill, it’s usually to kill a bill.
Both sides made their case. Darin says environmentalists gave a litany of reasons to keep the moratorium.
DARIN: Cost, safety issues, the very big problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. We had our hands full enough trying to figure out how to deal with power plants we already have without adding to the problem of building more.
Osmond’s case was more personal.
OSMOND: I don’t want my granddaughters to have to buy their electricity from another state I want to be able in 2020, 2030 to be able to plug in our electric cars.
So, who won?
DARIN: It was quite a shock.
OSMOND: It was just unbelievable – it came out of committee, eleven to two.
DARIN: Apparently, we’re looking at re-opening that can of worms.
Osmond won, but her victory was not total. This summer, the political leadership put the brakes on her move to repeal the ban. Instead of moving her bill forward, they punted to a statewide nuclear task force which is now studying the proposal. Still, after two decades, Illinois’ nuclear moratorium is now open for debate. Veterans of nuclear politics are surprised Osmond got even this far.
KRAFT: It makes absolutely no logical, rational sense in any mode of analysis.
I find Dave Kraft at a coffee shop, where he's just wrapped up an event. Kraft is with the Nuclear Energy Information Service, a clearing-house for all things anti-nuclear.
KRAFT: We have a power glut right now, so there’s no need for the power. And we’re still further down the road, and still have no solution in sight for radioactive waste that's been produced since 1987.
Kraft says at its core, this is what the moratorium’s about: the radioactive spent fuel waste. It’s the most dangerous material left over from making nuclear power.
KRAFT: The moratorium simply said, no more new construction of nuclear reactors until the federal government has a demonstrated means of dealing with the waste permanently.
In the 1980s, the federal government said it would take spent fuel and store it in a repository, maybe in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But that never happened, so spent fuel is just building up in Illinois. That’s not just a target for critics of nuclear power – it’s a real problem for the industry.
ambi: door swings shut
Bryan Hanson manages the Braidwood nuclear station, 50 miles southwest of Chicago. He leads me to their storage pool. It’s square. About half the size of a basketball court. And it has the bluest water I’ve ever seen.
HANSON: This is where we store our spent fuel. It’s about thirty feet of water between us and the top of the fuel bundles down there. So you're looking 30 feet in the water and then another 12 feet down below.
ALLEE: If you look into it, it’s almost like honeycomb.
HANSON: Honeycomb, looks like an egg crate or honeycomb. Within those cells are fuel bundles that have been used in the reactor, generated energy, and now they’re waiting for eventual disposal.
When Braidwood was built the company planned for short-term storage, like this pool.
ALLEE: How long can this stuff stay here, if it has to?
HANSON: Well, it could stay indefinitely, but eventually we would run out of room in our pool, and we’d have to move stuff to dry-cask storage as well.
Concrete casks could hold spent fuel on-site for decades. For critics, that’s a problem: Illinois already stores more spent fuel than any other state, and the pile is growing even without new plants. They see this as a growing environmental and security risk, which means the moratorium should stay in place. But Representative JoAnn Osmond sees potential in those piles.
OSMOND: There’s gotta be somebody out there that’s going to be brilliant enough to figure out how to use the spent fuel.
Actually, some scientists say we can reprocess and reuse nuclear fuel, but the federal government bans it for now. But when it comes to the future of nuclear power in Illinois, economics might trump science. Any new plant in Illinois would cost billions and in this economy, capital is hard to come by. No company has signaled interest in building in the state. Still, Representative Osmond says we have to plan for tomorrow’s economy, not today’s.
OSMOND: I started the thought process with people. They’re now thinking again about energy, they’re thinking about nuclear. If my little, naïve 62-year old grandma thought was to just think about the future, then I’ve got them thinking right now.
In fact, Osmond might have her opponents thinking again very soon. She plans to reintroduce her moratorium repeal next year.
For Chicago Public Radio, I’m Shawn Allee with the Environment Report.
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Patriot-News
November 25, 2008
SAFE POWER
Policies to build nuclear plants need to be reasonable, rationale
It's not just banks, insurance companies and automakers looking to Uncle Sam to protect them from the ravages of the marketplace. The nation's electric utilities have their hands out, too.
It's a virtual certainty that no new nuclear plant will be built in this country unless the federal government provides loan guarantees. The companies have said as much.
That includes PPL Corp., which is considering building a third reactor at its nuclear power station near Berwick. The proposed Bell Bend plant, equipped with a French-designed re actor capable of generating 1,600 megawatts of electricity, would be larger than any existing reactor in the United States, and more than twice the size of Three Mile Island Unit 1.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized loan guarantees for energy projects that do not produce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming and that involve new technologies. The nuclear industry has submitted $122 billion in requests to the Department of Energy, which has approved only $18.5 billion of them, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In the nuclear-plant building boom of the 1970s it was the rare project that did not exceed original estimates, often by a magnitude of two, three or more times. What nuclear plants ultimately will cost under simplified licensing rules, but unpredictable costs for steel, cement and money, is impossible to say. A proposed new nuclear plant in South Texas has been estimated at between $4 billion and $5 billion, but a two-reactor plant proposed in Florida has a $17 million price tag.
Of course, nuclear isn't the only energy technology counting on the federal government to provide a financial helping hand. Solar, wind, biofuels and even "clean-coal" technology are heavily funded by taxpayers in various ways.
But nuclear also has the added burden of dealing with long-active, highly lethal radioactive nuclear waste. Continuing to store this material at or near the 104 operating nuclear reactors is a disaster waiting to happen.
The holdup is the impossible standards established by the government to ensure that the waste stored at the government's proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, operates flawlessly for 10,000 years, twice the length of recorded history.
Safe nuclear power should be part of the mix in the urgent need to move away from the burning of fossil fuels. But the policies that get us there need to be reasonable and rationale. And the cost of the facilities must stay within the bounds of reality and be competitive with other energy solutions.
Otherwise, once again, taxpayers will be taken to the cleaners with little to show for it.
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Mesquite Local News
November 24, 2008
Yucca Mountain Discussed At Citizens Coffee
By Max Little
Friday morning at City Hall, Clark County Planning Manager Irene L. Navis enlightened the citizens about the ongoing issue of the nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain during the monthly Citizens Coffee meeting.
Navis is the Chair of Clark County’s Yucca Mountain Advisory Committee and is a member of the Clark County Emergency Planning Committee
She pointed out that Yucca Mountain is not in Clark County, but is in Nye County and about 90 miles North of Las Vegas.
In 1985 the Federal government designated Clark, Nye and Lincoln Counties as affected counties for purposes of having input into the decisions concerning the nuclear waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain.
The State of Nevada had to force the federal Department of Energy to recognize that the 10 counties surrounding Yucca Mountain also are affected as well as one county in California, containing Death Valley which is downhill from the Mountain and will receive run off from the facility.
Navis pointed out that with the new president’s help, Senator Harry Reid has said, “The Yucca Mountain Project will die a slow and painful death.”
She points out that this likely means that, “The project will bleed money for the remaining period of its consideration, but ultimately it will be abandoned because of our hard fought campaign to stop it.”
Originally the nuclear waste depository was one of three considered.
The other two were quickly abandoned and Yucca was the only one left to consider.
The plan is for 135,000 metric tons of nuclear waste to be stored there, the majority of it from naval reactors and decommissioned weapons and some commercial spent fuel.
At the present time the permit to operate is restricted by law to a cap of 77,000 metric tons.
Navis said that, “The original Environmental Impact Statement that the DOE submitted showed no negative environmental or cultural impacts.”
“We showed that the impact on the safety, police, and disaster requirements for the surrounding counties and cities would be a significant event if something major was to happen at Yucca Mountain.”
“We look at the technical aspects of the projects, and we study the transportation plan and analyze expected and potential impacts.”
“Our Clark County Yucca Mountain Advisory Committee functions as a public outreach agent and coordinates efforts of cities and tribes to make the combined impact greater that the individuals concerned.”
Originally none of the cities in Clark County were considered impacted by the Feds.
“We at Clark County are interested in the impact of this project over the next few decades, as that will set the pace for the considerations we will be given by the D.O.E. over the life of the proposed project considered to be 100 to 300 years.”
The D.O.E. has been woefully stingy with funds for adjacent communities on other projects such as the ones in New Mexico where they have provided token funds for addition training and equipment that would be required to protect a major facility such as Yucca Mountain Nuclear Depository.
There will be a Public hearing on Dec. 4 at Las Vegas from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and there will be a panel of speakers on Yucca Mountain and the rail line bringing the nuclear waste to Nevada.
It is recommended that interested public attend.
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Deseret News
November 24, 2008
Bennett says U.S. needs to get serious about nuclear power
By Lee Davidson
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, expects soon to become the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water. So he just spent a week in Europe looking at its energy industries for lessons he can use here
A key lesson he says he learned is that America will soon need to depend much more on nuclear energy if it is serious about reducing carbon emissions — which environmentalists want to help stop global warming.
And he says to do that, America will need to become serious about reprocessing and reusing nuclear waste.
His trip to England, France and Austria included looking at a reprocessing plant in France, where some waste is turned into uranium and plutonium for reuse in plants and the remaining waste is stored in vitrified glass containers.
"We walked through a room that was filled with all those rods. It was kind of a symbolic thing to show how safe it is. They don't have it stored in Yucca Mountain. They have it stored in a room in the plant," Bennett said. "They have a very, very different attitude, obviously, in France about all of this."
Bennett added that reprocessing in France reduces the final amount of waste to only about 4 percent of the volume created by nuclear plants in America. "Nuclear energy makes far more sense if you are going to do the reprocessing," he said.
"After you take the spent fuel rod out of a light water reactor of the kind we have in the United States, there's still an enormous amount of energy in it. That's why it's so radioactive. And you can't get that energy out unless you reprocess the fuel rod and then feed the uranium you get out of it and some of the plutonium back into the nuclear plant," he said.
Bennett said U.S. companies do not reprocess fuel because Jimmy Carter banned it, hoping that would prevent the extra plutonium it would have created from escalating the nuclear arms race.
"Ronald Reagan reversed the executive order that banned reprocessing. But by that time, frankly, it was too late because the industry had gone ahead on the assumption that there would be no reprocessing. The technology had gone overseas. The rest of the world engages in reprocessing, and America doesn't," Bennett said.
"If we're serious about nuclear energy, we're going to have to get into the reprocessing business," he said.
"If we are going to be serious about carbon emissions, we have to have a much larger nuclear component in our electric production," he said.
"Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of America's needs now," he added. "If you're going to get to the targets that people are setting around the world for carbon emissions ... there's no way you get there without significant increases in nuclear power. Solar and wind simply aren't big enough."
Bennett also toured industries seeking to produce renewable energy — including a power plant operated by the ocean tide — and carbon trading markets that cap and trade how many emissions industries may produce in Europe.
Bennett is currently the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, but hopes because of retirements of other more senior members to switch and instead oversee the energy and water subcommittee because of the importance of debates on energy.
--E-mail: lee@desnews.com
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Chattanooga Pulse
November 23, 2008
Goodbye, George—We’re Off to Greener Pastures
Written by Mary Duffy
In just two months, the nation will be saying farewell to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and welcoming Barack Obama and Joe Biden. While I have high hopes for the new administration’s environmental policies, I want to highlight some of George Bush’s greatest green “hits.”
Legislation wise, Bush was busy. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act was supposed to prevent damage to homes and communities from forest fires. How? By thinning millions of acres of trees—trees nowhere near where people live. Bonus: The act authorizes the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to give logging companies timber in exchange for managing our forests. This specially includes old-growth and prime timber they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
The proposed Clear Skies Act of 2003 was supposed to expand the Clean Air Act by expanding cap-and-trade, meaning economic incentives to control pollution. Like the Healthy Forests Act, Clear Skies was another weirdly Orwellian piece of legislation. (Healthy forests are logged forests; clear skies are polluted; war is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.) Passing the Clear Skies Act would have rolled back the stronger laws already in place under the Clean Air Act, allowing for more air pollution.
Bush also distinguished himself in his selection of an administrator who would work to protect the environment. Christine Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003, knowingly lied about the air quality in lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks. She repeatedly claimed the air was safe. Ultimately, about 70 percent of Ground Zero workers had respiratory health problems. When questioned by Congress about her claims that the air was safe, she defended herself by saying, “Was it wrong to try to get the city back on its feet as quickly as possible? Absolutely not. Safety was first and foremost, but we weren’t going to let the terrorists win.”
Yucca Mountain, the potential nuclear waste dump in Nevada, has been my personal environmental bogeyman. The Bush administration has worked very hard to support the establishment of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Bush’s Department of Energy and EPA have done everything to make it happen, too: weakening the rules and standards needed to make the site safe, understating the potential contamination to the Nevada drinking water supply, and falsifying data being some of the bigger efforts. Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promises that the plan for Yucca Mountain is dead, and Barack Obama has said he doesn’t support it.
But what will we remember George Bush for if not for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)? The ANWR is home to the most geographically remote spot in the United States. That is, you are further away from a road in the ANWR than you are anywhere else in our country. There you can see geese, caribou, lynx, gyrfalcons, golden eagles, musk oxen in a pristine wilderness. Or, if wildlife and untamed nature isn’t your thing, you could drill for the 5 to 15 billion barrels of oil estimated to be recoverable in the ANWR.
Currently, we consume about 20 million barrels of oil per day, so if we got every last drop out of there, we would be rid of our “crippling dependence on foreign oil” for about 2 years. Unfortunately, it would actually take about 10 years for the oil in the ANWR to start to reach the market, and then those barrels of oil would represent even less of our consumption. Still, this hasn’t stopped Bush from pushing to open up drilling in our last bits of this wilderness for the last several years.
Barack Obama has made it clear that the environment will be a priority for his administration. Next week we’ll look at how Barack can walk the walk in the next four years.
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Newsweek
November 22, 2008
PROJECT GREEN
Obama’s Nuclear Reservations
Political squabbling over how to store waste could hold back the industry.
By Daren Briscoe
It was one of Barack Obama's big applause lines. At nearly every campaign stop, the candidate promised to end our dependence on foreign oil and slash carbon emissions 80 percent by midcentury. "I will set a clear goal as president," he said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. "I will tap our natural-gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology and find ways to safely harness nuclear power." He also promised to back biofuels and wind, water and solar power. The crowd cheered.
Now all he has to do is make good on the promise. But despite all the inspiring talk about windmills and solar panels, it's difficult to see how Obama will reach that goal without relying, in large part, on nuclear power. Commercial reactors currently provide 20 percent of the nation's power—but accounts for 70 percent of the country's emission-free energy. "We cannot get to the reduction of CO2 in a big way without relying on nuclear energy even more than we do today," says Mujid Kazimi, the director of MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Systems.
So does that mean Obama will become the nation's cheerleader in chief for nuclear power? Not likely. Obama has been cautious whenever he's been asked about the issue. In a "Meet the Press" appearance in May, he hedged when the subject came up. "I think we do have to look at nuclear, and what we've got to figure out is can we store the material properly? Can we make sure that they're secure? Can we deal with the expense?"
Not exactly a full-throated endorsement. Obama's lack of enthusiasm is easy to understand politically, especially given the apprehension many voters have about the safety of nuclear-power plants. Three decades later, Three Mile Island still haunts—despite the pleas of industry advocates who say the technology has improved to the point that accidents are almost unheard of. Most Americans probably have no idea that there are 104 commercial nuclear-power plants currently operating in the United States today. None has suffered a malfunction that led to a major leak of radioactive material. Nuclear-power proponents often point to France, which depends on nukes for 80 percent of its power.
A bigger problem than the safety of the reactors themselves is what to do with the deadly waste they produce. Nuclear power is praised for its zero carbon emissions, but it comes at a price—radioactive fuel rods that remain toxic for thousands of years. If you're looking for a reason to feel queasy about building more nuclear reactors, this is it. While politicians bicker over where to put it all—nuclear waste is the ultimate "not in my backyard" dispute—the stuff is piling up. As things are now, a lot of it is simply stockpiled at the plants, submerged in open pools of water for as long as five years and eventually sealed in steel and concrete casks. "You have more than 100 reactors storing waste on-site, under what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls a temporary license, in the worst of all possible places," says Rochelle Becker of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, a nonprofit that monitors the nuclear-power industry. "In California, it's stored next to earthquake faults. In the rest of the country, you find that most waste is sitting very close to water supplies."
Nuclear-power companies pay a fee to the Department of Energy to pick up and store the waste, which by law becomes government property once it leaves the plant. But Energy is already 10 years behind schedule, and has no place to put it. The Feds want to store it in a vast facility inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles from Las Vegas, where it would be closely monitored and far away from neighborhoods, earthquake zones and water supplies. Shipping the nation's nuclear waste to Nevada sounds good to just about everyone—everyone, that is, who doesn't live in Nevada. The state's officials, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are against it and have kept it from opening. This is where Obama, who has strongly criticized the Bush administration for putting politics ahead of facts, could step in and provide leadership on a national problem that will only become worse as more nuclear plants are built in coming years: plans for 26 new reactors are currently awaiting approval.
But don't expect the new president to demand that Reid clear out of the way. Nevada was one of the states Obama fought hard to win, and he wooed its voters partly by coming out against opening Yucca Mountain. "[T]here are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be stored safely there," he wrote to a Las Vegas newspaper. "I believe a better short-term solution is to store nuclear waste on-site at the reactors where it is produced, until we find a safe, long-term solution that is based on sound science."
Sounds reasonable enough. Except that sound science already comes down firmly on the side of Yucca Mountain. "The best option is deep geologic isolation," says Per Peterson, a UC Berkeley professor who specializes in radioactive-waste management. "It's based on 50 years of research and development, and a very broad, widespread and strong consensus that it can provide appropriate and safe disposal of waste." Good luck finding a nuclear-waste expert who'll tell you Obama's stopgap solution—let it pile up and deal with it later —has anything to do with "sound science." Sound politics is more like it.
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Wired News
November 22, 2008
Artist Wants Nuke Waste Dump to Make New Universes
Brandon Keim
The nuclear waste buried beneath Yucca Mountain will be there for millennia, untouchable and lethal. Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats would put that time and radioactivity to use by turning the dump into a generator of new universes.
His plan is based on the laws of quantum physics, which state that each atomic particle exists in multiple states at once until observation fixes it in time and space. Keats, who recently built a temple of science to explore the implications of science-based religion, takes this literally.
In "Universes Unlimited," an exhibition opening today at the Modernism gallery in San Francisco, Keats unveils a do-it-yourself universe creation kit, on sale for just $20 and made from components bought on eBay — and, as he explains in a half-tongue-in-cheek letter to the Department of Energy, it could easily be scaled up to the dimensions of Yucca Mountain, dotting its 230 square miles with crystal towers glowing in a redemptive fount of creation.
After all, if the pebbles of depleted uranium-enriched glass in his DIY kit produce an estimated 200 universes a minute, the mind boggles at what 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste could generate.
I talked to Keats this week about his latest work.
Wired.com: Where did the idea come from?
Jonathon Keats: The Copenhagen interpretation says that in a quantum system, a particle exists in multiple positions until a measurement is made. It's when you measure it that you end up with a particle as you'd expect it in the classical world, at one place in time. Then there's some way the universe collapses. That didn't make much sense to Hugh Everett and his followers. The Everett interpretation is that the system doesn't collapse. Instead, when you make the measurement, you end up with two separate universes with no connection to each other. This was exactly the methodology I needed to build a technology that would generate universes.
Wired.com: Where did you get the parts?
Keats: I went onto eBay, and bought some uranium-doped glass. Uranium was used as a colorant in classic red glass Fiesta Ware in the 1950's, and in light green glass made in the 1920's and 1930's. That provide my uranium. Then I found a guy who sells scintillating crystals, which are used by Homeland Security as a simple way to detect whether someone has a nuclear bomb under their coat. When a gamma ray hits the crystal, a photon is produced, so it glows a beautiful blue.
Wired.com: And when it glows, that's the measurement?
Keats: It sparks so subtly that you can't see it. It's singularly unspectacular. From the standpoint of being in the universe, making a new universe is very mundane. If you could stand outside it and see the universes cleave, I'm sure it would be very spectacular. But you're seeing nothing in terms of the crystal glowing. That's important to me: I didn't want it to seem like every time you get a new universe, it's Christmas. I wanted to fit it into the everyday humdrum nature of universal creation, to bring it down to a level where we recognize that creativity is what we do naturally, that it's always in everything.
In the case of the Yucca Mountain project, though, there would be a visible glow.
Wired.com: What would it look like?
Keats: It would be quite beautiful: the idea is to sink two-mile-deep scintillating crystal stacks into the mountain, sticking out like chimneys, looking like a factory. But instead of sending out smoke, they'd glow in the night. I don't know if the government would go for it, but it'd be less expensive than other things that they've done in the past.
Wired.com: Beyond being pretty, what's the point?
Keats: It's a way of letting us collectively address questions of creation and quantum science. At the same time, at a more basic level, it addresses the question of where we are as a society right now, when a nuclear waste dump is the ultimate monument to ill-thought excess. Yucca Mountain represents what our civilization has come to, in terms of the threat that the world now poses to us. But with this, you'd see Yucca Mountain at work, making new possibilities for us.
Wired.com: So it's a form of redemption.
Keats: What made me look to Yucca Mountain as an ideal site for the universe factory is that here, more than anywhere, we could use some possibility of redemption.
It's also a way of taking us out of our paralysis, out of our fear for a world that now seems to be collapsing. We can make solutions to the problems we've made for ourselves. If Yucca Mountain can bring us to consider all the many alternatives of our future, then not only will it be a factory for making universes in the literal sense, but for remaking whatever universe we happen to find ourselves in.
It's important that we recognize that the future could take any number of paths. We could continue to abuse the environment as we've done, and simply go for broke, or work towards stable state. All these possibilities exist. What's crucial is that we start considering some of them. At least one of these universes will be a future in which it all comes out okay.
Wired.com: But what if someone thinks nuclear power is a pretty decent source of energy, given the alternatives?
Keats: I don't say that nuclear energy is good or bad. There's a bigger question: how much energy of any kind do we need? If the costs of energy, by whatever means are technologically feasible, are going to be so great that we're going to pay for it in terms of our future, might we need to live on less energy? What I'm asking, without any polemical point or stance, is that we consider the cost of any type of energy.
Making new universes is partly a pleasure, and partly a means of activating our search for alternatives — not only across universes, but within our own.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/files/universes.doe.letter.pdf
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Fox5 KVVU - Reid: Obama Says Yucca Mountain To Be Halted--Senator Says Radioactive Storage Plan To Die
November 21, 2008
Reid: Obama Says Yucca Mountain To Be Halted
Senator Says Radioactive Storage Plan To Die
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid said he has met with President-elect Barack Obama several times since the election and prior to the election, and he said the Yucca Mountain project will eventually be halted.
Reid said the most recent meeting was Tuesday. He said the plan to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive material in Nevada could die a slow and painful death.
“Yucca Mountain is history, OK?” Reid said in an interview Wednesday. “Just watch, we’ll see what happens real soon, just watch. You will see it bleed real hard in the next year.”
Supporters and critics of the proposed nuclear waste repository have been waiting for signals on how Obama would proceed on the Yucca Mountain project.
During the presidential campaign, Obama said the selection of Yucca Mountain for waste storage “has failed.” He said nuclear waste should continue to be kept at reactor sites until policy-makers come up with another plan.
Critics say the geology of the mountain ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is not suitable for safe storage of nuclear waste for periods of more than tens of thousands of years. They also said shipping radioactive material to Nevada would cause crashes and possible attacks.
But others say the Department of Energy strategy to place waste in corrosion-resistant containers within Yucca Mountain tunnels meets federal safety standards for up to 1 million years.
DOE and nuclear industry officials say there is a safe record for nuclear shipments going back 30 years.
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KRNV
November 21, 2008
Nev. Sen. Reid: Signaling death for Yucca
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Sen. Harry Reid is beginning to signal a slow death for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository plan.
The Senate majority leader says he's had several discussions about the project with President-elect Barack Obama, who will be picking a new energy secretary.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission started in September to review an 8,600-page Energy Department application for a repository construction and operating license.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 21, 2008
Demise of Yucca project predicted
Reid sees Obama blocking nuke waste dump
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Harry Reid have had several discussions about the Yucca Mountain Project since the election, with Reid saying this week the nuclear waste burial plan will "bleed real hard" before being halted.
Reid said the most recent conversation, covering the waste repository program and other issues, took place Tuesday.
He declined to give details, but hinted that the plan to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive material in Nevada could die a slow and painful death.
"Yucca Mountain is history, OK?" Reid said in an interview Wednesday. "Just watch, we'll see what happens real soon, just watch. You will see it bleed real hard in the next year."
Supporters and critics of the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository have been waiting for signals as to how Obama might proceed on nuclear waste issues.
One of the tea leaves is Reid, the Senate majority leader and the leading congressional opponent of the Yucca project that is unpopular among many Nevadans and most of the state's elected leaders.
Other signals, observers say, will be who Obama selects to run the Department of Energy and carry out his policies, and how much money he proposes to spend on the project in the coming year.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission started in September to review an 8,600-page DOE application for a repository construction license.
It has not been made clear what the ramifications might be if that process is stopped in its tracks, for instance whether legislation might be needed to set a new course, and what would become of more than $20 billion set aside so far for construction.
During the presidential campaign that included a key early caucus in Nevada, Obama declared the selection of Yucca Mountain for long-term waste storage "has failed." He said nuclear waste should continue to be kept at reactor sites while policy-makers come up with a Plan B.
Critics say the geology of the mountain ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is unsuitable for safe storage of nuclear waste for periods that would stretch beyond tens of thousands of years.
Further, they say shipping the radioactive material to Nevada would invite accidents and possible attacks.
But others contend the Department of Energy strategy to place waste in corrosion-resistant containers within Yucca Mountain tunnels will meet federal safety standards for up to 1 million years.
As for transportation, DOE and nuclear industry officials point to a safety record for nuclear shipments going back 30 years.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 21, 2008
Nevadans support House panel change
Californian wins top post
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Two Nevadans joined a Democratic coup Thursday that dethroned a longtime leader of the House's energy committee in favor of a new chairman who they said will be friendlier to the state on renewable energy and nuclear waste.
Rep. Henry Waxman of California could not be more different from Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the lawmaker he will replace as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Dingell was a leading supporter of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and prodded the Department of Energy to move faster to complete the project.
Waxman, said Berkley, "has been a steadfast supporter of Nevada's position on Yucca Mountain, and he will be a partner with Nevada in stopping this project."
Waxman, a Beverly Hills liberal, is more supportive of renewable energy, while Dingell had built a reputation as an ardent proponent of automakers who populate his Detroit-area district.
"I was an unapologetic supporter of Waxman," Berkley said after the 137-122 secret ballot vote by Democrats who will serve in the new Congress gathering in January.
Two of Nevada's three House representatives in the new Congress will be Democrats. Besides Berkley, Reppresentative-elect Dina Titus also voted for Waxman, who she said is a supporter of the casino industry.
Titus was unavailable on Thursday evening. She said in a statement that Waxman's election "is a win for Nevada and our nation as we move forward to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and explore renewable technologies to create new jobs and protect our environment."
The 57-member Energy and Commerce panel is one of the most important House committees, with jurisdiction over energy, the environment, consumer protection, telecommunications and health care programs such as Medicaid and the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.
The switch from Dingell to Waxman could help President-elect Barack Obama on Capitol Hill with one of his favored issues: trying to curb global warming by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But Waxman's combative stance on climate change and other issues could alienate Republicans and moderate Democrats, making the bipartisan support Obama will need harder to get.
Waxman, 69, is an environmentalist and booster of health care programs and a home state ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was the candidate of change in a year dominated by that theme. He likened the first years of the Obama administration to a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get things done in Washington.
"The argument we made was that we needed a change for the committee to have the leadership that will work with this administration and members in both the House and the Senate in order to get important issues passed in health care, environmental protection, in energy policy," Waxman said after the vote.
Dingell, 82, has been the top Democrat on the panel for 28 years and is an old-school supporter of carmakers and other big industries such as electric utilities.
His battles with Waxman over clean air issues date to the Reagan administration and recently were revived as Waxman complained that the committee has been too slow to address global warming.
Dingell's defenders said he had done nothing to deserve being dumped, pointing to a long list of accomplishments and the panel's busy work load over the past two years, including successfully enacting an energy bill that would raise automobile fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
--The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 21, 2008
Las Vegas SUN - Nevada's Dina Titus gets taste of Congress
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/nov/21/nevadas-dina-titus-gets-taste-of-congress/
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Pahrump Valley Times
November 21, 2008
Commissioners approve high-tech shopping list
By Mark Waite
PVT
The Nye County justice system will be going high tech soon after commissioners Tuesday approved an early Christmas electronic buying spree totaling $238,887.
The goodies include an INFAX Docket Call for the Pahrump Justice Court. It will display the court calendar for the day electronically at the courthouse, with the defendant's name, case number, courtroom and hearing time.
That will replace a docket sheet hanging on the wall at the courthouse next to the justice court clerk's window, which is probably ignored by most defendants who inquire about their case with the clerks.
The cost for the two displays is $30,180, which will each be on 40-inch flat-panel LCD monitors. The system will be tied in to the court's case management system and updated in real time.
Pahrump Justice of the Peace Tina Brisebill unsuccessfully asked for six deputy court clerks recently.
Pahrump Justice Court Administrator Kathy Ivey outlined the advantages of the system to commissioners.
"The docket call system is very similar to what you see when you go into an airport and lets you know the status of your planes. This lets you know the status of your court case. The advantage of this system, as we continue to grow, it will direct people in the courtroom without having long lines at the clerk's window to find out where they have to go," Ivey said.
The system could be expanded to include more justice courts or district court, she said. Nye County Information Technology Director Milan Dimac said the courthouse addition is being wired to accommodate the system.
Another innovation will be installing cameras in the courtroom to record witnesses as part of an $84,134 contract with Jefferson Audi Video Systems Inc.
The cost of installation will be $20,700.
Ivey said the compact discs will last all day. The present audio system sometimes doesn't function properly in the morning, she said.
"This is a system where the cameras in the courtroom are controlled by who's speaking, so the cameras would be directed on the person who's speaking at the time. It's a more complete record and it could possibly reduce the need for court reporters in the future," Ivey said.
Gil Muise, collections manager for the justice court, lauded the REV-Q case management system used to identify and collect payments due the court. That will cost $20,620 plus annual fees of $2,100.
"The current system requires a lot of manual reviewing of files," Ivey said.
Muise said the collection system is labor intensive.
"I have to physically touch every case that I'm working, that involves, between Beatty and Pahrump Justice Court, about 2,500 cases," he said.
Muise said the REV-Q system will allow him to put in a collection alert to start a payment system, with addresses, the payment owed, payment plan and other information. It can be programmed to generate warrants if necessary.
Muise said since the Pahrump Justice Court began a collections program under his predecessor Kathy Minor in 2002, $650,000 has been collected.
"We currently have over 1,500 cases on accounts receivable. They have to be closely monitored all the time," Ivey said.
Commissioner Joni Eastley said Brisebell told her the system might allow for a 20 to 25 percent increase in collections.
Eastley prodded her fellow commissioners: "I'm asking all the questions here, does anybody have any questions?"
The biggest ticket was for the JustWare Prosecutor case management system for the district attorney's office.
Commissioners awarded a $146,020 contract to New Dawn Technologies. Eastley said it was a pet project of hers, upgrading the district attorney's case management system which is now done by hand on three-inch by five-inch cards.
Prosecutors will be able to look up cases by a defendant's name, victim's name, a date the case was filed and other information. JustWare Prosecutor is used in the Clark, Churchill, Lyon and Carson City district attorney's offices.
"We need this system to effectively communicate, interface with other criminal justice agencies," Nye County Chief Prosecutor Kirk Vitto said.
The software will allow the district attorney's office to monitor forfeitures, Vitto said, like the $350,000 in property accused drug trafficker Guerino Cristalo forfeited to the sheriff's office Tuesday.
Vitto said he'd also be able to better monitor what is going on in the district attorney's office.
"As our county grows, as the time to treat repeat offenders and criminals in the manner the law allows, they should be approached with their criminal history. It will allow tracking of those cases to be done more effectively and efficiently," Vitto said.
The case will be entered in the computer system, beginning at the time a suspect is booked into the county jail, Eastley said. The case information is then automatically transferred to justice court, district court and the DA's office, she said.
Ivey said the system will interface with the justice court system, Court View.
"I'm thrilled. I want to thank my colleagues. This is something I have wanted for many, many years," Eastley said.
The contracts were all bankrolled by a capital projects fund from the $11.5 million in payment equal to taxes the U.S. Department of Energy gave Nye County for the land value of Yucca Mountain this year. Eastley has expressed concern recently over the continued funding of this program by the DOE.
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Tri-City Herald
November 21, 2008
TRIDEC forming plans for Obama term budget
By Annette Cary
The Tri-City Development Council will be working to ensure funding to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation doesn't get lost among the changes promised in the nation's capital, said Tim Peckinpaugh, a longtime lobbyist for TRIDEC.
Peckinpaugh, of K&L Gates, has worked on behalf of TRIDEC for 22 years and met with the Herald editorial board Friday.
"It's very important that we continue to tell the story of the Hanford mission, or we will get left behind," he said.
Hanford is operating under a continuing resolution covering the DOE budget for fiscal 2009, which began Oct. 1. The continuing resolution sets spending at fiscal 2008 levels until a new appropriations bill for Department of Energy operations is approved.
Congress is expected to resume its fiscal 2009 budget discussions after the new administration takes office, Peckinpaugh said, which may mean an increase in Hanford spending in the neighborhood of the $220 million for the year, based on previous Senate proposals.
The continuing resolution that has set spending at Hanford for fiscal 2009 expires in the spring.
In addition, an economic stimulus package that could be passed in January includes $800 million more to be spread among all of DOE's cleanup sites.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who has been re-elected to the fourth most powerful position among Senate Democrats, will be in a position to ensure that Hanford gets its share of cleanup spending, Peckinpaugh said.
"She advocates very passionately for the region," he said.
TRIDEC also is watching to see who Barack Obama will appoint as energy secretary to oversee the nation's energy policy, research and nuclear weapon site cleanup.
Peckinpaugh believes it's likely to be someone with a background in clean energy technologies such as solar, wind and biomass, based on Obama's energy agenda.
Obama campaigned in Nevada against Yucca Mountain, which has yet to open as a national repository for waste from commercial nuclear power plants and for glassified high-level radioactive defense wastes from Hanford.
Obama has said nuclear could be part of the nation's energy mix if issues over waste, nonproliferation and health and safety can be addressed, Peckinpaugh said. It is the same argument used for years by people who oppose nuclear power, he pointed out.
One Hanford-related issue that should see some increased attention is compensation for ill nuclear workers or their survivors under a new administration that supports labor and worker health and safety, he said.
Claimants in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program have criticized what they see as a slow and unfair process for deciding claims and awarding compensation.
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KIDK
November 21, 2008
DOE plans to make Nuclear Energy recyclable.
By Jennifer McGraw
IDAHO FALLS - The D-O-E has drafted a plan to help supply large amounts of energy by using nuclear power and then recycling it to be used again.
This would be a more efficient way to use nuclear fuel and it will also be economically preferred.
"The power demand in the U.S., the electricity demand is increasing the environmentally impact statement we're assuming a 1.3 percent increase and with that we're going to need new ways to generate electricity," Ray Furstenau, from Department of Energy.
Nuclear power is just one of the ways that the DOE plans to supply that electricity demand.
"Nuclear energy is a clean source of energy. It doesn't produce greenhouse gas and it is also, Uranium is a resource, but it's a widespread resource in terms of energy security, it's something the U.S. can use and not be dependent on unreliable partners," says Kathy McCarthy, from the INL.
By using and recycling nuclear fuels there is an automatic benefit.
"Just the fact that you can use something twice instead of once," says Lauren Joyce from the INL.
But it doesn't stop there. More than half of the nuclear fuel is wasted just during the process.
"We use less than one percent of the original energy content of Uranium Ore, which it comes from, and then the actual used fuel that comes out of the reactor, there's still a lot of energy content," says McCarthy.
"The amount of waste would be reduced so much so that Yucca Mountain could be used for many years more," says Joyce.
Which at this point without recycling nuclear fuels, it will be full of nuclear materials by 2010.
Not everyone is on board with the nuclear idea at all. The DOE project hopes to change this.
"Back in the 60's and 70's, we didn't do a good job in explaining what it was about. If people don't understand, they tend to be afraid of it. So we've tried a lot harder this time to help people to understand nuclear energy," says McCarthy.
"I think it's a very important project and that's why we're getting public comments. It's so important to hear what the American people think and not just people in D.C. making decisions because it's going to effect all of us, not just the policy makers," says Joyce.
You have until December 16th to add your comments on the project. Call 866-645-7803 to get copies of the plan or to just send your comments to
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Nuclear Energy - NE - 5
1000 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20585
www.gnep.energy.gov
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kypost
November 21, 2008
Power For Kentucky
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Decades after closing the door to nuclear power, political leaders in Kentucky have begun a dialogue that could lift a legal ban on such generating plants.
Gov. Steve Beshear opened the discussion Thursday by publicly releasing a 144-page plan that calls for the state to decide whether nuclear power will be part of a broad range of initiatives aimed at meeting Kentucky's energy needs. Coal would be its centerpiece, but biofuels and nuclear power could also be components.
Beshear called nuclear power "one potentially viable option" to help meet the state's energy needs.
"We must begin the discussion now about whether nuclear energy should be a part of our energy portfolio," he told reporters at a Capitol press conference.
The governor's energy plan comes at a time when utility companies are looking at Kentucky for potential nuclear power plant sites.
"Several companies have suggested that they would be interested in building nuclear plants in Kentucky," said Energy Secretary Len Peters.
Peters didn't identify any of the utility companies eyeing Kentucky. All neighboring states, except Indiana and West Virginia, have nuclear power plants.
Kentucky banned nuclear power plants after an accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island generator in Pennsylvania. But even one of the lawmakers who led the push for the ban, state Rep. Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, said it's time to take a fresh look at the issue.
Kentucky law bans nuclear power construction until the country develops a permanent disposal site for radioactive nuclear waste. The federal Energy Department has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build such a site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, but the future of the project is far from certain.
State Sen. Bob Leeper unsuccessfully introduced legislation earlier this year to lift Kentucky's ban on nuclear power. Leeper said at the time that Kentucky could expect numerous requests to build nuclear plants if the law is changed.
"It's a very expensive proposition to get into, although it ends up, depending upon the economy, being a cost efficient way of producing electricity," Beshear said Thursday.
Beshear and Peters jointly unveiled the energy plan, which outlines seven strategies to meet the state's power needs while protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
They set a target of 2025 for implementing the proposals, which include reducing energy consumption by making homes and businesses more efficient and by promoting solar, wind and hydro power. They also called on the state to encourage industries to convert coal into liquid fuels.
Beshear said coal is key to achieving energy security for the nation, and called for Kentucky to encourage the conversion of coal into synthetic natural gas. He also said the state should encourage development of methods to dispose of carbon wastes from coal by piping them underground.
"Make no mistake about it, I'm a strong supporter of coal and coal mining," Beshear said. "But make no mistake about it, I'm also a strong supporter of doing it responsibly."
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Brattleboro Reformer
November 21, 2008
Panel meet turns sour
By Bob Audette
Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- What was meant to be an update on the status of the relicensing of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and an investigation into the plant's reliability turned into a verbal sparring match between a pair of legislators and the commissioner of Vermont's Department of Public Service.
At one point, Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro and Commissioner David O'Brien, members of the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel, struggled over a microphone after Edwards accused O'Brien of not fulfilling his duties as the panel's chairman by asking panel members what they would like to have discussed at the meeting.
Edwards told O'Brien that she didn't get her agenda "in a timely manner," and if she had she would have added several topics for discussion.
The VSNAP agenda was sent out two weeks before the meeting, giving panel members plenty of time to ask for additions, said O'Brien. He told Edwards he only learned about her concerns after reading about them in the paper.
O'Brien said Edwards, instead of complaining to the newspaper, should have "picked up a phone and called me."
At that point, Edwards tried to grab the microphone from O'Brien.
"We speak in turn," said O'Brien, adding they should "act like adults."
For the first hour and a half of the three-hour meeting, Edwards, O'Brien and Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, argued over items that weren't on the agenda, including the storage of low- and high-level waste at Yankee, a change in the way the Department of Health measures fenceline radiation and guarantees that were made to the state by Entergy, which owns and operates Yankee, which were not fulfilled.
MacDonald started the meeting off by saying that VSNAP was unable to fulfill its duties "when the assurances we are given year in and year out don't come to pass."
Promises to deliver low-level waste to a Texas facility haven't been kept, he said, and high-level waste that was supposed to be sent to a federal depository in Nevada sits on the banks of the Connecticut River.
Siting a low-level waste storage facility in Texas "is not a straightforward process," said O'Brien. In fact, he said, "This was seen as less than a 50-50 proposition for permitting."
"You're telling us today that when the subject came up last year you believed that this stuff was going to be stored at VY?" asked MacDonald.
Until the state received a "firm indication" of the site in Texas being permitted, said O'Brien, "I would not have any confidence whatsoever the (low-level waste) would be transported out of Vermont."
But MacDonald said it was his recollection that at a previous VSNAP meeting O'Brien and Vermont Yankee nuclear engineer David McElwee assured the panel the waste would be gone by June 2008.
O'Brien challenged MacDonald to find those comments in the minutes for the meeting.
The Reformer was unable to find meeting minutes online at the Department of Public Service's Web site. At VSNAP's page on the Web site, there is no notification of last night's meeting in Brattleboro. The only notice on the page is more than a year out of date and states that the next meeting of VSNAP is scheduled for Nov. 13, 2007.
MacDonald also said O'Brien and McElwee said in 2005 that Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be opened by 2020.
"That's simply untrue," responded O'Brien. "There's no way that I've ever said on the record that I have all the confidence in the world that Yucca Mountain would open on 'X' date."
O'Brien said the federal government is responsible for taking the waste to the repository in Nevada and has not followed through on that promise.
"I would agree there has been a trail of broken promises when it comes to waste disposal," said O'Brien.
The public has been told everything is on track and has been assured that everything will turn out all right over and over again, continued MacDonald, but once the state makes a concession to the operators of Yankee, changes are made that turn out to be promise breakers.
Such was a promise during uprate hearings that nuclear waste would only be stored on site in dry casks for 20 years, said MacDonald. Now the state has learned the waste might be stored on the banks of the Connecticut River for up to 100 years, or when Yucca Mountain opens.
"We give permission and then we're told 'Oh, gee, it didn't turn out the way we thought.' What do we call it when we keep accepting guarantees that don't come through?"
"What is your point, Senator?" asked O'Brien.
"What we're being told isn't worth the paper it's written on," responded MacDonald.
O'Brien reminded MacDonald that VSNAP has no regulatory power. It only makes recommendations to the Legislature and the state's regulatory authorities.
It's the panel's obligation to review any and all information put before it, he said, evaluate it, question the conclusions reached and inform those making the decisions.
MacDonald was also upset that the Vermont Department of Health changed the way it measures fenceline radiation at the power plant without holding public hearings.
After the plant was granted approval to increase power production by 20 percent, fenceline radiation spiked, exceeding limits set by the state. After the measurement method was changed from exposure to dosage, the radiation levels were once again below state limits.
The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules recently ruled that the Department of Health violated state regulations when it changed the measurement technique and said the department should rewrite the rule, this time in public.
Even though DPS had been told the plant was in violation of fenceline radiation limits, contested MacDonald, no one at DPS saw fit to inform the Legislature of the increase or the fact a third party was being brought in to reevaluate the measurement technique.
Had the information been disbursed in a timely manner, he said, "Who knows what decisions might have been made?"
"I'm happy to put (fenceline radiation) on the next agenda, but not six months from now," said Edwards, who reminded the panel its last meeting was nine months ago.
MacDonald also asked that VSNAP not wait another six months for its next meeting and asked O'Brien to invite the Department of Health to VSNAP's next meeting to explain the measurement change.
Bill Irwin, the state's chief of radiological health said he would be glad to give a presentation at VSNAP's next meeting, whenever it is scheduled.
--Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.
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Nuclear Engineering
November 21, 2008
Nuclear material sites 'dangerously insecure'
A recent report, Securing the Bomb 2008, commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) claims that some stockpiles of potential nuclear-weapons material are “dangerously insecure.”
The report by Matthew Bunn of Harvard University said the highest risks of nuclear theft are in Russia, Pakistan, and at highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuelled research reactors around the world.
The progress and work that needs to be done on improving security for nuclear warheads and materials; consolidating and moving nuclear stockpiles to more secure locations; and implementing international and domestic policy frameworks for effective and lasting nuclear security is outlined.
Co-chairman of the NTI, Sam Nunn, said that in order to meet the nuclear threat “we must build a real nuclear security partnership with Russia and work with all nations to secure stockpiles around the world.”
According to the report, security upgrades have been completed in roughly 75% of the buildings that store nuclear material in the former Soviet Union and roughly 65% of nuclear warhead sites. Russia has however largely refused to convert its HEU-fuelled research reactors to low enriched uranium, or shut them down. China does not appear to have made any major improvements in its nuclear security and so far India and South Africa have rejected offers of nuclear security cooperation.
Bunn also suggested that a White House official, with direct access to the president, should be appointed to take full-time charge of all efforts focused on preventing nuclear terrorism.
This week, the Institute for 21st Century Energy (part of the US Chamber of Commerce) also published its Transition Plan for Securing America's Energy Future.
It said a programme to recycle US spent fuel should be established and a corporation to manage waste disposal should be appointed within a year.
The plan also recommended that the current statutory cap of 70,000t of spent fuel for Yucca Mountain should be eliminated and that a radiation health standard should be established for the repository "for a time period that can reasonably be demonstrated through scientific evidence."
In addition it suggested that DoE loan guarantees should be increased to “commensurate with the capital cost” of new build projects.
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Desert Valley Times
November 25, 2008
DOE moving ahead on Yucca licensing
Bob Challinor
Despite opposition from 75 percent of Clark County’s population and public safety preparedness policy inadequacies, the Department of Energy is seeking licensing approval for its Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project.
The DOE filed an 8,600-page license application plus a final environmental impact statement in support of repository construction authorization with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission June 3. The NRC on Sept. 8 announced its intent to formally docket the license application, opening a comprehensive safety analysis review.
Currently, the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is conducting a technical review proceeding that includes legal hearings, all which are open to the public. Additionally, the Surface Transportation Board has scheduled a Dec. 4 public hearing in Las Vegas on the DOE’s application for rail transportation of high-level nuclear waste.
The NRC will make the final decision on whether the DOE is allowed to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project. DOE is required to obtain two licenses from NRC, one to construct the repository and another to accept nuclear waste. NRC is expected to reach a final decision on authorization to construct the repository in 2012.
Clark County, designated in 1998 as an “affected unit of local government” in regard to Yucca Mountain, has been monitoring DOE’s project through its Nuclear Waste Oversight Program and is one of several potential intervening parties. The county has taken the lead role in representing the City of Mesquite and other southern Nevada local governments.
Heading the county’s Nuclear Waste Oversight Program since 2001 is Irene Navis, planning manager with the county’s comprehensive planning department. Navis updated a Citizens Coffee audience of about 30 on Yucca Mountain Friday at city hall. One of the county’s responsibilities is public involvement and outreach.
The county also studies and comments on the scientific and technical aspects plus transportation plans and documents of the project. It analyzes, monitors and reports on potential Yucca Mountain impacts, coordinating its efforts with cities and tribes.
“We still have, after 20 years, 70 to 75 percent opposition to the repository,” Navis said. “People still have concerns and are not convinced DOE is on the right track.”
One of the reasons for public suspicion is DOE’s proposal to store 135,000 metric tons of nuclear waste for thousands of years at Yucca Mountain, an amount that exceeds the current federal cap of 77,000 metric tons.
The county has targeted impact concerns in 15 other areas – geology, earthquakes, Nellis AFB, worker safety, transportation, public health and safety, land use conflicts are some of the focus areas.
“The DOE environmental impact statement in 1999 said there were no negative impacts to Clark County.” Navin said. “Our study showed impacts to the contrary. There are stigma-related impacts on property values and tourism. There are also costs to first responders that the DOE couldn’t shake in the final EIS.”
In fact, there are 22 issues the county monitoring program is scrutinizing. Because the county is an “affected unit of local government,” it receives an annual appropriation from Congress to study and comment on the DOE’s program. Clark County shares that information with cities, such as Mesquite, which are included in the county’s Nuclear Waste Oversight Program. This is important because the federal government does not recognize any Clark County cities as “affected units of local government.”
Navin said there are gaps in DOE’s program relating to impacts on key areas such as health and public safety.
“In ongoing management of public safety, they have not dealt with how to handle emergency management,” she said. “They’ve said there was no need to build a hospital in Nye County (the location of Yucca Mountain) because Clark County has the UMC hospital. Have they considered whether UMC has the capacity to deal with the potential release of nuclear waste?
“We have to talk about the long-term performance of the repository. It’s not operated just for 50 to 100 years. It potentially is going to be operated 100 to 300 years. The shipments come the first 50 years, then they stop. But the work at the site goes on. The waste has to be placed. The federal government is concerned about the first five decades. We have to be concerned with the short-term and long-term performance of the program.”
One of the short-term impacts will be the transportation of the nuclear waste to the repository.
“We have to consider: is this beneficial to the public?” Navin said. “Should it be built? There is a 319-mile stretch of rail that is not going through the county. It’s mostly in Lincoln County, Nye and Esmeralda counties. The cost for the rail went from $1 billion to $3 billion two years ago. We think the cost will climb more.
“The pubic safety policy only concentrates on first responders along the transportation route. It only considers the designated route and offers only training and technical assistance. The numbers they’re talking about for this are laughable: $200,000 for the first year for the entire state and $100,000 afterward.
“In New Mexico, where the federal government promised benefits and support, the fire stations get $1,000 per station every two years. That might be enough for one haz-mat suit and a couple of helmets. That gives you an idea of the stellar benefits. We have our doubts that we’d be treated any differently.”
Navin said county concerns about nuclear waste transportation escalate because “DOE has never built a rail line or a repository before.”
But will DOE be able to railroad Yucca Mountain through NRC?
“There are two licenses required by the NRC,” Navin said. “One is the authorization to construct the repository. Then they have to get another license to accept waste. You have to get the first to get the second. Sometimes facilities have received the first license but not the second.
“NRC is not going to give DOE a pass on anything. They’re working to put DOE through its paces. DOE has never applied for anything through a federal agency before.”
Navin also said the DOE’s Yucca Mountain program is a disjointed puzzle.
“It’s all up in the air,” she said. “Nothing is a done deal. Nothing fits together as it’s supposed to. I think that’s why approval will be difficult. It’s one of the most stove-piped, segregated, non-communicative processes I’ve ever seen.”
She said government and utilities work as partners in other nations, but they’re adversaries in the U.S. Additionally, the American public has been hit with bail-outs and an expensive war; a federally-mandated project such as Yucca Mountain – something people in Nevada don’t want – would have to be funded by the people.
“I was surprised, even with all we have to worry about now, that Yucca Mountain has always come out number five through seven in Clark County priority surveys,” Navin said.
The public can keep itself informed through several sources. Here are some:
• www.accessclarkcounty.com
• www.co.clark.nv.us/Comprehensive planning/
• YuccaMountainPodcoast.htm
• www.monitoringprogram.com
• Clark County TV Channel 4
• Nuclear Waste Division E-Newsletter
• www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
• www.ymp.gov
• www.nrc.gov
• www.epa.gov
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Mesquite Local News
November 25, 2008
Short Meeting Set For Council Today
By Morris Workman
With the Thanksgiving holiday just days away, the Mesquite City Council intends to waste no time in getting through tonight’s regularly scheduled council meeting.
The 11-item agenda (10 if you exclude item number nine which is listed as “Intentionally Left Blank”) should make for a short meeting.
The lineup includes the introduction of the proposed “OHV Ordinance” which will address when and where ATV’s and other Off-Highway Vehicles can be used within the city.
Since it is only an introduction of the ordinance, there will likely be little discussion.
The other big item on the agenda is discussion of a new communication tower to be built by the city near the Virgin Valley Water District’s Scenic water tank.
The site is actually on BLM land, and required approval of the Bureau of Land Management.
The tower, which will be used for fire, police, and public works communications, is budgeted at $150,000.
The council will also vote on creating a Special Improvement District for the Solstice development on the west end of town.
The SID will allow Solstice to charge a special assessment on any properties they develop and sell, with new property owners paying what amounts to an extra “tax” on their property each year.
The SID money is used to reimburse Solstice for infrastructure costs, including roads and sewers.
On the Consent Agenda, the council will vote on two measures regarding the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.
Both items are for contracts regarding the federal project, including $15,000 for a contract with Aztec Communications for public relations work, and another $30,000 to Urban Environmental Research for monitoring of the project’s excruciatingly slow progress through the labyrinth of federal committees, departments, and hearings.
Both measures are expected to pass without comment.
Today’s council meeting is set to begin at 5 p.m. in the council chambers located above City Hall on Mesquite Blvd.
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Longview Daily News
November 25, 2008
Trojan decommissioning complete, but fuel rods remain
By Tony Lystra
Portland General Electric says it is largely finished decommissioning the former Trojan nuclear power plant bordering the Columbia River south of Rainier. Spokesman Steve Corson said the company finished tearing down Trojan’s “containment building,” which once housed the plant’s nuclear reactor, this fall.
“There are no plans to remove anything further,” Corson said.
The demolition, which involved smashing apart super-thick concrete walls, was one of the final steps in the decades-long process of removing buildings from the landmark plant after it shut down in 1993. The plant is the first large-scale commercial nuclear facility in the U.S. to be decommissioned, the company said.
All that remains of the nuclear facility, which began operating in 1976, are radioactive fuel rods, contained in concrete casks and guarded around the clock. Those, Corson said, will remain at the site until the federal Yucca Mountain radioactive storage facility opens in Nevada.
Federal regulators have not yet signed off on the long-delayed construction of the Nevada storage facility. The last of the fuel rod assemblies is scheduled to ship to Yucca Mountain in 2030, Corson said.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear how the 634-acre Trojan site will be used, he said.
“That is an open question,” he said. “We really have not made any decisions and don’t have any specific plans in place.”
Also an open question is the future of nuclear power in the U.S. and the Northwest, a hot topic during this year’s presidential campaign.
Opening another nuclear facility in the region seems unlikely during the next two decades, Corson said. In 1980, Oregon voters made it illegal to build a nuclear plant without voter approval and without a proper disposal facility for nuclear waste.
“We’re not going to be proposing a nuclear portfolio that we wouldn’t be legally allowed to build,” Corson said.
Still, he said, looking beyond the next two decades, “We’re going to have to need every tool in the toolbox,” he said.
PGE imploded Trojan’s 499-foot-tall cooling tower in 2006. Last year, the company demolished the so-called “power block,” which had contained the plant’s control room, electricity generating turbine and fuel storage areas.
The containment building, destroyed this fall, had held Trojan’s reactor, which has been buried at the Hanford nuclear repository in Eastern Washington.
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Annapolis Capital
November 25, 2008
Guest Column: Reactor a potential health risk
By Joseph J. Mangano
Unistar Nuclear Energy is seeking federal approval to build a new nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs plant on the west bank of the Chesapeake Bay, just 45 miles from Washington, D.C., and 55 miles from Baltimore.
At 1,600 megawatts, the new reactor would be easily the largest in the United States - and, at $10 billion, perhaps the most expensive. Supporters claim it will go a long way toward meeting future energy needs - and would do so in a "clean" manner.
But, even though they don't emit greenhouse gases, nuclear reactors are anything but clean. To generate electricity, they must create more than 100 radioactive chemicals otherwise produced only by atomic bomb explosions.
This toxic mix includes iodine 131, which attacks the thyroid gland; strontium 90, which seeks out bones; and cesium 137, which enters muscle. Each causes cancer, and is especially hazardous to infants and children.
Many of these chemicals must be stored as waste, of which the new reactor would create 1,375 tons. This waste must constantly be cooled by water, for hundreds and thousands of years.
Nearly 30 years ago, the federal government proposed sending waste to a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. But this facility is bogged down in challenges, and may never open.
Nuclear plants are stuck with storing large amounts of waste, the equivalent of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs. Any loss of cooling water, from terrorist attack or mechanical failure, would result in a meltdown, releasing huge amounts into the air. The heavily populated Baltimore-Washington area could not be evacuated in time, and thousands would suffer and die from radiation poisoning and cancer.
Washington was one of the terrorist targets on Sept. 11, 2001. The 9-11 Commission subsequently concluded that nuclear plants are also terrorist targets. Thus, building a large new reactor so close to the national capital is a risk, both for U.S. security and for public health.
Some of the 100-plus chemicals cannot be contained as waste. For a reactor to operate, they must be routinely released into the air and water. They enter the food chain and also enter human bodies through breathing.
A quarter-century ago, when the existing Calvert Cliffs reactors had just begun operating, Calvert County's cancer death rate was 2.2 percent below the Maryland rate. Now the county rate is 16 percent higher.
Rates are high for whites and blacks, and are especially high for children and the elderly, who are most susceptible to radioactivity. Something has changed Calvert County from a low-cancer to a high-cancer area.
The county, a fast-growing area with about 90,000 residents, has no obvious health risks. Its population is well educated, its unemployment and poverty rates are very low, and its residents have access to medical care at the local hospital, plus world-class care in Washington and Baltimore.
Calvert's death rate for all causes is equal to the Maryland rate - except for cancer. Nearly 200 county residents die of cancer each year, and the 16 percent increase is a serious problem.
Officials should study why Calvert's cancer rate is so high, and should examine its exposure to radioactivity from Calvert Cliffs.
Adding a large nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs may carry an excessive public health risk. The more prudent course would be to develop sources of energy such as wind, solar and geothermal power. These are renewable, will last forever and will cause no harm to human health.
--The writer is the executive director of the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project.
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Chicago Public Radio
November 25, 2008
Changes May Be in Store for Commercial Nuclear Power in Illinois
Produced by Shawn Allee
Illinois was once the cradle of the commercial nuclear power industry. In fact, utilities built so many reactors the Prairie State is still number one in nuclear generation. In 1987, though, Illinois turned its back on that legacy. Concern over nuclear waste and high costs led to a ban on any new nuclear plants. Recently, one legislator suggested Illinois repeal that moratorium and consider a nuclear renaissance. As part of our series, Chicago Matters: Growing Forward, Shawn Allee of the Environment Report has the story.
For a relative newcomer to Illinois politics, representative JoAnn Osmond managed to shake up something that had been dormant for some time – the state’s nuclear policy. It all started with a problem in her northeastern Illinois district.
OSMOND: I represent Zion. Zion has a nuclear plant that has been closed for several years.
Last spring, the plant owner, Exelon, announced plans to tear down the Zion nuclear station. That got Osmond thinking.
OSMOND: After a public hearing we went out to dinner and we were sitting and talking to people from Exelon and I asked a question: 'Why are you not taking some of the parts away from Zion and putting them in other nuclear locations?' They said, 'There’s a moratorium, we’re not building any more nuclear plants in the state of Illinois.'
Osmond says she was stunned. As a politician, she hears plenty of gripes about energy prices. So, Osmond thought, why leave any energy source off the table – even nuclear energy.
OSMOND: I asked staff in Springfield to prepare a bill that would remove the moratorium. Of course they thought I was a little strange because nobody’s asked to remove a moratorium in quite some time.
Twenty one years to be precise – that’s how long the moratorium’s been around. Osmond got her bill together so fast, she blind-sided environmental groups.
DARIN: I got a call that this bill to potentially restart the nuclear power industry in Illinois was being heard in ten minutes in committee and I thought, wow, what a blast from the past.
That’s Jack Darin, head of the Illinois Sierra Club. By chance, the very day Osmond introduced her bill in committee, environmental groups happened to be lobbying in Springfield. So, she got a little blind-sided herself
OSMOND: It was standing room only and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is really going down fast.' This many people showing up is never in favor of a bill, it’s usually to kill a bill.
Both sides made their case. Darin says environmentalists gave a litany of reasons to keep the moratorium.
DARIN: Cost, safety issues, the very big problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. We had our hands full enough trying to figure out how to deal with power plants we already have without adding to the problem of building more.
Osmond’s case was more personal.
OSMOND: I don’t want my granddaughters to have to buy their electricity from another state I want to be able in 2020, 2030 to be able to plug in our electric cars.
So, who won?
DARIN: It was quite a shock.
OSMOND: It was just unbelievable – it came out of committee, eleven to two.
DARIN: Apparently, we’re looking at re-opening that can of worms.
Osmond won, but her victory was not total. This summer, the political leadership put the brakes on her move to repeal the ban. Instead of moving her bill forward, they punted to a statewide nuclear task force which is now studying the proposal. Still, after two decades, Illinois’ nuclear moratorium is now open for debate. Veterans of nuclear politics are surprised Osmond got even this far.
KRAFT: It makes absolutely no logical, rational sense in any mode of analysis.
I find Dave Kraft at a coffee shop, where he's just wrapped up an event. Kraft is with the Nuclear Energy Information Service, a clearing-house for all things anti-nuclear.
KRAFT: We have a power glut right now, so there’s no need for the power. And we’re still further down the road, and still have no solution in sight for radioactive waste that's been produced since 1987.
Kraft says at its core, this is what the moratorium’s about: the radioactive spent fuel waste. It’s the most dangerous material left over from making nuclear power.
KRAFT: The moratorium simply said, no more new construction of nuclear reactors until the federal government has a demonstrated means of dealing with the waste permanently.
In the 1980s, the federal government said it would take spent fuel and store it in a repository, maybe in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But that never happened, so spent fuel is just building up in Illinois. That’s not just a target for critics of nuclear power – it’s a real problem for the industry.
ambi: door swings shut
Bryan Hanson manages the Braidwood nuclear station, 50 miles southwest of Chicago. He leads me to their storage pool. It’s square. About half the size of a basketball court. And it has the bluest water I’ve ever seen.
HANSON: This is where we store our spent fuel. It’s about thirty feet of water between us and the top of the fuel bundles down there. So you're looking 30 feet in the water and then another 12 feet down below.
ALLEE: If you look into it, it’s almost like honeycomb.
HANSON: Honeycomb, looks like an egg crate or honeycomb. Within those cells are fuel bundles that have been used in the reactor, generated energy, and now they’re waiting for eventual disposal.
When Braidwood was built the company planned for short-term storage, like this pool.
ALLEE: How long can this stuff stay here, if it has to?
HANSON: Well, it could stay indefinitely, but eventually we would run out of room in our pool, and we’d have to move stuff to dry-cask storage as well.
Concrete casks could hold spent fuel on-site for decades. For critics, that’s a problem: Illinois already stores more spent fuel than any other state, and the pile is growing even without new plants. They see this as a growing environmental and security risk, which means the moratorium should stay in place. But Representative JoAnn Osmond sees potential in those piles.
OSMOND: There’s gotta be somebody out there that’s going to be brilliant enough to figure out how to use the spent fuel.
Actually, some scientists say we can reprocess and reuse nuclear fuel, but the federal government bans it for now. But when it comes to the future of nuclear power in Illinois, economics might trump science. Any new plant in Illinois would cost billions and in this economy, capital is hard to come by. No company has signaled interest in building in the state. Still, Representative Osmond says we have to plan for tomorrow’s economy, not today’s.
OSMOND: I started the thought process with people. They’re now thinking again about energy, they’re thinking about nuclear. If my little, naïve 62-year old grandma thought was to just think about the future, then I’ve got them thinking right now.
In fact, Osmond might have her opponents thinking again very soon. She plans to reintroduce her moratorium repeal next year.
For Chicago Public Radio, I’m Shawn Allee with the Environment Report.
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Patriot-News
November 25, 2008
SAFE POWER
Policies to build nuclear plants need to be reasonable, rationale
It's not just banks, insurance compa nies and automakers looking to Un cle Sam to protect them from the ravages of the marketplace. The nation's electric utilities have their hands out, too.
It's a virtual certainty that no new nuclear plant will be built in this country unless the federal government provides loan guarantees. The companies have said as much.
That includes PPL Corp., which is considering building a third reactor at its nuclear power station near Berwick. The proposed Bell Bend plant, equipped with a French-designed re actor capable of generating 1,600 megawatts of electricity, would be larger than any existing reactor in the United States, and more than twice the size of Three Mile Island Unit 1.
The Energy Poli cy Act of 2005 au thorized loan guar antees for energy projects that do not produce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming and that involve new technologies. The nuclear industry has submitted $122 billion in requests to the Department of Energy, which has approved only $18.5 billion of them, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In the nuclear-plant building boom of the 1970s it was the rare project that did not exceed original estimates, often by a magnitude of two, three or more times. What nuclear plants ultimately will cost under simplified licensing rules, but unpredictable costs for steel, cement and money, is impossible to say. A proposed new nuclear plant in South Texas has been estimated at between $4 billion and $5 billion, but a two-reactor plant proposed in Florida has a $17 million price tag.
Of course, nuclear isn't the only energy technology counting on the federal government to provide a financial helping hand. Solar, wind, biofuels and even "clean-coal" technology are heavily funded by taxpayers in various ways.
But nuclear also has the added burden of dealing with long-active, highly lethal radioactive nuclear waste. Continuing to store this material at or near the 104 operating nuclear reactors is a disaster waiting to happen.
The holdup is the impossible standards established by the government to ensure that the waste stored at the government's proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, operates flawlessly for 10,000 years, twice the length of recorded history.
Safe nuclear power should be part of the mix in the urgent need to move away from the burning of fossil fuels. But the policies that get us there need to be reasonable and rationale. And the cost of the facilities must stay within the bounds of reality and be competitive with other energy solutions.
Otherwise, once again, taxpayers will be taken to the cleaners with little to show for it.
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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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