Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, February 6, 2009
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KXNT
February 06, 2009
Bill Would Void Yucca Mountain Agency
The state agency that battles the Yucca Mountain project would be axed under a bill introduced in the state Legislature by Senator Barbara Cegavske of Las Vegas. The program would come under the authority of the governor. Cegavske's bill came about after controversy erupted over former Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux gave himself and his staff unauthorized pay boosts. Loux resigned from the post and a complaint has been filed against him with the state Ethics Commission. Cegavske's bill was referred to the Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation Committee.
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New Republic
February 06, 2009
Is The End Near For Yucca Mountain?
Rob Inglis
One worst-case scenario some people fear with the planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain is “autocatalytic criticality,” the possibility that some of the waste stored in the mountain might get jostled about and come into close enough contact with other waste to set off a spontaneous nuclear explosion. But, for the time being, an even more pressing question is whether the project will implode before the first shipment of nuclear waste ever arrives, as Judith Lews reports at High Country News. After all, Barack Obama came out against storing waste at Yucca Mountain while campaigning in Nevada last year. Harry Reid, meanwhile, has taken it upon himself to slash Yucca’s construction budget whenever possible, proudly announcing last week that he'd slashed its fiscal year 2009 appropriation by more than $100 million. That’s enough to make the current level of funding—$288 million for the year—the lowest in the project’s two-decade history. And Reid promises that more cuts will be coming next year.
In a strange way, it would only be fitting if political considerations spelled the end of the Yucca Mountain repository, seeing as how politics played such a central role in the original selection of the site. Back in the 1980s, when the Energy Department was first studying the problem, officials came up with nine potential sites for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, a list that was eventually narrowed down to three: Yucca Mountain, the Hanford site in Washington, and some underground salt deposits in West Texas. Then, with a 1987 law that quickly became known as the “Screw Nevada Act,” Congress ordered the Department of Energy to stop studying the other two sites and to focus solely on Yucca Mountain. (This transpired, in part, because Nevada's congressional delegation wasn't terribly powerful at the time.) Opposition to Yucca has been a cornerstone of Nevada politics ever since.
Yucca Mountain, as it turns out, is hardly the perfect site for storing nuclear waste. It gets very little rain, which is an advantage, but it’s also in a geologically active region prone to earthquakes and, possibly, volcanic activity. And, despite the area's dryness, conditions inside the mountain promote the oxidation—i.e. rusting—of metal containment vessels. But if not Yucca Mountain, where? The current ad hoc system of storing spent fuel at nuclear power plants—where the waste sits close to population centers and is relatively unsecured—is surely the worst of all possibilities. If Obama took a hard look at not just the problems with storing waste in Yucca Mountain, but also the problems with the alternatives, he might decide that his campaign position on Yucca is one promise worth going back on.
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Las Vegas SUN
February 05, 2009
Bill introduced to abolish nuclear projects agency
By Cy Ryan
CARSON CITY – State Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, has introduced a bill that could abolish the state agency charged with battling the Yucca Mountain project.
Senate Bill 117, prompted by the controversy over former Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux’s giving himself and staff unauthorized raises, would place the program under the authority of the governor.
“It’s up to the interpretation” of the proposal whether it would do away with the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, Cegavske said. That was not her initial intention, she said, but “some say it does because it gives everything over to the governor.”
In his proposed budget, Gov. Jim Gibbons called for reducing the office from seven to two employees.
Gibbons did not ask Cegavske to introduce her bill, she said. Cegavske and former Sen. Bob Beers of Las Vegas came up with the idea, she said. The bill states that any employee of Nuclear Projects who loses his or her job would receive preference in getting another state job.
“I wasn’t happy with how it transpired,” said Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, referring to the Loux incident. “He did something that is totally wrong.”
Loux raised his own salary and that of his staff above the amounts approved by the Legislature. He resigned after the pay raises were discovered. A complaint has been filed against him with the state Ethics Commission.
The bill was referred to the Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation Committee.
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Louisville Courier-Journal
February 05, 2009
KENTUCKY GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Bill would end nuclear power moratorium
Measure clears Senate committee
By Joseph Gerth
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A Senate committee passed a bill yesterday that could open the door to construction of nuclear power plants in Kentucky.
Senate Bill 13 would rescind a 1984 state law that placed a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants until the federal government determines how to safely dispose of high-level nuclear waste.
Sen. Bob Leeper, a Paducah independent, told the committee that his legislation would allow the state to begin talking about nuclear power as an option. But, he said, the Public Service Commission could be expected to block construction of such a plant until a long-term storage option is found.
SB 13 passed the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee 7-1.
Hank List, deputy secretary of the Energy and Environment Cabinet, said Gov. Steve Beshear's administration favors the legislation because the state should consider nuclear power as a way to deal with future energy demands.
The bill, he said, would "create a spirit of an open-minded discussion."
As the law now stands, List said, it prevents the Public Service Commission from even considering a nuclear plant until the federal government determines how to deal with nuclear waste. Leeper's bill would allow the state to begin considering nuclear power and thus be in a position to move forward once a long-term storage solution is found, List said.
Leeper and Tom FitzGerald, executive director of the Kentucky Resources Council, an environmental advocacy group, said it would take at least 10 years for a nuclear power plant to be approved and built.
Nonetheless, FitzGerald argued that the bill be deferred until the federal government resolves the problem of storing nuclear waste.
A federal repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to open 10 years ago but it still hasn't accepted any waste because of court challenges and other delays.
Jim Gooch, the Providence Democrat who is chairman of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, said he doesn't know if he will call the bill for a vote if it passes the full Senate.
"I think nuclear energy is going to have to be part of the nation's energy plan, but I'm just not certain it's going to be needed in Kentucky," he said. "But I'm open to taking a look at it."
--Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702.
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Columbia City Paper
February 05, 2009
Will S.C. be the Center of the Nuclear Industry's Revival?
by Michael Berg
In the gymnasium of an elementary school in Blair , South Carolina , staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gathered to listen to public comment on the potential environmental impact of two new nuclear reactors proposed for construction V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in nearby Jenkinsville.
"You have insight and knowledge that we don't," NRC Project Manager William Burton told the crowd of around 100 people. "We want you to participate in this decision. An educated consumer is our best customer."
After a short presentation by NRC staff, Jenkinsville Mayor Gregory Ginyard was not impressed. "I live a mile and a half from the plant," he stated. "I'm the mayor. They want me to represent them. And I don't know what you want. Where I live we don't have environmentalists. You guys need to educate us. The people of Jenkinsville, we are on the front lines."
Ginyard, 52, grew up in Jenkinsville and has lived in this small, predominately African-American town all of his life, half of which he has spent in the shadow of V.C. Summer's nuclear reactor, which was built in the late 1970s and came on line in 1982. At that time, South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) confiscated 60 acres from his father's property for the plant, compensating the family $1,000 per an acre. Now as the first mayor of the newly incorporated town of Jenkinsville , he is caught in the middle of a battle between two utility companies and South Carolina 's small but energetic community of anti-nuclear activists, in a battle of national importance. If the plans of the privately operated SCE&G and unregulated state utility Santee-Cooper go forward, V.C. Summer Reactors 2 and 3 will likely be the first new commercial reactors in the United States to begin construction in almost 30 years.
Ginyard is not the only Jenkinsville politician concerned about the proposed expansion. Kamau Marcharia is a community activist on the Fairfield County Council. He is wary about how two new reactors will affect his community. "It's a ten billion dollar contract," explains Marcharia. "Out of 10 billion dollars I want to know how many minority contracts they're going to give. I want to know how people are going to help this community with its infrastructure. Right now we have no health center and no modern fire station. I want to know how they're going to help us with this. I want to know how they are going to improve the roads when four to six thousand people work here on construction for seven years. I want to know how they are going to make this community safer."
These are reasonable concerns for this poor, aging community. The town's average annual household income is only $24,000 and the average resident of Jenkinsville is almost forty years old. The first reactor at V.C. Summer has failed to produce prosperity for the town. "Thirty years ago when the plant came, Jenkinsville was pretty rural and people were pretty much uninformed. It was just like today, but we had more in this community back then. There were three stores and other things that were closed down and boarded up. Jenkinsville is worse off today than when the plant moved in."
Marcharia doesn't blame the plant for the town's decline: most small rural towns in South Carolina were better off thirty years ago. Still, he thinks that SCE&G should do more to support the community in which their plant is based. 90% of the jobs at the nuclear power plant go to people outside of Fairfield County . He agrees with Mayor Guinyard that SCE&G has made little effort to inform the community about issues related to the plant, a sentiment echoed by several residents speaking before the NRC. "I worry about evacuations," says Marcharia. "The town of Dawkins has one way in and one way out – what's the evacuation plan in case of an accident? There are signs here from 15, 20 years ago about evacuation that don't even show you in what direction you should go."
Many Jenkinsville residents are anxious about cancer. Worldwide, there is intense debate over the relationship between nuclear power and cancer rates. Although it is impossible to pin any one cancer case to a nuclear reactor, there is growing evidence that certain cancers such as breast cancer, leukemia and thyroid cancer increase among people who have lived for years near a reactor. Many in Jenkinsville, including Marcharia, feel that cancer rates have increased in the area.
Other residents worry about the plant's effect on animals and vegetation. Local farmer Barbara Mann, who lives two miles from the plant, tells of strange occurrences happening on her property. "I've been finding many dead birds," Mann says. "Old trees will start dying for no reason. Our rye fields that we have for horses aren't growing. We planted fifteen collards and only got one pot, when usually we can get several. We've spotted deer with growths hanging from the side of its face. In our pond our bass won't grow. We came here twenty years ago and back then SCE&G used to come to check our vegetables, but they haven't been for a year or two. If they build two more of those reactors, it's going to cause us to have to leave."
Marcharia doubts that there is enough money or organization to stop the construction of the two plants, but opponents are not letting the reactors go through without a fight. The South Carolina Sierra Club has filed with the NRC to request that they deny approval of the plant on grounds of negative environmental impact. In addition, Friends of the Earth and other citizen interveners spent half of December in a hearing before South Carolina 's Public Service Commission (PSC) arguing against SCE&G's application for permission to build and for the right to raise their rates.
SCE&G wants to raise rates 37% above ordinary increases over the next ten years in order to obtain capital to pay for the project. SCE&G and Santee-Cooper have already contracted with the Westinghouse and Shaw corporations to build the two AP1000 reactors at an estimated cost of $9.8 billion.
Friends of the Earth argues that it isn't right to shift the risks of a private company from their shareholders to the South Carolina ratepayer. Although they are relatively cheap to operate, nuclear plants are costly to build. They are also a risky venture, as Sierra Club member Susan Corbett pointed out at the NRC hearing, when she presented a document five pages long listing nuclear reactor sites in America where construction began but was never completed. If construction begins and is stopped before completion, the South Carolina utility ratepayers will lose money from increased rates and will gain nothing.
Assuming the reactors are completed, the final price tag remains a matter of dispute. Friends of the Earth claims that the $9.8 billion estimate greatly underestimates construction costs. It cites a Department of Energy figure from October 2, 2008 that estimates the costs of two new nuclear reactors to be $18 billion. Whatever the true cost, SCE&G is hoping to get access to federal government loan guarantees authorized to support the nuclear industry's attempted revival. $18.5 billion was authorized in 2007 and a possible $50 billion more will come out of the pending economic stimulus package. The company testified during the PSC hearing that the Department of Energy rated it number two on the list of utilities qualifying for the underwriting against default. Without federal loan guarantees, it may be difficult for SCE&G to obtain financing for its project on reasonable terms
Another point of contention is whether energy conservation, increased energy efficiencies, wind power and solar power are minor issues or the wave of the future. SCE&G and Santee-Cooper project around 260,000 new customers in the next ten years, which necessitates more power plants. They claim that they have exhaustively looked into all the alternatives for meeting South Carolina 's future energy needs, and have determined that this project is the safest, most cost effective, least environmentally damaging way to meet both residential and industrial needs.
Opponents see SCE&G's search for alternatives as anything but exhaustive. In testimony before the PSC, the company admitted that it had never completed a thorough analysis of possible gains from increased energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
For Larry Newton, a certified "Green Realtor", SCE&G's plan to build multiple generators in America 's 3rd most energy wasteful state is a mater of misplaced priorities. " South Carolina is one of the few states looking at energy production," says Newton . "Most states are looking at how they can reduce use, so you can do more for less."
Newton sees increasing efficiency and conserving more energy, a process known as Demand Side Management (DSM), as a cheaper, faster and safer alternative to building new plants. Because so much of South Carolina 's energy use goes into heating and cooling homes, using modern techniques to insulate homes could yield impressive results quickly. "SCE&G's investment in this project, applied to 600,000 customers, amounts to $11,000 per a customer. For a small portion of this investment, great gains could be made in weatherizing homes," says Newton .
SCE&G spokesman Robert Yanity claims that the company does not oppose Demand Side Management or renewable energy. The SCE&G recently hired a DSM program manager and has programs to promote conservation as well as a program called Palmetto Clean Energy where people can donate money to the development of alternative fuel sources. He states that there needs to be a mix of approaches, which includes DSM as well as new nuclear reactors.
For Tom Clement, Friends of the Earth's Southeast Region Nuclear Coordinator, this argument fails to account for the reality of scarce resources. "Investing billions into nuclear power will essentially eliminate any pursuit of efficiency, conservation and renewable energy by the company in South Carolina ," says Clement. "Proponents talk about a mix, but money isn't unlimited. In South Carolina right now it is cheaper and safer to save energy than to produce energy. Unfortunately SCE&G is in the business of generating and selling power, not saving power."
Newton agrees, adding that SCE&G's conservation and efficiency programs are good community service projects but not a serious investment in large scale change. He does not blame the company for their present strategy, citing a lack of economic incentives for it to change course. "It takes three to tango in this case," says Newton . "It takes the utility, your Public Service Commission and your state government to create effective regulatory changes that would make it more desirable for a utility company to become not only a source of power but also a distributor of power which can make a profit from increasing energy efficiency at the residential and commercial level."
Another issue brought up by opponents is the large amount of water that the nuclear reactors will consume. This is the primary concern of Joseph Wojciki, a retired math professor who intervened in the PSC case. Wojciki, who refers to himself as "Joe the Intervener", believes if there are to be new nuclear reactors, they should be built near the ocean where they will have access to abundant water. SCE&G defends the location of its project by pointing out that the V.C. Summer Nuclear station is located on the Monticello Reservoir, which is 17 square miles with an average depth of almost 60 feet. The Reservoir is connected to the Broad River through the Parr Reservoir. In 26 years, the present reactor at V.C. Summer has never faced a water shortage.
Still, even this large body of water might not be sufficient if South Carolina 's drought continues and Duke Power goes through with its proposal to build one new coal-fired and two new nuclear plants upriver on the Broad River , in addition to three reactors in Jenkinsville. According to Clement, the Broad River is the river most threatened nationwide by new coal and nuclear power plants. In total, the five plants would evaporate around 80 million gallons a day. A depletion of the Broad River would affect the water supply for Columbia , South Carolina 's capital located 25 miles from Jenkinsville.
Another major problem is the high level nuclear waste the plant will produce. SCE&G and Santee Cooper officials express confidence that Yucca Mountain in Nevada will soon open as America 's high level nuclear waste depository, but both political and technical issues continue to plague the proposed project. Presently there is nowhere to take the waste and it must be safely stored and guarded with on site. If released from storage, high level waste poses severe health risks to the public, and if a terrorist got hold of the waste he could create a dirty bomb. A sophisticated terrorist could further process the material to create a nuclear weapon. While VC Summer has safely contained its high level waste for 26 years, the prospect of storing and protecting three times as much waste for the next 300,000 years is a heavy burden for the facility to take on.
V.C. Summer's safety record has generally been good, but not perfect. There have been several leaks throughout its history, the most serious occurring in 2000. In that year the reactor suffered from a leaking hot leg pipe, which cools the reactor. According the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Luck, not skill, seemed to prevent the hot leg piping from cracking completely."
Even with the support of increased utility rates and federal loan guarantees, SCE&G may run into a difficult issue facing nuclear plants nationwide: a lack of trained staff. Forty percent of those presently working in nuclear power plants are eligible to retire in the next five years, and only 8% are under the age of 32. Santee Cooper spokesperson Mollie Gore says the utility companies are cognizant of this shortage, and that is why they are working with technical colleges in both Charleston and Columbia to offer degrees in order to make sure that there are enough South Carolinians trained to work at these plants by 2016. It remains to be seen how successful these programs will be and how many people will enroll.
Will the reactors be built? It's a definite possibility. South Carolina is the perfect state for the nuclear industry to begin its hoped for revival. The nuclear power industry is very powerful in South Carolina . South Carolina already generates around half of its energy needs with nuclear reactors. All six of South Carolina 's House members and both Senators support the construction of more nuclear reactors in the state. So far, not a single elected official in the South Carolina state government has spoken out against reactor constructions, nor is there widespread opposition to nuclear power among South Carolinians . The PSC most likely will approve the project and allow SCE&G to go forward with a rate increase, and the NRC's environmental review will likely have little effect on the process.
For SCE&G, a more serious regulatory hurdle is the NRC's design approval for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, the type that SCE&G wants to build at V.C. Summer. This type of plant has never been built before, and after the 17th iteration of design modification it still has yet to be approved.
An even more daunting task for SCE&G is to obtain the funds it needs to begin this massive project in the midst of an economic meltdown. South Carolina unemployment now approaches 10% and is rising every day. It might not be the best time to raise utility rates, an action which could drive users to seek other methods to obtain electricity or get off the grid altogether, thus driving up rates for remaining customers. Higher utility rates will likely slow economic growth and lead to public resentment. Even with the United States government subsidizing uranium enrichment, liability insurance and financing, the project may be too costly. So far, no financial backers have stepped forward. Whether or not Jenkinsville is the site of a new nuclear power revival in America or the last gasp of a dying industry remains to be seen.
--This opinion piece was submitted by Michael Berg who heads up the Nuclear Issues Workgroup at Carolina Peace Resource Center
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Kankakee Daily Journal
February 05, 2009
Radioactive fuel storage work to begin in spring
By Robert Themer
rthemer@daily-journal.com
Construction will begin this spring for the additional storage of used radioactive fuel from the Braidwood Station nuclear power plant.
The first stage will be to construct a large concrete pad where spent nuclear fuel can be stored outdoors inside huge steel-lined concrete "dry casks" beginning in 2011, said Paul Dempsey, Exelon Corp.'s communications manager. A person could stand next to the casks without danger of radiation from the contents, he said.
At the peak of construction, a few dozen contractors will be at work on the Braidwood site, with employees hired from local union halls, he said. The project also will create a handful of new Exelon jobs -- a project manager and some material handlers.
A custom-made mechanical "crawler" also will be built on site, he said. "The casks are very large and this thing moves about half a mile an hour to safely carry the casks out to the pads," he said.
The initial construction will cost more than $20 million, he said. The federal government will repay Exelon for the cost.
Future storage of the spent fuel in the dry casks is necessary because the federal government hasn't created the national nuclear fuel repository planned at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Dempsey said.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has vowed to block the Yucca Mountain project, indicating that $100 million will be cut from its budget through the end of this fiscal year on June 30 and that "little or nothing at all" will be budgeted for it in the new 2010 fiscal year, according to published reports.
Meanwhile, highly radioactive used nuclear power plant fuel keeps piling up at a rate of 20 metric tons per year per reactor, according to the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute. Dempsey says 58,000 metric tons have accumulated at power plants around the country since commercial nuclear power began in 1960 at ComEd's Dresden plant.
Spent fuel has been stored in steel-lined concrete pools of water inside the plants since the nuclear plants started operating -- 1988 in the case of Braidwood Unit 1. Those pool storage areas are filling up.
Dry cask storage is either in use or under construction at 55 of the nation's 104 commercial nuclear power plants, Dempsey said.
Exelon has dry cask storage at Dresden, on the Illinois River in Grundy County, and at Quad Cities Station, in Savanna on the Mississippi River.
The LaSalle County power plant, west of Mazon, and Byron, south of Rockford, "are on the same schedule with us to get this done," Dempsey said
Up to about six casks per year will be used, each one containing 32 fuel assemblies, he said. Each reactor at Braidwood is fueled by 193 fuel assemblies.
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Pahrump Valley Times
February 04, 2009
Nye perching on PETT pot of $11m
By Mark Waite
PVT
While Nye County officials continue to negotiate a renewal of the agreement for the payment equal to taxes for another five years from the U.S. Department of Energy, they're sitting on a pot of almost $11.4 million in carryover funds from previous years.
Nye County receives the funds as the host county of Yucca Mountain, a requirement of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987.
The carryover amount in the capital projects fund is about equal to the annual appropriation from the DOE of $11.5 million.
The balance in the capital projects fund in the PETT budget includes $1.822 million for reconstruction of the Calvada Eye buildings. The county now plans to rebid the demolition of those buildings and construct new ones.
Commissioners last December voted to go out for bids on a 50-by-95-foot metal addition to the Pahrump Valley Museum. The county has $358,434 left for that project out of a $377,011 allocation granted in August 2005, about the oldest PETT project still unfinished.
There's $40,500 remaining out of $75,000 for planned improvements to the roof and kitchen at the Bob Ruud Community Center requested by Pahrump.
Commissioners allocated $925,800 toward the widening of Manse Road and another $824,000 for Homestead Road outlined in the capital improvements plan back in July 2007. Those widening projects will probably wait until after the permanent traffic signal is erected at Highway 160 and Homestead Road and right-of-way can be acquired, acting Public Works Director Dave Fanning said.
Planning funds for a water and sewer General Improvement District are still in the budget. The county allocated $400,000 for a water resource General Improvement District that's still unspent as well as $350,000 for a sanitary sewer GID.
Assistant County Manager Pam Webster said with the creation of a Nye County water district Tuesday, it's unlikely the GID for water and sewer service would be set up. A request by Utilitlies Inc. for a letter of support from the town of Pahrump last week for economic stimulus package money to set up a valleywide water and sewer service was angrily shouted down by some residents.
Nye County already spent $292,982 on studies for a GID for drainage and flood control by Bureau Veritas consultants.
The county has $1.65 million remaining out of $1.75 million allocated for remodeling of the Nye County Government Complex at 1520 E. Basin Ave., for the courthouse addition. B&H Construction is expected to break ground on that $4.7 million project early next month, Nye County Facilities Manager Bob Jones said.
Other projects in the budget and the amount remaining include:
* $244,139 for improvements to Simkins Park;
* $123,000 for a renewable energy study, a 20 percent county match for a $615,000 DOE grant;
* $125,000 for a tanker truck for the Pahrump Valley Fire and Rescue Service;
* $95,700 for the completion of a recreation hall in Gabbs.
Other funds include $50,000 for renovation of the Amargosa Valley Senior Center and $50,000 to construct a sewage pond in Gabbs.
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Braidwood Journal
February 04, 2009
Exelon turns to new spent fuel storage solution
Marney Simon
Staff writer
Exelon's Braidwood Station is waiting patiently for the United States Deptartment of Energy (DOE) to open a permanent storage facility for spent fuel. But in the meantime, the nuclear power plant has now reached a point where an alternative storage solution has to be found.
Braidwood Station site communications manager Paul Dempsey and Public Affairs Manager Stephen Tribuzzi gave a presentation at the Jan. 27 regular meeting of the Braidwood City Council.
"If we did learn anything from the tritium issue, it's that over-communication is probably better than moderate to little communication," Dempsey said.
According to Dempsey, the need for additional on-site storage is temporary. While the plant already stores spent fuel on-site in a pool, additional space will be needed soon. But some political red-tape has stalled the construction of a storage facility for spent fuel, which by law should have been completed by the DOE more than a decade ago. That means nuclear power plants nationwide have now had to turn to a process called "dry cask storage."
"All the spent fuel at our nuclear plant is stored on site in a concrete steel-lined fuel pool," Dempsey explained. "This fuel pool is now becoming full, in a few years it will become very limited. So we're going to this dry cask storage like many other plants.
"The original process was going to be from the reactor to the fuel pool to a depository of some kind that the U.S. Dept. of Energy is going to construct," Dempsey continued. "It's a political issue right now, so we're going to have to go to a different process temporarily in the meantime. So this would be dry cask storage."
Dry cask storage may be new to Braidwood, but not to the nuclear industry. Dempsey said that more than half of the nuclear reactors in the country either have the process or have started the process. Exelon operates five other plants that are already using the dry cask storage system.
"It's not really new to Illinois, it's not new to the industry, it's not new to Exelon," Tribuzzi said. "In fact, it's something we've been doing at Dresden for two to three years."
Placing the spent fuel into the dry cask containers is a lengthy and regulated process. The spent fuel is placed inside multiple sturdy cylindrical containers for storing liquids, known as "casks." The casks work similar to a nesting doll, where a smaller cylinder sits inside a larger one, and so on.
The first cask is dropped into the fuel pool, collects the spent fuel, and is sealed while still under water. That cask is then transferred inside another cask and removed from the pool. The water is then purged from inside the cask (creating a "dry" cask), and the containers are now placed into a third transfer cask. All three will then be sealed inside a huge cask made of 26 inches of concrete. That massive structure will be moved with the help of a special designed slow-moving crawler. The crawler, which moves at about one mile per hour, relocates the spent fuel to a concrete pad storage facility located on plant property.
Dry cask storage is approved and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has an office on site at Braidwood Station. According to the NRC, dry cask storage has been proven to be a safe, secure and reliable way to store spent nuclear fuel.
Dempsey said that while the spent fuel is adding up, the public shouldn't be concerned that there is an overabundance of the material on site.
"We've been operating since 1988, and all the fuel we have right now could fit inside a four car garage about four feet tall," Dempsey said. "So we're not talking about that much material."
Dempsey said construction will start on the physical pad this spring, and begin site improvements in 2010. Exelon plans to move the first casks out to the pad in 2011.
"As many as six of these huge casks could be trucked to the pad every year," Dempsey noted. "So that's going to be our interim solution until the Deptartment of Energy, as they're required to do, finds the depository for all the spent fuel."
Dempsey said the storage areas will be well within the property's limits, and shouldn't be visible from Route 53 outside the plant.
Braidwood Mayor Sue Grygiel said she was happy with Exelon's outreach efforts to keep people in Braidwood informed about what's happening at the plant.
"I feel the lines of communication are more open now than before," Grygiel said.
In addition to Braidwood, Exelon made the same presentation to the village boards in Godley and Braceville.
Exelon's next community information night is March 5 at Cinder Ridge Golf Course. In addition to tritium remediation, information on the dry cask storage will also be available.
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Medill Reports
February 04, 2009
Nuclear leader Exelon pushes for more plants
by Hannah Kokjohn
While Barack Obama stumped across the country last fall proposing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, John Rowe, CEO of Chicago’s Exelon Corp., was making some energy efficiency pledges of his own.
“The demand for energy must be met,” Rowe stated Dec. 4 at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, “and it must be met with the least impact upon our climate and the least burden on the U.S. economy.”
In this speech and others made since recently introducing Exelon 2020, which is the company’s plan to reduce, offset or displace 15 million metric tons of greenhouse emissions by 2020, Rowe outlined five elements he believes to be imperative to U.S. energy policy.
Financial support for nuclear power is one of those imperatives. With 17 nuclear reactors, Exelon has the largest nuclear fleet in the U.S. and is aggressively looking for avenues of expansion.
For short-term growth, Exelon is pursuing a merger with New Jersey’s NRG Energy Inc., a diverse power company with a nuclear plant in South Texas. For long-term expansion, Exelon on Sept. 3 applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build a new two-unit nuclear plant in Victoria, Texas.
The new nuclear plant, if approved, would not be completed until 2015 at the earliest, according to Bill Harris, Exelon Nuclear’s community outreach manager in Texas, who is paving the way for the proposed plant.
Acquiring NRG Energy would mean faster opportunities for growth. According to the NRC, NRG Energy filed an application with the commission in September to expand its nuclear plant at the South Texas Project nuclear power station site. The company plans to build two new nuclear units by 2015.
“We are constantly looking for ways to grow. But we are doing it in a way that’s hard headed and indeed, cold blooded,” Rowe said.
In October, NRG Energy turned down Exelon’s bid - an all-stock transaction valued at $6.2 billion - as too low, and refused to negotiate.
In response, Exelon turned to NRG Energy’s shareholders. As of Jan. 7, NRG Energy shareholders had tendered 45.6 percent of the company’s shares to Exelon. On Jan. 30 Exelon announced it had named four nominees to run for the board seats up for election at NRG Energy's upcoming annual meeting.
Angie Storozynski, analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., said the merger would be the easiest means of expansion for Exelon.
“Both of the companies can exist on their own, but if you combine them, you get economies of scale,” Storozynski said. “If there are other existing sites that can be expanded like the NRG power plant, costs would be significantly lower.”
According to Storozynski, acquiring NRG Energy with its nuclear plant in Texas would give Exelon a nuclear presence in the southern state, which she said might increase its chances of building the proposed plant in Victoria, Texas.
According to the Web site Exelon created for the proposed site in Victoria, that plant would supply electricity to 1.9 million Texas homes a year and boost total local spending by $2 billion each year.
William Burns, a spokesman for the NRC, said Exelon’s application would not be approved until at least 2011, possibly later. Because the NRC did not receive any applications from 1979 to 2007, no new nuclear plants have been approved in three decades. The NRC is currently reviewing applications for 26 new reactors.
In an interview published in the September/October issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Rowe said a new plant could cost $12 billion, and he would not be willing to go forth without financial assistance from the government.
“We see nuclear as very expensive for a new plant,” Rowe told the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “but less expensive and far more reliable than wind; much less expensive than solar is today; and probably much less expensive than coal with carbon sequestration.”
Production costs, which include operating, maintenance and fuel costs, are cheaper for nuclear than for coal, petroleum or gas. According to Global Energy Decisions Inc., a consulting and data firm, in 2007 a kilowatt-hour of electricity from a nuclear plant cost $1.76 cents, compared to $2.47 cents from a coal plant, $6.78 cents from gas and $10.26 cents from petroleum.
But not everyone agrees that nuclear energy is the best path for the U.S. Jim Riccio, nuclear policy expert at Greenpeace in Washington, D.C., said nuclear energy will only “put taxpayers on the hook.”
“When it comes to building a new reactor, a lot of companies are putting their nose in the government trough,” Riccio said. “If you look, [companies] are not moving forward. They haven’t made the decision to break ground.”
Although Exelon has submitted an application, Harris said the company has not yet decided if it's going to actually build a plant. A decision, he said, would probably come early in 2010.
One obstacle to any new nuclear plant, and a long-time problem for all exisiting ones, is the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
“I think the waste disposal issue is the single biggest hang-up to a nuclear renaissance,” Rowe said in an interview with PBS in October 2007.
Currently, spent fuel rods are stored in pools on the nuclear sites. Once those pools fill up, the NRC allows the spent fuel to be stored in dry casks above ground.
“In the 50-year operating history in the U.S. there has never been an issue with spent fuel at the sites,” Harris said.
According to Harris, Exelon is supportive of government research into recycling spent fuel, as well as the development of Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the permanent storage site designated by the federal government but opposed in Nevada.
Exelon needs new plants to further enlarge its franchise.
Despite reporting a 26 percent increase in fourth quarter earnings ended Dec. 31 from the year-earlier period, Exelon predicted no further growth for 2009.
Storozynski agreed that earnings will be flat.
"Exelon has very limited growth potential because all of its plants operate at full potential," Storozynski said. "They have no ability for growth without building new plants."
The company, which owns Philadelphia’s PECO utility and Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison Co., earned $1.07 per diluted share in the fourth quarter, compared with year-earlier earnings of 84 cents per diluted share.
In the full year 2008, earnings increased 4 percent but revenues slid 1 percent to $4.49 billion from $4.55 billion in 2007.
The majority of analysts who cover Exelon recommend buying the stock, which enjoyed a steady rise from 2002 until the market collapsed last year. In recent weeks stock has remained relatively stable.
It closed Wednesday at $57.68, down 9 cents from Tuesday’s closing price of $56.77.
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Brattleboro Reformer
February 04, 2009
VY spent fuel plan gets nod
By Bob Audette
BRATTLEBORO -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday gave Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee permission to draw on its decommissioning trust fund to manage spent fuel if the plant closes down in 2012.
But to do so, the company will need to file a request for an exemption to NRC regulations that forbid the use of trust fund money for such purposes.
Last year, Entergy was turned down when it asked to withdraw nearly $100 million for spent fuel handling.
The NRC rejected the request because trust fund money may only be used for decommissioning work unless the funds are in addition to decommissioning funds and if they have been earmarked for spent fuel management, said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC.
According to the Feb. 3 letter, the NRC also concluded Entergy's plan to handle spent fuel after shutdown was adequate.
But NRC staffers did have one caveat to their approval.
"The NRC staff notes that the preceding analysis is based on a reported DTF balance that can fluctuate over time," stated the NRC letter. "Should there be a material decline in the DTF balance, the staff's analysis and preliminary findings may no longer be valid and the licensee would be under an obligation ... to update the DTF balance as well as any changes in projected costs."
The Feb. 3 letter was in response to an Oct. 2008 letter from Entergy that was intended to demonstrate "the adequacy of funding to meet regulatory requirements to use the SAFSTOR decommissioning option based on the current license expiration date ..."
Although NRC staffers determined Entergy's plan for long-term storage of the fuel was adequate, it was based on a Dec. 31, 2007, trust fund balance of nearly $440 million.
By the end of 2008, the stock market had tumbled, reducing the trust fund by $40 million. Between the now and then, the fund has earned back $12 million of the loss. It is now estimated to be approximately $372 million.
Entergy has promised to deposit another $60 million in the decommissioning fund in 2026 to help pay for spent fuel management costs.
Estimates range between $600 million to $1 billion to clean up the site and return it to public use.
According to the letter, Entergy estimates it will cost $825 million to clean up the site. Of that total, $656 million will be used for the plant's radiological decommissioning, reported Entergy.
Site restoration is expected to cost $40 million, according to the letter.
Site remediation might include the removal of 135,000 cubic feet of potentially contaminated soil at a cost of $9 million, stated the letter.
"The licensee stated that the extent of the soil contamination and the costs of removal and disposal are based on a preliminary assessment, and a detailed characterization was not conducted at this time, but would be included as part of the license termination plan," according to the Feb. 3 letter from the NRC.
Entergy has applied to the NRC to extend its operating license from 2012 to 2032. Because the plant is within five years of its original license expiration date, Entergy is required to submit a decommissioning fund update every year.
The next report is due out in March.
Sheehan said he expected that the March report would reflect any changes to the fund balance as a result of the stock market crash.
Currently, Entergy has stored five dry casks containing nuclear waste on a concrete pad just north of the plant's reactor building. Between now and 2015, Entergy will need to store another 10 casks worth of fuel on a new concrete pad, according to the October letter filed with the NRC.
Each dry cask holds 68 fuel assemblies, or 10 tons of nuclear waste.
If the plant does shut down in 2012, it will need to be put into SAFSTOR until the decommissioning fund reaches the level necessary to clean up the site. SAFSTOR is an NRC-approved method of mothballing a nuclear power plant until decommissioning funds reach the level needed to safely clean up a site.
The plant could be mothballed for up to 60 years before decommissioning could start, but spent fuel will need to be moved out of the reactor building as soon as it ceases operation.
Eventually, the spent fuel is supposed to be transported to a storage site in Nevada for permanent disposal, but the opening of the site itself -- Yucca Mountain -- has been delayed by environmental concerns and legal proceedings.
The Legislature passed a bill in January 2008 requiring Entergy to pay decommissioning costs in full by 2012. Gov. James Douglas vetoed the bill on the grounds it was bad for business in Vermont.
Entergy plans to apply for the waiver, said Rob Williams, spokesman for Yankee, something it wouldn't have to do if the federal government had started taking nuclear waste as promised in 1998.
Nonetheless, said Williams, Entergy takes seriously its obligation to clean up the site and care for spent fuel.
"The costs for decommissioning are the responsibility of Vermont Yankee and not the Vermont utilities or the consumers they serve," he said. "We consider our obligation to provide decommissioning funding as equally important with our obligation to fund temporary spent fuel storage. As always, we will do the right thing by meeting all regulatory and financial obligations to the federal government and the state of Vermont."
A local anti-nuclear activist said the letter doesn't reassure those concerned about the waste stored on the banks of the Connecticut River.
"The NRC report released today on the cleanup fund for Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee is worse than worthless," said Ed Anthes, of Nuclear Free Vermont by 2012. "NRC staff take no notice of the drastic decline in the value of the cleanup fund."
By 2011, he said, Yankee will have on site an amount equal to two pounds of high level nuclear fuel waste per each man, woman and child in Vermont.
"This is the highest amount of waste per capita of any state in the United States."
--Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 02, 2009
Anti-Yucca Mountain strategist catching up
By Keith Rogers
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Bruce Breslow is getting his feet wet.
He just hopes the water won't be laced with radioactive remnants from nuclear waste that the Department of Energy plans to entomb in Yucca Mountain.
Breslow, who turns 53 today, took over for Bob Loux on Jan. 12 as Nevada's chief strategist on defeating the project.
After having been executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects since the agency's inception in 1985, Loux stepped down Sept. 29 amid controversy that he gave himself and his staff large, unauthorized pay raises.
Gov. Jim Gibbons chose Breslow to fill the post from a field of three candidates narrowed down by the state Nuclear Projects Commission.
After a dozen days on the job, and while attending his first meeting last week with federal scientists who were trying to convince an independent panel that the project is safe, Breslow acknowledged that he's got a lot of brushing up to do.
Besides the technical issues, he faces a challenging task in keeping his agency afloat with budget cuts and staff reductions looming.
After all, Breslow is not a geologist or an economist. Rather, he's a journalist by education who has made a career as a television sports broadcaster. He has dabbled in the baseball card trading business and also was the mayor of Sparks from 1991 to 1999.
"It's been a sharp learning curve," he said during a break in Wednesday's Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meeting.
"It's fascinating and informative. The more I learn, it's easy to understand the state's long position against Yucca Mountain," Breslow said.
If licensed by nuclear regulators and built in the volcanic-rock ridge about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the burial site would hold 77,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear reactors and highly radioactive defense waste.
"It's going to be a nuclear cemetery," Breslow said, and not a boon for high-paying jobs in science and university programs.
Part of his job is to educate the "highly uninformed mass of people living in Nevada who have heard the myth of a large pot of money in exchange for this hole in the ground."
As for his large pot of money, Breslow does not have one to run his agency of what has been seven staff members plus expert advisers. With two vacancies, the agency consists of five, including himself.
With the nearly $2 million the agency usually receives from Nevada's general fund expected to be cut significantly, the agency could be whittled down to just him and another staff member.
Breslow is going to try to work things out with governor's staff next week to keep more people on board.
"They've shown a willingness to be flexible on the matter," he said.
In addition, the state receives $5 million yearly in federal funds for being a unit of government affected by the project. That money goes largely for project oversight and the state's effort to thwart the Energy Department's attempt to obtain a repository license.
Nevada is precluded from using that money to pay Breslow's $104,000 salary.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has proclaimed the DOE project "dead" or at least bleeding to death from the lack of federal funds.
Reid has vowed to watch it fail as he continues to use his leverage as Senate majority leader to slash its purse strings.
So, why does Nevada need an Agency for Nuclear Projects?
"Because the beast is not dead yet," Breslow said.
"The agency sets the strategy. The agency hires the consultants to counter what DOE is proposing. The agency coordinates the fight," he said.
"Nevada has waited 25 years for a crack so they could actually participate in the court, in a trial where they can present evidence and cross-examine witnesses. Now the moment has arrived; so if it is not defeated politically, we believe Nevada has an excellent chance to prove how unsafe this is.
"So to abandon that and everything the state has worked for the last 25 years just because we're hoping that the president kills the project would not do justice to the state of Nevada."
Among the things Breslow has learned on the job is that Yucca Mountain is a flawed site where surface water can trickle through fractured rock, corrode waste canisters and contaminate Nevada's groundwater with deadly, radioactive materials.
He has learned that the Department of Energy's scientists and consultants are paid to deliver the right answers from DOE's perspective "based partially on reality and academic guesses."
"There are other sites that aren't in earthquake areas. There are other sites that aren't in volcanic areas. This one has them all," he said.
"Also, they're basing their conclusions on technology that doesn't yet exist, like titanium drip shields put in by robots 300 years from now, 200 years from now. How can you base science on technology that you hope exists in the future?"
Breslow said he met with Gibbons on Jan. 23, and the governor "confirmed what I wanted to hear, which was, 'Yes, I'm absolutely against Yucca Mountain.' And basically, 'Go get 'em.' "
At Wednesday's meeting with the technical review panel, Breslow sat next to Steve Frishman, a geologist who is a technical consultant for the state's effort.
While a DOE subcontractor presented a slide show on stability of "lithophysal rock" inside Yucca Mountain, Breslow was busy using his BlackBerry.
Like Loux, his predecessor who faces the Ethics Commission over the pay raise matter, Breslow once appeared before the state ethics panel for making personal calls on a city-owned cell phone while he was mayor of Sparks.
As the self-proclaimed "poster boy for not using the cell phone for personal calls," Breslow assured that he was not text-messaging somebody while the presenter was enlightening listeners about lithophysal rock, rock cavities formed by expanding gases.
That's what DOE scientists argue is evidence that earthquakes since 13 million years ago haven't been powerful enough to crack the bubblelike cavities.
So what was Breslow doing with his BlackBerry?
"I was Googling," he said, to find out what lithophysal means.
"The state phone is only for state business. I learned that the hard way," he said.
--Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 02, 2009
Political Notebook: Nye of The Tiger
By Molly Ball
Gov. Jim Gibbons last week appointed a new member to the Nye County Commission who recently said that she supports the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Fely Quitevis is chairwoman of the Nye County Republican Party, owns a real estate company in Pahrump and serves on the state's Judicial Discipline Commission. In December, she was part of a state Republican Party group that toured Yucca and heard the Department of Energy's pitch for the project; afterward, she told the R-J, "Before I was against it, but now I am for it."
State Democrats pounced on the news, using it to question Gibbons' stated opposition to the dump. Gibbons has proposed cutting the staff and funding of the state's Nuclear Projects Office, and he once appointed a Yucca supporter to the Nuclear Projects Commission; both agencies' mandate is to fight the project.
"After years of fighting, and with the election of a president that has vowed to end Yucca Mountain, Governor Gibbons is attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory," Travis Brock, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said in a news release.
Gibbons spokesman Daniel Burns said Yucca Mountain wasn't taken into account in Quitevis' selection because the governor considers it a state and federal, not a county, issue. He noted that the project, while unpopular statewide, is widely supported in Nye County, the place Quitevis is charged with representing.
"Not everybody is against Yucca Mountain," Burns said. "I'm not sure her views don't represent the views of a lot of people in Nye County."
As for Gibbons, Burns said, "Any suggestion the governor's stance on Yucca Mountain has changed is a foolish question to ask. The governor is adamantly opposed to Yucca Mountain."
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Las Vegas SUN
February 02, 2009
2009 Nevada Legislature opens amid budget debate
The Associated Press
The 2009 Nevada legislative session opens on Monday, with Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and Democrats in charge of the session at odds _ and likely to stay that way unless a big wad of federal "stimulus" dollars eases the state's budget crisis.
The 2009 session is like nothing seen in decades in Nevada. State budgets usually go up, but due to the recession, Gibbons' spending plan for the next two fiscal years goes down. His $6.2 billion proposal is about 9 percent lower than the current budget.
The governor's proposal is more than $2 billion short of what state officials say is needed to maintain government services at current levels and deal with inflation and increased demands.
The stimulus plan being considered in Congress could fix most or all of that shortfall _ although legislators have been warned not to bank too heavily on a "Santa Claus" bailout complicated by federal rules that set conditions for receipt of the money.
Pending final action on the funds, the lawmakers' initial review of Gibbons' budget made it clear they're ready to junk many of his proposals and come up with a plan of their own that won't have the same deep cuts in areas such as human services and education.
The current standoff between the governor and lawmakers may not degenerate into a pitched, partisan battle over the course of the 4-month long session since Gibbons says he's working on a revised budget that will take into account the stimulus funds.
But that "supplementary" budget plan still may not be enough, especially if the federal stimulus funds don't cover the $2 billion-plus shortfall and Gibbons continues to balk at new taxes that would erase the need for steep spending reductions.
Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, and Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, aren't talking new taxes at this point. Instead, they're challenging the governor's budget in many areas and saying they'll detail their spending priorities in two months, midway through the 2009 session.
In an interview prior to the session start, Gibbons said there's "absolutely nothing to be gained by the negative rhetoric" that he saw in the initial budget review. He groused about partisanship, although some key Republicans joined in with the Democratic critics.
Buckley and Horsford complained that the deep cuts proposed by Gibbons shows he "has chosen mediocrity for our state and our children" by eliminating many essential services and was on a "reckless and irresponsible" path.
Gibbons said he was required by law to work with revenue estimates provided by the state's Economic Forum in coming up with his plan. He also called for the Democrats to state publicly what taxes they'd propose to raise.
While silent on the subject of higher taxes, the legislators say they'll review the many business tax breaks that have built up over the years in Nevada. They also want to find ways of nabbing tax cheats who haven't been paying money owed to the state.
Legislators also plan to develop new protections for consumers to prevent more housing foreclosures. Nevada has the highest rate of foreclosures in the nation.
One of the Democratic lawmakers' biggest concerns is the $2 billion in spending proposed by Gibbons for human services programs. While up about 4 percent, they say it would keep Nevada at or near the bottom nationally in critical areas, including mental health programs.
The plan includes cuts in Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and doctors. Critics say the reductions will only shift the costs elsewhere _ and probably increase them.
Legislators, backed by more than 2,500 students who demonstrated in Las Vegas and Carson City, also questioned Gibbons' plans to cut funding for Nevada's K-12 schools and higher education system by an overall 15 percent.
The governor's proposed $3.15 billion in state general fund spending for education accounts for nearly 51 percent of his total plan for the coming two fiscal years.
While K-12 funding would drop by less than 3 percent, state support for universities and community colleges would plummet by more than a third under the governor's spending plan. The reductions are even deeper for the two state universities in Reno and Las Vegas _ about 50 percent.
His bare-bones budget also would reduce pay of government worker and educators by 6 percent, and would suspend longevity and merit pay increases and other benefit reductions. Gibbons said he's cutting his own pay by the same amount and will ask lawmakers to restore the cuts _ assuming they OK them _ once the economy permits.
Concerns also have been voiced about proposed cuts in benefits to former and current government workers covered under the Public Employees Benefit Program. Current state retirees would see PEBP subsidies cut by 50 percent. All such subsidies would be erased for Medicare-eligible retirees, and for anyone retiring after July 2009.
A move to close the old Nevada State Prison also has come under fire from lawmakers who want more details and say the proposed shutdown might not produce the Gibbons administration's estimate of a $37 million budget savings.
Also facing criticism is the governor's proposal to cut staffing for the state's Nuclear Projects Agency, charged with fighting federal efforts to open a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, and to reduce funds for lawyers involved in a complex court battle against the dump.
The governor's proposed budget also would slash Nevada's share of funds for the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, charged with protecting scenic, mile-high Lake Tahoe, by 41 percent.
Despite all the differences, there are some areas of agreement, such as the need for "green jobs" and the need for renewable energy expansion in Nevada. Gibbons favors legislation to speed permits for energy projects, and says utilities should further increase their use of energy produced by solar, geothermal, wind or other alternative sources.
And while the differences may delay solutions on many key issues, the lawmakers will have plenty of other matters to debate while those differences are worked out. In advance of the session, more than 240 proposals dealing with a wide array of topics were prepared for quick introduction at the session's start.
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NY Times blog
February 02, 2009
Debating Next-Generation Nuclear Waste
By James Kanter
Amid signs that nuclear power is on the verge of a renaissance are the voices of opponents of the technology who say the industry remains secretive and irresponsible — particularly about highly radioactive waste.
The latest salvo against it is from the anti-nuclear environmental group Greenpeace.
Greenpeace issued warnings and links to scientific documents on Friday to The International Herald Tribune and on Saturday more widely that claimed that waste from one of the most prominently marketed next-generation reactors will be seven times as radioactive as waste from the current generation of reactors.
That, said Greenpeace, will make nuclear power even more costly and potentially dangerous than it is already.
Areva, the French manufacturer of the new reactor technology, called “EPR,” said that the reports were grossly inaccurate. It said the waste from the reactor would be up to 15 percent more radioactive at most.
Hans Riotte at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris said that the current technologies for handling and storing waste could be adapted quite easily to deal with waste from the EPR.
Even so, the latest materials from Greenpeace do raise many interesting points.
One is the high cost of nuclear power plants. Construction of the first new EPR in Finland already is running hugely over budget. Another plant is under construction in Flamanville in France, where there also have been delays. (Two more EPRs are scheduled for construction in China, and Areva is waiting for the reactor to be certified for use in the United States.)
Another point raised by Greenpeace is that nuclear power, despite its appeal as a low-carbon source of energy, will continue to face political hurdles unless adequate plans are put in place for the long-term disposal of nuclear waste. That disposal, of course, includes even more radioactive forms of waste from the next generation of reactors like the EPR.
Currently, there are no long-term facilities for disposing of high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world.
Construction is under way in Finland to store waste a quarter of a mile underground, but that project still is awaiting final approval. American authorities have sought to put high-level waste inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but that plan is foundering because of local opposition.
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Las Vegas SUN
February 01, 2009
Yucca is no solution to energy crisis
Richard Stallings
Mesquite — For years I have watched with interest the courageous fight that Nevada has waged against the Energy Department over the proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility. Having served in Congress for eight years, representing a district in Idaho that included a major Energy Department facility (INL) and serving for two years as the U.S. nuclear waste negotiator, I know how difficult the struggle has been.
I worked with Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus as he led a similar fight to stop the Energy Department from locating nuclear waste products above the Idaho aquifer, and I took every opportunity to support the efforts of Sen. Harry Reid and then-Sen. Richard Bryan.
While directing the nuclear waste office, I argued against the Energy Department’s Yucca proposal and offered alternative solutions which were not appreciated. In fact, when my agency’s funding was up for renewal, the Energy Department quietly used its influence to close the office of U.S. nuclear waste negotiator in 1995.
Today, Nevada and the nation are poised at a significant crossroads. Sen. Reid has cut funding for Yucca while Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed severe cuts to the funds the state has used to fight the Energy Department. I believe Congress will interpret Nevada’s financial retreat as a sign that Nevada’s opposition to Yucca has weakened. The Las Vegas Sun’s Jan. 25 editorial (“Selling out Nevada: Gibbons plans to cut fight against Yucca Mountain and some in GOP want blood money”) was right on target!
And what about the nearly
20 percent of the nation that uses electricity generated by nuclear power? Many argue the current policy of on-site waste storage is a solution. But that is also shortsighted and unless the Energy Department takes responsibility for the spent fuel, as it promised many years ago, several reactors may be forced to close.
There is no question that significant amounts of green power will be needed in the near future. Coal and oil are not solutions. Wind and solar may be part of the solution and, while natural gas has filled the void during the past few decades, its skyrocketing cost has raised serious questions. My conclusion is that nuclear energy must be considered.
I know the biggest obstacle is dealing with the waste stream. Long-term burial in Yucca Mountain is not the answer, nor is on-site storage, but there is a third option that has been developed that holds great possibilities. It requires a smaller investment, shorter storage time and a process our scientists have had success with. It is known as the 300-year Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Solution and, as its name suggests, it requires only 300 years for the spent fuel to decay instead of the tens of thousands of years in the current plan.
I have always appreciated the American “can do” spirit. We have taken difficult problems and found ways to resolve them. I believe the same holds true with our energy crisis. We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and put less pollutants in the air. A well thought out nuclear option will help us reach these necessary goals.
It is time for the Energy Department to consider alternatives and stop pouring billions of dollars into the failed policy at Yucca Mountain.
--Richard Stallings, who splits his time between Nevada and Idaho, represented Idaho as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 to 1993.
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Muskogee Daily Phoenix
February 01, 2009
Letter: Take care of disposal first
Long-term disposal of radioactive waste should be settled before Oklahoma allows the building of a nuclear power plant in the state.
Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, has introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would allow a procedure for companies applying to build nuclear plants. He also included a provision in his bill that would allow for cost recovery of an investment in a new nuclear plant.
Oklahoma is not the only state considering an end to a moratorium on nuclear plants. California and Washington will also consider nuclear options to meet increased demand for power as well as reduce the amount of greenhouse gases now being emitted by conventional power plants.
Before Oklahoma goes nuclear, however, the state should guarantee the strictest safety measures will be employed in construction and operation, and a long-term plan for disposal of radioactive waste is in place.
The United States has plans for disposal in Yucca Mountain, Nev., but that plan has been on hold since 1998.
We should not be producing dangerous waste without plans for its transportation or disposal.
Settle those questions about nuclear power. Then let’s discuss it.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 31, 2009
Yucca workers urged to fight for their jobs
E-mail campaign touted in fliers
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Workers at the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain Project in Las Vegas are being urged to launch an e-mail campaign aimed at saving their jobs in light of dwindling budgets threatened by Sen. Harry Reid and the Obama administration.
Fliers were placed on the windshields of cars and trucks at the project's offices in Summerlin this week.
The fliers, which were not signed, called on workers to enlist their friends and family to write to President Barack Obama and top Nevada leaders, and stressed that de-funding the nuclear waste project "will have a significant adverse impact on the community as a whole.
"There is never a good time to be out of a job, but as you know now is certainly a very bad time," they said. "This town cannot afford to lose 1,200 or so high paying jobs, the Summerlin area cannot absorb hundreds of additional houses on the market and the vacancy of tens of thousands of square feet of office space."
The organizers of the e-mail campaign could not be discerned on Friday.
Spokesmen for the Department of Energy and Bechtel SAIC, the project's managing contractor, said those entities were not involved in the effort.
Several workers said Friday the appeal was indicative of low morale and high anxiety among employees who have been caught in the undertow of the controversial project.
The Yucca workforce has been halved in the past three years, from about 2,750 to 1,400, according to DOE. About 1,120 work in Nevada, with most of the remainder in Washington.
But now the project is under pressure as never before, as the president has declared he is against it and an energized Reid has vowed to kill it outright. On Wednesday Reid, the Senate majority leader, disclosed that new legislation Congress is expected to pass in the coming weeks will reduce the Yucca budget to a record low of $288.4 million.
Lynne Norman, an administrative assistant on the Yucca project who lives in Summerlin, said Friday project workers are being made to feel like "second-class citizens," and she feels betrayed by her home-state senator.
Nevada officials who have strategized against the Yucca project said they are sympathetic but the cause of killing the repository is bigger than the workers, who they said should not be surprised the end finally might be near. Reid on Jan. 14 declared, "Yucca Mountain is not a jobs program."
Adding to the distress on the program is an upcoming management changeover, workers said, as Bechtel SAIC is ending an eight-year tenure as chief operations contractor.
Bechtel SAIC sent federally required layoff warnings to more than 600 workers Monday, reminding them they will no longer be employed as of March 31, when the company's contract expires.
"Killing the dump is the right policy for Nevada and for America," Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a joint statement Friday.
They said the federal Workforce Investment Act can provide retraining and other help for dislocated workers.
--Keith Rogers of the Review-Journal contributed to this report. Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia. com or 202-783-1760.
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New York Times
January 31, 2009
Warning Sounded as France Moves Ahead on Reactor
By James Kanter
BRUSSELS — As France presses ahead with building more next-generation nuclear reactors, new evidence emerged Friday to suggest that industry and governments might be unprepared to handle the increasingly toxic waste that will result.
Highlighting the importance of the technology in France, both as its main source of electricity and as a major export, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced late Thursday that Électricité de France had been chosen to develop a second reactor using next-generation technology at Penly in northern France.
Areva, the Paris company that designed the so-called EPR, says the system will generate far more electricity more safely than previous reactors, is easier to build and will last longer.
Areva, the world’s biggest reactor maker, also says the EPR — which is expected to generate more than 1,600 megawatts, making it more powerful than any other reactor in commercial use — will use about 15 percent less uranium and produce 30 percent less waste.
But an antinuclear group, Greenpeace, said that information it had gleaned from industry reports — which are public but have received little attention so far — showed that waste from the EPR would be more radioactive by a factor of seven.
That will make it more expensive to handle and to store safely, according to Greenpeace, which provided the details to The International Herald Tribune.
“Despite the French government’s global marketing of the EPR as cheap and safe, the evidence proves otherwise,” said Rianne Teule, who focuses on nuclear issues for Greenpeace.
The next wave of reactors “poses an ever-increasing burden on people’s budgets and danger to their health, now and far into the future,” Ms. Teule said.
A spokeswoman for Areva, Patricia Marie, said the claim was “grossly inaccurate.” She said the waste would be 15 percent more radioactive at the most.
There are currently 58 reactors in France. No EPR reactors are up and running; the first is under construction at Olkiluoto, an island in the west of Finland, and the second in Flamanville, in the Basse-Normandie region of northern France.
Ms. Teule said the evidence about the waste’s radioactivity was drawn from a report by Posiva, a waste disposal company owned by Finnish nuclear operators, and from the Swiss organization Nagra, which oversees management of nuclear waste.
She said the waste would pose greater dangers to workers from higher radiation doses during transfer and storage than current waste. In addition, she said, the waste would need to be stored longer in areas above ground.
Those factors, among others, would increase the overall cost of nuclear energy — costs that Ms. Teule said were not properly accounted for by industry and governments.
There are no long-term facilities for disposing or burying high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world, although Posiva is digging a tunnel at Olkiluoto in anticipation of approval for storing waste a quarter of a mile underground.
American authorities have sought to put high-level waste inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but that plan is foundering because of local opposition.
Spokeswomen for Posiva and Nagra said they were unable to give any immediate comment about the reports.
Hans Riotte at the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris said waste from the EPR, although smaller in volume, would be more radioactive because it would be denser.
But Mr. Riotte, who heads the agency’s radiological protection and radioactive waste management division, was unable to say whether the waste would be more radioactive by a factor of seven, as Greenpeace contends.
Mr. Riotte conceded the waste would have to be stored above ground longer, but said that waste-handling and storage procedures could be adapted to deal with much more toxic waste without much added expense.
Ms. Marie, the spokeswoman for Areva, said the company “was confident that all costs have been taken into account” for construction and operation of EPR reactors.
Greenpeace has vowed to oppose construction of the plant in France, but has not said how it will pursue that goal.
This week Areva reported rising sales for 2008 as its uranium mining and reactor construction businesses benefited from increasing demand for nuclear power. The company is competing to become the designer of reactors for the next generation of plants in the United States and elsewhere.
Problems at the EPR site in Finland mean the reactor already is overdue and vastly over budget, even though it was designed to have a shorter construction period than previous models. The site has been plagued by waterlogged concrete, faulty welds and flawed pipes, delaying the reactor start date by at least three years and raising costs by roughly 50 percent.
Two more EPR reactors, called Taishan 1 and 2, are scheduled for construction in China. Areva said the design was also being used by Électricité de France and the large German utility E.On, which are bidding to refurbish aging reactors in Britain.
Areva also is vying to sell the technology to the United Arab Emirates as part of a project led by Total and GDF Suez.
--Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.
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Senator Harry Reid
January 30, 2009
Reid Working To Cut Additional $100 Million From Yucca Mountain Budget
January 29, 2009
Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced that he is working on cutting an additional $100 million from the budget of the Yucca Mountain project. This cut will bring Yucca’s budget to $288.4 million for the year, a figure drastically lower than the nearly $500 million former President George W. Bush requested. The current reductions combined with an anticipated low budget request for next year signal the end is near for Yucca Mountain.
“I am glad that I was able to make this cut and bring the Yucca Mountain Project another step closer to its rightful end,” Reid said. “I look forward to working with President Obama to end this project so we can focus more resources on making Nevada the leader in a clean energy revolution.” To read more on Senator Reid’s efforts to keep Nevada from becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dumping ground please visit the Yucca Mountain page on his website by clicking here.
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KTVN
January 30, 2009
Sen. Reid Eyes Cuts to Yucca Mountain Budget
Kellene Stockwell
Channel 2 News
One budget cut that isn't likely to get too many people wound up is Yucca Mountain.
Thursday Nevada Senator Harry Reid said he is working on cutting funds for the project. He says a $100 million cut may be the final blow for Yucca Mountain, bringing its budget down to $288.4 million.
(Former President George Bush had initially requested $500 million for the project.)
The proposed cuts could mean lost jobs at Yucca Mountain. "Those jobs will be replaced with renewable energy. That's good for Nevada and good for America."
Reid hopes that the money Nevada receives from President Obama's stimulus package will create more jobs in renewable energy.
On top of proposing budget cuts, Reid's latest move has been to direct $5 million to the Nevada Attorney General to lead the fight against Yucca Mountain.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 30, 2009
Yucca workers urged to launch drive to save their jobs
By Steve Tetreault
Las Vegas Review-Journal
WASHINGTON — Workers at the Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain Project in Las Vegas are being urged to launch an e-mail campaign aimed at saving their jobs in light of dwindling budgets threatened by Sen. Harry Reid and the Obama administration.
Fliers were placed on the windshields of cars and trucks at the project’s offices in the Summerlin community of Las Vegas this week.
The fliers, which were not signed, called on workers to enlist their friends and family to write to President Barack Obama and top Nevada leaders, and stressed that de-funding the nuclear waste project “will have a significant adverse impact on the community as a whole.
“There is never a good time to be out of a job, but as you know now is certainly a very bad time,” they said. “This town cannot afford to lose 1,200 or so high paying jobs, the Summerlin area cannot absorb hundreds of additional houses on the market and the vacancy of tens of thousands of square feet of office space.”
The organizers of the e-mail campaign could not be discerned today. Spokesmen for the Department of Energy and Bechtel SAIC, the project’s managing contractor, said those entities were not involved in the effort.
Several workers said today the appeal was indicative of low morale and high anxiety among employees who have been caught in the undertow of the controversial project. The DOE is seeking to build an industrial complex and underground tunnel system to store 77,000 tons of radioactive material.
The population of the Yucca workforce has halved in the past three years, from about 2,750 to 1,400, according to DOE. About 1,120 work in Nevada, with most of the remainder in Washington.
But now the project is under pressure as never before, as the president has declared he is against it and an energized Reid has vowed to kill it outright. On Wednesday, Reid, the Senate majority leader, disclosed that new legislation Congress is expected to pass in the coming weeks will reduce the Yucca budget to a record low of $288.4 million.
Reid has said he expects the federal budget that Obama will unveil next month will contain “little if anything” to keep the program afloat. Over time, staffers on the repository project could join the 128,100 Nevadans that are out of work, according to December’s count.
Lynne Norman, an administrative assistant on the Yucca project who lives in Summerlin, said today project workers are being made to feel like “second-class citizens,” and she feels betrayed by her home-state senator.
“I don’t think what Harry Reid has done is fair to us at all,” said Norman, a 13-year employee who wrote an e-mail to the White House on Thursday. “It is time for people to stand up and fight back.”
While the Yucca Mountain Project long has been a whipping boy in the state, “I know the scientists and their work and I believe in the work that has been done,” Norman said. “The general public doesn’t know the whole story.”
Nevada officials who have strategized against the Yucca project said they are sympathetic but the cause of killing the repository is bigger than the workers, who they said should not be surprised the end finally might be near. Reid on Jan. 14 declared, “Yucca Mountain is not a jobs program.”
“It is unfortunate but when there is a discontinued or dangerous product recalled or taken off the shelf, people lose their jobs,” said Bruce Breslow, who coordinates the state’s official opposition as director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Adding to the distress on the program is an upcoming management changeover, workers said, as Bechtel SAIC is ending an eight-year tenure as chief operations contractor.
Bechtel SAIC sent federally required layoff warnings to more than 600 workers Monday, reminding them they will no longer be employed as of March 31, when the company’s contract expires.
Normally, most workers simply would be picked up by the incoming management firm. But USA Repository Services reportedly is holding off to learn how much money it might have available.
“People are panicking because the new contractor doesn’t know what to do yet. Everything is on hiatus until the new budgets are released,” said a Bechtel SAIC staffer, a 25-year employee who asked not to be identified for fear it might damage his chances at rehire. He said some colleagues are not waiting to find out, and are departing if they can.
“Killing the dump is the right policy for Nevada and for America,” Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a joint statement today. They said the federal Workforce Investment Act can provide retraining and other help for dislocated workers.
“As Yucca continues to die a slow death, we will continue to work with the Department of Labor to ensure that people can find help when they need it,” the senators said.
Most of the state’s leaders say they believe the Energy Department rigged the process, and that the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is not safe for the entombment of highly radioactive nuclear waste for thousands of years into the future. But others say the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be allowed to judge the Energy Department’s research.
While officials in several rural counties and some Republicans in the state have called for a re-evaluation of the state’s long-held official opposition, polls show the repository still is unpopular among many residents.
Workers were urged to copy their pleas to Reid, Obama, Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, state Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, university system chancellor Jim Rogers, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and Paul Seidler, the Las Vegas representative of the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association.
--Keith Rogers of the Review-Journal contributed to this report. Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 30, 2009
IBLV editorial:
The fight must go on
Now is not the time for cuts at agency devoted to defeating Yucca dump
The potent combination of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid bodes well for Nevadans, the majority of whom don’t want the nation’s high-level nuclear waste dumped in this state. Both men have vowed to do everything in their power to see that a dump is never built at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But until it is certain the dump plan is dead, Nevada has an obligation to its residents to continue fighting, through its Nuclear Projects Agency, the nuclear power industry-backed proposal. Because of the highly complex nature of the issue, it takes a fully staffed office to help research and prepare the state’s arguments against a Yucca repository, which is under licensing review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
This is not the time to reduce the agency’s staff, but that is precisely what Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed. As reporter Phoebe Sweet wrote last week in the Las Vegas Sun, a sister publication of In Business Las Vegas, Gibbons is seeking to eliminate five of the agency’s seven positions. While using the state budget crisis as cover, he is also proposing lower-than-necessary levels of money over the next two years for the agency’s outside contracts and for legal counsel through the attorney general’s office. Doing so would make it difficult for Nevada to wage a serious fight.
The agency serves a crucial role by monitoring the Energy Department’s activities at Yucca Mountain, coordinating state and local reviews of technical and planning documents, conducting independent reviews of the hydrological, geological and engineering aspects of the proposed dump, and identifying health, safety and environmental issues. That effort should be bolstered by a solid legal team, which the attorney general’s office thinks would require $5 million over the next two years, far more than the $186,000 proposed by Gibbons.
As former Sen. Richard Bryan, who also served as Nevada’s governor and now heads the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission, told Sweet: “This is not the time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. This is at a very critical stage, and Nevada has to be fully prepared.”
We couldn’t agree more.
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Lincoln County Record
January 30, 2009
Nuclear Oversight Program Seeks Commissioners Approval for Complaints
By Dave Maxwell
Staff Writer
During the regular January 20 meeting, County Commissioners approved a letter requested by the Lincoln County Nuclear Oversight Program. The letter expressed their continued concerns with plans for any emergency responses needed for incidents that may occur during construction and operation of the proposed Department of Energy (DOE) rail line through Lincoln County.
Program Coordinator Connie Simkins told Commissioners the County made comments in August 2007, to the DOE’s proposal of $100,000 to be spread over the affected counties in Nevada. It is to be used to train and equip “first responders,” for any emergency that might take place during the construction or operation of the Yucca Mountain project and railroad.
In 2008, the Department of Energy released its final statement regarding such issues. After review, Dr. Mike Baughman, consultant to the Oversight Program, wrote a response including 14 points and Simkins relayed some of those to the Commissioners. In part, Baughman said Lincoln County did not feel $100,000 was near enough money. In addition to the training and planning, they also needed to have money to buy the proper pieces of equipment, usually associated with ambulances and fire trucks, to assist those who would be responding to the emergencies and/or accidents.
Another of Baughman’s 14 points claimed the DOE had not paid attention to comments made by Lincoln County in 2007. The final Department of Energy statement said they will “meet their requirements of responding to accidents safely, and would respond to accidents,” but Baughman pointed out, the article does not specify in what ways or what specific requirement would be complied with.
Simkins said the DOE statement seemed to talk only about planning for responding, but not about providing the training or equipment for those who would be the responders. In addition, she noted, there was no outline in the DOE plan that indicated how, or even when, the funds would be distributed. She said the state of Nevada has made similar comments about the same funding issue to the DOE. She asked Commissioners to follow the lead of the state in saying, “That the DOE continues to ignore the need to determine the amount of funding and technical assistance for an adequate program, and DOE’s policy lacks any method for determining the grant amount.”
Simkins said the DOE’s list of allowable activities that the DOE would be willing to provide money for, “Is an excellent list, but the funding is entirely inadequate.” She said needs based funding for planning is already $450,000 per state and for training and equipment; it is $2.5 million per state. Thereby, $100,000 is grossly inadequate for what DOE says ought to be done.
She said the DOE final statement, released in 2008, also unveiled a new plan and formula to give money to Indian Tribes in Nevada that would be affected by the Yucca Mountain project and railroad. The payment formula is based on how many miles of rail line through each county and each state. However, Simkins noted, emergency responders do not have the authority to cross onto Tribal lands should an emergency occur there. “Therefore, we feel like the miles inside the Indian nation should be subtracted from the miles inside Nevada for the emergency response money. The Indians are funded separately and have authority to respond to emergencies on their own lands, and we should not have to have our funding reduced by that amount because the Indians get separate funding for the same thing.”
In Baughman’s 14 points, he said he believed the funding should be “needs based. There are different needs for different counties at different levels.” He felt the funding should be county by county and not go to the state level. Simkins said even comments made by the state of Nevada to the DOE recently said the funding should go directly to the counties that are affected because they have a more dynamic, up to date plan on what their own needs are.
DOE has indicated they plan to spend some of the emergency response funding to be at the “point of origin,” or the power plant where the spent nuclear waste is first coming from. Dr. Baughman felt the “point of origin” was not an emergency accident response function, but rather a safety inspection function of the power plant, which already receives federal funding under an entirely separate program.
After listening to the presentation, and approving the requested letter, Commissioner Ronda Hornbeck thanked Mrs. Simkins for the work the Nuclear Oversight Program does to protect the county on these issues. “If we didn’t have the people that are staying on top of this, I think we’d be lost,” she said.
On other matters, Simkins said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plans to release its decision on what contentions they will accept for discussion and possible mitigation, in May 2009. She said all parties, Lincoln County included, would then have 45 days to make their own responses on the NRC decisions.
She also noted the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has filed some contentions about the Yucca Mountain project, but said she has learned the DOE is asking the NRC not to pay any attention to them, claiming the NEI did not have the proper legal standing by which to make contentions in the first place.
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Pahrump Valley Times
January 30, 2009
Yucca funding likely to shrink further
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The already scaled-back federal funding to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain would drop by close to $100 million more through the rest of fiscal 2009, continuing a steep downward spiral that raises new questions about the future of the project.
The office of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., disclosed new spending cuts Wednesday for the unpopular Nevada project that he once vowed to make "bleed real hard," and that he says he is trying to end altogether.
The annual spending level of $288.3 million would be a record low, or close to it, for 26-year nuclear project, Energy Department managers said.
"That's pretty much near the bottom," spokesman Allen Benson said. Benson said DOE would not comment on project spending until it was made final.
DOE has adapted to shrinking budgets in recent years through layoffs and by revising Yucca work plans, and it filed for a repository construction license last summer. Project managers have not indicated what would be the ultimate tipping point below which it may not possible to sustain the effort.
Reid aides said the new low number was negotiated by the Senate majority leader into a omnibus bill expected to be filed in Congress next week. The legislation would finalize spending through September for a number of federal agencies after lawmakers failed to finish that work last year. A stopgap bill expires on March 6.
For Yucca Mountain, the new budget would be $98 million less than what the Department of Energy is being given now under the stopgap bill, and more than $200 million less than the Bush administration requested early in 2008.
"Reid has made it clear he was going to make Yucca Mountain bleed and he has been very successful," spokesman Jon Summers said of the 42 percent drop from the Bush request.
With President Obama also having come out against Yucca Mountain, Reid has stepped up his activity and his rhetoric against the project. He has said the reductions in the upcoming spending bill would be only the first step, and that Obama's budget for 2010 would contain "little if anything" to keep the project going.
The bill is expected to contain another change in Yucca spending.
While previous bills have directed a slice of federal funding to Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects for the state's own experts and project evaluations, the new measure will send the funds to the state's attorney general instead.
The shift comes amid changes in the nuclear projects agency. Its longtime director Bob Loux resigned under fire last September and has been replaced by a new director. Further, Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed to reorganize the state's anti-Yucca effort while cutting the agency's staff and budget.
The new bill will direct $5 million to Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, Summers confirmed.
Summers said the change was prompted in part by the proposed reorganization that would cut the agency's seven staffers to two and move it closer under the governor's wing. Also, he said, it recognized that most of the state's fight now will take place in courtroom settings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Marta Adams, the deputy attorney general who handles nuclear litigation, said the change may have little practical impact.
Most of the state's nuclear experts are paid with federal funds through subcontract with the law firm of Egan, Fitzpatrick & Malsch, which also is the lead outside counsel handling NRC matters.
Egan, Fitzpatrick & Malsch, which has been approved for up to $6 million in fees for the coming year, has a contract relationship with both the attorney general's office and the Agency for Nuclear Projects, Adams said.
"I honestly think we are not going to have a break," Adams said.
Bruce Breslow, the new director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, was traveling Wednesday evening and could not be reached.
Negotiations in Congress over the Yucca spending have taken place behind a thick veil in recent weeks even as Reid occasionally hinted that budget cuts would be deep.
While most of the omnibus spending bill was formed by House and Senate committee aides, they were told the nuclear waste line items would be handled at the highest levels.
At one point, government and industry sources said a provision was considered to create a two-year presidential blue ribbon commission to study nuclear waste management, while placing the Yucca repository in a "caretaker" status. But that was dropped, a source said.
Summers said Wednesday he did not believe the spending bill will contain special instructions or related provisions dealing with the repository project.
Reid aides also could not say Wednesday how the upcoming bill will treat the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that is reviewing the DOE repository construction application. Reid has said that agency's budget would be reduced along with the DOE budget.
A trade newsletter, Nuclear New Build Monitor, reported earlier this month that Reid offered to release his stranglehold on confirmations to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in exchange for deeper cuts to Yucca Mountain.
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International Herald Tribune
January 30, 2009
Rebound of nuclear plants raising worries over waste
By James Kanter
BRUSSELS: As France presses ahead with building more next-generation nuclear reactors, new evidence emerged Friday to suggest that industry and governments may be unprepared to handle the increasingly toxic waste that will result.
Highlighting the importance of the technology in France, both as its main source of electricity and as a major export industry, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced late Thursday that Électricité de France, Europe's biggest power producer, was awarded the contract to develop a second atomic reactor using next-generation technology.
EDF beat competition from the gas and power company GDF Suez to lead the construction at an existing nuclear site at Penly in northern France.
Areva, the company based in Paris that designed the so-called EPR, says the new system will generate far more electricity more safely than previous reactors, is easier to construct, and will last longer.
Areva, the world's biggest reactor maker, also says the EPR - which is expected to generate more than 1,600 megawatts, making it more powerful than any other reactor in commercial use - will use about 15 percent less uranium and produce 30 percent less waste.
But an anti-nuclear group said that information it gleaned from industry reports - publicly available but which have received little attention so far - show that waste from the EPR will be more radioactive by a factor of seven because more uranium is burned up. That will make it more expensive to handle and store safely, according to Greenpeace, which provided the details on Friday to the International Herald Tribune.
"Despite the French government's global marketing of the EPR as cheap and safe, the evidence proves otherwise," said Rianne Teule, an international nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace who is based in Amsterdam.
The next wave of reactors "poses an ever-increasing burden on people's budgets and danger to their health, now and far into the future," Teule said.
Patricia Marie, a spokeswoman for Areva, said the claim by Greenpeace was "grossly inaccurate." She said the waste would be 15 percent more radioactive at the most.
There are currently 58 reactors in operation in France. There are no EPRs in operation anywhere in the world, but the first is under construction at Olkiluoto, an island in the West of Finland, and the second in Flamanville, in northern France.
Teule said the evidence about the radioactivity of the waste was drawn from a report by Posiva, a waste disposal company owned by Finnish nuclear operators, and from the Swiss organization Nagra, which oversees management of nuclear waste.
Teule said the waste would pose greater dangers to workers from higher radiation doses during transfer and storage than current waste. She also said the waste would need to be stored for longer in areas above ground, where it is potentially exposed to terrorists.
Those factors, among others, would increase the overall cost of nuclear energy - costs that Teule said were not properly accounted for by industry and governments.
There are no long-term facilities for disposing or burying high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world, although Posiva is digging a tunnel at Olkiluoto in anticipation of final approval for storing waste a quarter of a mile underground.
U.S. authorities have sought to put high-level waste inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but that plan is foundering because of local opposition.
Spokeswomen for Posiva and Nagra said they were unable to give any immediate comment about the reports.
Hans Riotte, the head of the Radiological Protection and Radioactive Waste Management Division at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, said waste from the EPR, although smaller in volume, would be more radioactive than existing forms of high-level waste because it would be denser. But Riotte was unable to say whether it would be more radioactive by a factor of seven, as Greenpeace contends.
Riotte conceded the waste would have to be stored above ground longer to cool, but said that waste-handling and storage procedures could be adapted to deal with much more toxic waste without much added expense.
"Any financial impacts are likely to be relatively small," Riotte said.
Marie, the spokeswoman for Areva, said the company "was confident that all costs have been taken into account" for construction and operation of EPR reactors.
Greenpeace has vowed to oppose construction of the new plant in France, but has not said how it would pursue that goal.
Areva reported rising sales this week for 2008 as its uranium mining and reactor construction businesses benefited from increasing demand for nuclear power.
But any reports about the cost, or safety, of its EPR model still are a sensitive matter for the company, which is competing to become the designer of reactors for the next generation of nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere.
Problems at the EPR site in Finland mean the reactor already is badly overdue and vastly over budget, even though it was designed to have a shorter construction period than previous models.
The site has been plagued by water-logged concrete, faulty welds and flawed pipes, delaying the reactor start date by at least three years and raising costs by roughly 50 percent.
Two more EPR reactors, called Taishan 1 and 2, are slated for construction in China. Areva said the design was also being used by Électricité de France and the large German utility, E.ON, bidding to refurbish the fleet of aging reactors in Britain.
Areva also is vying sell the technology to the United Arab Emirates as part of a project led by Total and GDF Suez.
--Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington
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Rutland Herald
January 30, 2009
Experts say Vt. Yankee's nuke waste is here to stay
By Daniel Barlow
Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER – Don't count on Yucca Mountain or any other national solution for the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, a consulting group told lawmakers Thursday.
As the Vermont Legislature considers Vermont Yankee's proposal to continue operating past its 2012 expiration date, lawmakers should assume that all the radioactive spent fuel left will be stored on-site in Vernon, nuclear consultants said.
Bruce Lacy, the founder of Iowa's Lacy Consulting Group, told members of several House and Senate committees that dry cask storage of this waste material at nuclear power plants has become the default United States policy.
"We are storing it here in Vermont right now, but it is not going out of state unless there is a national movement," Lacy said. "We need a positive will of Congress."
Yucca Mountain, a ridgeline adjacent to nuclear weapons test sites in Nevada, was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy in 1987 as the storage facility for spent nuclear waste and other radioactive materials from nuclear power plants across the country.
But that site has sat unused since then, tied up with political disputes and doubts by the U.S. Congress. The Department of Energy filed a formal application to use the site late last year with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but even that process seems fraught with problems, including funding.
Here in Vermont, lawmakers are considering a request by the owners of Vermont Yankee to extend the Vernon plant's operating license for another 20 years beyond its 2012 end date. Storage of the nuclear waste – the byproduct of creating nuclear power – is one of the chief concerns lawmakers are struggling with.
Vermont Yankee now stores its nuclear waste in its spent fuel pool within the reactor and in underground, dry cask storage units – essentially steel and concrete storage units intended to keep the waste stored safely as it degrades naturally. Entergy Vermont Nuclear, the company that owns the plant, won legislative approval for those storage units in 2005.
Lacy said Vermont Yankee has 1,911 bundles of the waste stored in its spent fuel pool and another 340 bundles stored in dry cask units at the facility, which is located south of Brattleboro along the Connecticut River in the small town of Vernon.
The facility has enough storage room – thanks to the additional space allowed by the dry cask units – to continue storing its waste until 2032, which is when it would cease operating if its application to continue past 2012 is approved.
Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro, is a longtime critic of Vermont Yankee and a member of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. She said she worried about the long-term storage of the waste at the Vernon facility, especially if there is a natural disaster there, such as flooding.
She was surprised Thursday to learn that federal regulators did not consider the possible implications of global warming in their flooding predictions for the facility.
"Their belief is that the water levels are relatively stable," Lacy told lawmakers.
Whenever Vermont Yankee is decommissioned – whether that is in 2012 or 2031 – the state should assume that the nuclear waste continue to be stored at the facility because there is no other viable national option, Lacy told lawmakers.
"This could be stored on site for a long time," he said.
Another type of waste produced at Vermont Yankee also needs to find a long-term home. So-called low-level radioactive waste – anything from contaminated clothes and equipment to materials directly exposed to neutrons in the plant's reactor – can only be stored in sites approved by the NRC, Lacy explained.
Radioactive waste dumps in South Carolina and Washington have often taken most of these classes of waste for the nuclear industry, but those sites will soon stop taking shipments from states not in their compact.
However, a new site is being constructed in Texas, which Vermont does have a contract with to store these materials, Lacy said. But the availability and cost of disposal is a wildcard in the debate over the future of Vermont Yankee.
"You cannot decommission a power plant without a contract for a disposal site," he said.
Lacy said Vermont Yankee has three decommissioning options: Immediate decommissioning, which would take six to eight years; mothballing the facility and decommissioning over a 60-year period; and filling the structure with concrete and waiting until the radioactive material decays completely.
There have been 11 nuclear facilities that have undergone immediate decommissioning, Lacy said, with two more now in progress. Eleven sites in the country have been mothballed and two more – which he described as early, prototype reactors – have been filled with concrete and shut down.
Each option has its own costs and benefits, although the true costs of shutting down a power plant for good fluctuate and are hard to pin down. Decommissioning the facility immediately would cost between $655 million and $893 million; mothballing it for a few decades would cost between $717 million and $991 million.
Vermont Yankee's owners have a trust fund set up to pay for decommissioning, but that account has dropped in recent months as troubles began on Wall Street. In September 2007, the fund was $440 million. In December 2008, it was $372 million.
"Like all trust funds in the United States, this has been in decline," Lacy said.
Because of the uncertainties of the final decommissioning costs, Lacy recommended that lawmakers insist that the owners of Vermont Yankee put more money in that account.
"You can't sharpen your pencils enough," he said. "You don't want to be in a position 60 years from now where there is not enough money left in that fund."
Lacy Consulting, which bills itself as a non-partisan source of information on nuclear issues, was hired by the Vermont Legislature as consultants during the Vermont Yankee debate.
--Contact Daniel Barlow at Daniel.Barlow@timesargus.com.
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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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