Yucca Mountain News Clips - Monday, August 3, 2009

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, August 3, 2009
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Las Vegas SUN
August 02, 2009

Sun Editorial:

Reid wins another round

Senate majority leader from Nevada announces another victory in Yucca Mountain fight

It is premature to say that the long battle against Yucca Mountain has ended in victory for Nevada, but it is safe to say a turning point in the state’s favor makes ultimate victory more assured.

The turning point came Wednesday with an agreement among Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the White House and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. They agreed the budget for getting Yucca Mountain federally licensed as a burial site for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste should be significantly reduced.

On Thursday Reid announced that the White House, in keeping with President Barack Obama’s campaign promises to Nevada, had decided to propose no funding whatsoever in the fiscal-year 2011 budget for the license application.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” said Reid, who has led Nevada’s fight against Yucca for more than 20 years. He was right. If there is no licensing budget, the Yucca Mountain project, barely moving after two decades of disclosures from Nevada about its multiple dangers, comes to a stop.

In anticipation of this, Obama is planning to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to recommend a safer alternative to Yucca Mountain.

The issue began in 1987 when Congress approved the “Screw Nevada” bill, which named Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only site that would be considered as the burial ground for deadly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear plants.

Nevada had little clout on the national level at the time. That began to change as Reid, elected to the Senate in 1986, steadily advanced in its ranks. He became minority leader in 2005 and became majority leader after Democrats gained control following the 2006 general election.

After years of fighting against congressional Republicans who support Yucca Mountain, and after fighting the Bush administration, which gave the Energy Department the go-ahead to construct the project, Nevada is prevailing, but it has not yet won.

The state will need the clout of Reid in the coming years to finish the job.

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Patriot-News
August 02, 2009

Government must address nuclear waste disposal

by Patriot-News Editorial Board

Figuring out what America should do with our nuclear waste is rather like figuring out what we should do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Everyone thinks we should do something about it, but as soon as the policy debate moves from the hypothetical to the idea of putting it in some state's backyard, the discussion breaks down.

As with every other policy issue, the arrival of President Obama in January seemed to bring hope, especially given his administration's push for a clean energy revolution.

Obama's first big action in this arena was to officially declare Yucca Mountain in Nevada, viewed as the best storage site since 1987, a no go.

Few expected Yucca Mountain to come to pass, but the problem now is there is even more precedent for what local outrage and political stalling can do to stop a nuclear waste site.

Congress says it has formed a "Blue Ribbon Commission" to explore alternative locations, but the verdict is still out on how effective that will be.

For now, nuclear waste remains a ticking time bomb for the nation.

In mid-July, the Congressional Budget Office testified on the federal government's responsibilities and liabilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

The Congressional Budget Office is a non-partisan group that is tasked with putting a figure on how much every piece of legislation costs. Here are the sobering facts from CBO's testimony:

The federal government remains responsible for permanently disposing of nuclear waste from civilian facilities, which pay fees for that service.

The federal government has not yet disposed of any civilian nuclear waste and has no identifiable plan for doing so. CBO estimates the federal government is more than 10 years behind schedule in its contractual obligations.

Nuclear utility operations pay $750 million annually to the government to cover the costs of disposing of the nuclear waste they generate. Over the past 25 years, nuclear utilities have contributed $16.3 billion for waste services they have yet to receive.

The government has paid nuclear facilities $565 million to date in compensation for costs incurred because of its failure to meet contractual agreements.

In short, the federal government's stalling is worrying from a safety standpoint and from a financial standpoint. No one can really estimate the true costs of disposing of nuclear waste until a site is found.

In the Harrisburg area, we understand this issue in a very tangible way as many of us glimpse the cooling towers of Three Mile Island daily.

While nuclear safety concerns have largely abated in the 30 years since the TMI accident, the issue of what to do with the waste is of increasing alarm.

Before the federal government approves any more nuclear plants, we must have a viable plan on what to do with the waste. The attitude of "we'll figure it out later" is no longer going to cut it.

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KXNT
August 01, 2009

Posted: Friday, 31 July 2009 3:07PM

Reid Signals Yucca Death; Gibbons Wary

Nevada Senator Harry Reid says he's received assurances from the White House and the Energy Department that all funding for the Yucca Mountain license application will be eliminated from the federal budget in 2011. Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, made the announcement after a meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday. The Senator added that after 2011, any funding for Yucca Mountain will only be for wrapping up work on the project. Reid said he plans on working toward "responsible, alternative solutions" for dealing with the nation's nuclear waste.

But not everybody is confident in Reid's announcement. On Friday, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons expressed skepticism, noting that Senator Reid has called Yucca Mountain "dead" on at least a dozen occasions over the past three years. Gibbons said he's sent a letter to Reid asking the Senator to work toward repealing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which legally designates Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste storage site. In a written statement, Governor Gibbons said "...why wait for 2011, Senator Reid should make Nevada safer by working to immediately repeal the NWPA and kill Yucca Mountain once and for all."

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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 01, 2009

Gibbons challenges Reid on Yucca Mountain

Gov. Jim Gibbons is telling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to "put up or shut up" about the death of Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear repository.

In a press release Friday, Gibbons took issue with Reid, who said he's been assured by the Obama administration that it will seek to eliminate funding in 2011 for a review needed to open the nuclear waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Instead of focusing on funding, Gibbons says he's urging Reid to "use his influence" in Congress to repeal the Nuclear Waste Police Act that designates Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump.

A Reid spokesman said Gibbons has done little as governor to advance the state's fight, adding some of his actions have done more harm than good.

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AP Google
August 01, 2009

Governor to senator: 'Put up or shut up' on Yucca

Sandra Chereb

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Gov. Jim Gibbons challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday to "put up or shut up" about working to stop Yucca Mountain from being used as the nation's nuclear repository.

Gibbons wrote a letter to Reid, D-Nev., asking him to use his influence in Congress to repeal the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that designates Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear dump.

"Sen. Reid should make Nevada safer by working to immediately repeal the NWPA and kill Yucca Mountain once and for all," Gibbons said in a written statement.

Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid, dismissed the criticism.

"Jim Gibbons has done very little as governor to advance the state's fight against Yucca Mountain," he said.

Thursday, Reid said he had been assured by the Obama administration that it will seek to eliminate funding in 2011 for a review needed to open the nuclear waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Obama opposes the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump, and Energy Department officials have said it's the administration's policy that Yucca Mountain would never be used. But the licensing process continues.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted to cut funding for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review to $29 million in 2010. The president had requested $56 million.

The Obama administration has said it will appoint a commission to find alternatives to Yucca Mountain.

"I'm convinced that for the foreseeable future, for the next 50 to 100 years, we'll simply store the spent fuel rods on site," Reid told reporters this week in Washington, D.C.

The statement did not satisfy Gibbons.

"Every few weeks or months we hear from someone in Congress that Yucca Mountain is dead, yet the project and the licensing process continue," Gibbons said.

The governor himself has come under fire for sending mixed messages on Yucca Mountain.

In his budget proposal to the 2009 Legislature, Gibbons sought to cut staff at the state's Nuclear Projects office, citing the state's revenue shortfall

In 2007, he backed a decision by the state engineer for a monthlong extension allowing the U.S. Department of Energy to use the state's water to drill bore holes near the mountain.

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Senator Harry Reid
July 31, 2009

Reid Announces Yucca License Application Funds to be Eliminated in Budget

Following conversations with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the White House, Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced that the administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off all funding to pursue a license application for the Yucca Mountain Project in the 2011 budget. The only funding allocated for Yucca will be used to conclude the work being done on the project, bringing the ill-conceived project to its rightful end. This agreement is a major victory for Nevada, and comes on the heels of the $27 million cut Reid secured in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill that passed yesterday.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain Project. I look forward to continuing my work with the President and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste.” To read more about Senator Reid’s work to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada pleas, click here.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 31, 2009

Reid declares Yucca victory

Senator says licensing funds erased

By Keith Rogers
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he dealt a fatal blow to the funding-starved Yucca Mountain Project on Thursday, announcing that President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have agreed to eliminate all money for pursuing a license for the nuclear waste disposal project in 2011.

"The only funding allocated for Yucca will be used to conclude the work being done at the site, bringing the ill-conceived project to its rightful end," Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement.

The agreement evolved after Reid cut $27 million from the project's 2010 license application funding in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill that passed Wednesday.

During a conference call with former Vice President Al Gore about next month's Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Reid said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well won't have money to continue its four-year review of the license application that Chu's predecessor, Samuel Bodman, submitted last year near the end of the Bush administration.

"It will be terminated. There's no money and there's no way to do it," Reid said.

But killing the project outright would require an act of Congress to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, said Paul Seidler, senior director for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry.

"All I can really say is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is the law of the land. Until the nuclear waste policy act is changed, the law is very clear on what has to take place," Seidler said by telephone from his Henderson office.

Asked Thursday about amending the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Reid said, "No. I don't think we have to change that."

Seidler acknowledged that Reid can influence the funding process and stop it altogether.

"But at some point in time, you have to go back and follow the Nuclear Waste Policy Act or modify the Nuclear Waste Policy Act," Seidler said.

The licensing process can be stopped and restarted, he said, and another administration could revive the Yucca Mountain Project.

"Certainly that can always happen," Seidler said.

He said the Nuclear Energy Institute has written a letter to Chu, asking that the Energy Department stop collecting money from nuclear utility ratepayers if DOE doesn't intend to go forward with its plans to entomb 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel and highly radioactive waste in a maze of tunnels in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"The law of the land is very clear," Seidler said. "Cutting funding to the licensing process doesn't fully address the situation."

Chu's office didn't give details about the verbal agreement to which Reid alluded.

"The president opposes the Yucca Mountain Project, and that is reflected in the (fiscal year) 2010 budget and will be again in the (fiscal year) 2011 budget," Chu's spokeswoman, Stephanie Mueller, wrote in an e-mail.

She didn't respond to follow-up questions about what work needs to be concluded at the site, whether it be environmental remediation or closing permanently the five-mile exploratory tunnel in the volcanic rock ridge.

Obama's fiscal 2010 budget contained $196.8 million for the proposed waste repository. That was more than $100 million cut from this year, continuing a steep fiscal slide for the program.

The previous low for funding DOE's nuclear waste disposal program was $243.5 million, appropriated for 1991.

The 2010 budget includes funding for a commission to study alternatives to the Nevada effort. The panel, which Chu has not yet announced, is expected to take two years to make its recommendations.

Earlier this month, Reid said asking that the Department of Energy withdraw the license application wasn't in his immediate plans. "I don't know why we need that," he told the Review-Journal.

On Thursday, Reid said there is no hurry to put nuclear waste in a repository anywhere.

"I'm convinced that for the foreseeable future, the next 50 to 100 years, we'll simply store the spent fuel rods on-site.

"We don't have to worry about transportation, because that's where it gets dangerous. ... I'm not opposed to nuclear power but it's pretty expensive. But if you produce nuclear power, you just leave it where you produce the energy," Reid said about highly radioactive waste.

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

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Las Vegas SUN
July 31, 2009

Reid writes obit for Yucca, pointing to new Obama vow

Yucca compared to horror-show zombie that will not die

By Lisa Mascaro

Washington — The head of the Nevada agency fighting the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump likes to compare it to a horror-show zombie that will not die.

The Yucca Mountain project has seen its funding slashed, its science dismissed, its support dwindle. Still it lives on.

But on Thursday, the project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas suffered its strongest blow yet.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the White House and its energy secretary have agreed to provide no funding in next year’s budget to pursue the project’s license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The agreement Reid reached with the White House is perhaps the most significant move to stop the project in the more than 20 years since the site was targeted by Congress and the nuclear industry as a place to bury highly radioactive fuel rods used at nuclear power plants.

If the president declines to fund the application process when he unveils his fiscal 2011 budget early next year, the Energy Department would not be able to continue the review, essentially halting decades of effort.

“Withdrawing the funds certainly stops it in its tracks,” said Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which is fighting the project. “Cutting off the money is like chopping its legs off. It can’t move.”

President Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail to stop the dump if he was elected. He won Nevada, traditionally a swing state, by a wide margin.

Obama and Reid have since formed a working relationship as the president relies on the top Democrat to help usher his agenda through Congress — and Reid has been in talks with the administration to end the Yucca Mountain project.

Obama’s first budget severely reduced Yucca Mountain’s funding and included his intent to “terminate” the project.

Obama offered $196.8 million for Yucca Mountain — a fraction of what the Energy Department needs to develop the dump and a clear signal that Yucca’s days were numbered.

Yet the project’s foes remained skeptical, because Obama was allowing its license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to proceed, a process that can take up to four years.

As long as the license application continues, opponents worried, the dump was not truly dead. What would stop a future president from opening the dump?

Obama’s energy secretary, Nobel laureate Steven Chu, didn’t calm concerns.

Chu suggested that allowing the licensing process to play itself out would have scientific value if and when another geological repository is proposed for storing nuclear waste.

Observers also thought the administration was biding time so as not to trigger more lawsuits from the utility companies. The utilities have sued the federal government for its failure to open Yucca Mountain in 1998, as promised, and the government has amassed damages of more than $7 billion and climbing.

On Wednesday, as the Senate was working its way through votes on the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill for the Energy Department and related agencies, Reid was on the phone with Chu and the White House.

The administration relayed its intent to significantly reduce funding for the next fiscal year.

On Thursday Reid announced the administration had agreed to cut off in 2011 all funding to pursue the license application. The only money made available would be to conclude the work, bringing the project to a close, he said.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said in a statement. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain project.

“I look forward to continuing my work with the president and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste,” Reid said.

Reid is up for reelection in 2010, and the ability to trumpet such a major blow to a project that many Nevadans oppose would be a significant campaign coup.

The fiscal 2011 budget would likely be announced early next year and would be making its way through Congress next summer, as election season is under way.

Administration officials confirmed this week’s talks.

“The president opposes the Yucca Mountain project, and that is reflected in the FY 2010 budget and will be again in the FY 2011 budget,” a White House spokesman said.

The administration is assembling a panel of experts to recommend alternatives to the Nevada site, and the “Department of Energy will be making an announcement soon on the formation of the Blue Ribbon Commission,” an agency spokeswoman said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the main industry lobby, was not pleased, and hinted at additional legal action from the utilities.

“Budget decisions that, in effect, significantly delay the repository program are counter to current policy and would result in the government defaulting on contracts with utilities at a cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers,” institute spokesman John Keeley said.

But longtime dump foe Rep. Shelley Berkeley, a Democrat, welcomed the news. “With this announcement, we are closer than ever before to eliminating this threat to the very future of Las Vegas.”

Yet Yucca is not over until it’s over.

The law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 — naming Yucca Mountain as the chosen site for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel — remains on the books.

Overturning that law may prove daunting, as even congressional allies of Reid and Obama represent states with nuclear power plants that want to get rid of the waste.

Shy of overturning the law, two other avenues remain for killing the dump plan.

Under the law, the energy secretary has the authority to withdraw the license application from the queue — a move the Obama campaign said last year it would make if he became president.

The energy secretary also has the authority to declare the Yucca Mountain site unsuitable, which would withdraw it from consideration.

Until these happen, or the law is overturned, Breslow said, Yucca still lives.

“We’re hoping that Secretary Chu will withdraw the license application and declare the site unsuitable based on all of the technical findings that Nevada has proved over the years,” Breslow said.

“The day that the license application gets withdrawn and the site is declared unsuitable by the energy secretary is the day I finally let out a deep breath.”

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Las Vegas SUN
July 31, 2009

Veteran anti-Yucca activist reacts to Montandon’s pro-dump comments

By Jon Ralston

Judy Treichel warns gubernatorial hopeful Mike Montandon of the dangers of inviting the feds to send nuclear waste here. See her letter at right.

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NEVADA NUCLEAR WASTE TASK FORCE, INCORPORATED

Judy Treichel, Exec. Director
Non-profit/Public Advocacy
E-mail: judynwtf@aol.com
4587 Ermine Court
Las Vegas, NV 89147
Fax: 702-248-1128
Phone: 702-248-1127
Toll Free: 800-227-9809

July 30, 2009

E-mail: Campaign@MikeMontandon.com

Dear Mayor Montandon,

I recently watched the July 21, 2009 show "Nevada Newsmakers" where you were the guest. I thought that you did a good job of answering questions that skipped through a wide variety of issues. You were certainly right when you stated, several times, that Nevada needs to increase business opportunities through innovation and a broadening of our economic base. I however disagree with your answer to Randi Thompson's question regarding opportunities at Yucca Mountain.

In the interest of openness and full disclosure I think that Ms. Thompson should have stated that she is the executive director of a Northern Nevada organization that supports the Department of Energy's nuclear waste efforts at Yucca Mountain as well as being a former DOE employee. Likewise, I have an active interest in Yucca Mountain because of my position as the executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, an organization that for more than twenty years has been a public advocate in opposition to the Yucca Mountain project.

During the show you noted differences in approach and position from Governor Gibbons and previous governors. The current and previous Nevada Congressional delegations and Nevada Legislature since 1989, have all opposed Yucca Mountain. I participated in a Congressional hearing a few years ago and heard then Congressman Gibbons explain why, as a geologist, he opposed Yucca Mountain for scientific reasons and questioned some of the DOE data supporting the proposed repository.

You expressed interest in the development of reprocessing technologies at Yucca Mountain. While there are ongoing DOE sponsored research projects at Nevada universities on radioactive materials and Yucca Mountain, inviting the government and commercial nuclear industry to send the nation's waste to Nevada would be an irreversible mistake. Recent federal reprocessing program plans are no longer being considered and an environmental impact statement to select locations for such projects was halted. Nevada was not and should not have been on the list of possible sites. Reprocessing uses large quantities of water and turns it into radioactive waste. Nevada has insufficient water for such a project and none to waste. Places where reprocessing has been done like Hanford Washington, now face multi-billion dollar cleanups. West Valley, New York is undergoing an expensive remediation and the current price tag at Hanford tops $200 billion.

Closing the nuclear fuel cycle will and must happen one day but not at Yucca Mountain. Even licensing a nuclear reactor there would be impossible with all the earthquakes and lack of a major sustainable water source.

You said that the Yucca Mountain area is "awfully remote." Though there is not a large population (about 1,500) there, Amargosa Valley which is dependent on the aquifer under Yucca Mountain, has the largest dairy in the State of Nevada -- a multimillion dollar industry that distributes milk in Nevada and California. Crops supporting the dairy and other businesses are grown there as well.

Randi Thompson's organization has made every effort to make it appear that Yucca Mountain could bring dollars, raining down like fairy dust, to end our financial woes. Not true. If our state agreed to sign a "benefit agreement" as provided for in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and stop all opposition to the project, we would receive $10 million per year - less than $5 per citizen. Our health and safety must not be for sale for any price.

While there are undoubtedly many fantastic opportunities for new businesses, those associated with nuclear waste should not be considered in a place with frequent earthquakes underground, Air Force training missions overhead and scarce water sources that must be protected.

In your run for Governor of Nevada, you will be asked what your position is on Yucca Mountain and/or nuclear waste. When you draft your public policy statement on these issues, we would be very happy to answer any questions or help in any way that we can. It would also be helpful for you to contact Bruce Breslow, the executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects/ Nuclear Waste Project Office in Carson City (775-687-3744).

Yours truly,

Judy Treichel
Executive Director

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Environment News Service
July 31, 2009

Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump Dead

WASHINGTON, DC, July 30, 2009 (ENS) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has achieved his long-held plan of doing away with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Following conversations with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the White House, Senator Reid today announced that the administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off all funding to pursue a license application for the Yucca Mountain Project in the 2011 budget. It had been approved as the nation's only permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and Department of Defense high-level radioactive waste.

"This is a major victory for Nevada," Reid said. "I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain Project. I look forward to continuing my work with the President and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste."

In 2002, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed Public Law 107-200, which approved Yucca Mountain as the site for the repository at Yucca Mountain. On June 3, 2008, the Energy Department submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking construction authorization for the repository.

Currently, the 77,000 tons of high level nuclear waste that were supposed to go to Yucca Mountain are held in temporary surface storage facilities located at 131 sites in 39 states.

The federal government sought approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license that would safely store the highly radioactive waste for a 10,000-year regulatory compliance period.

The proposed site for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is on federal land at the edge of the Nevada Nuclear Test site. The volcanic area has fractured, and critics expressed concerns that water moving through the fractures into the facility could corrode the containers holding the waste, releasing radioactivity into the environment.

Since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain, excluding underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site.

With today's agreement, the only funding allocated for Yucca Mountain will be used to conclude the work being done at the site, bringing what Reid calls "the ill-conceived project" to its end.

This agreement follows the $27 million Reid cut from Yucca's 2010 license application funding in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill that passed the Senate Wednesday.

The license application funding was cut from President Obama's requested $56 million to $29 million. As passed by the Senate, bill follows the President's budget level of $196.8 million to terminate Yucca Mountain and fund the Secretary of Energy's Blue Ribbon Commission to develop alternative nuclear waste management solutions.

The Yucca Mountain project had suffered many setbacks such as the discovery in 2005 that emails sent by a U.S. Geological Survey staffer between May 1998 and March 2000 "indicated that he had fabricated documentation of his work," the USGS said in a statement at the time.

The staffer was preparing computer models on water infiltration and climate at Yucca Mountain that relate to the potential for the release of radioactivity from the repository.

Reid said at the time that the revelation "proves once again that DOE must cheat and lie to make Yucca Mountain look safe."

Then, in 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had to revise its dose limits for people exposed to radiation from Yucca Mountain to satisfy a July 2004 court order to extend the standards' duration from 10,000 to one million years. The court also ordered the EPA to require that the Department of Energy consider the effects of climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes, and corrosion of the waste packages to safely contain the waste during the one million-year period.

Many Nevada citizens' groups protested the repository, including Native Americans. They say that Yucca Mountain is located within the Western Shoshone Nation and has long been a place of powerful spiritual energy for the Shoshone and the Paiute.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, NEI, an industry association, supported the Yucca Mountain facility, but now accepts the new political reality.

Alex Flint, the Nuclear Energy Institute's senior vice president for governmental affairs, commented today, "In the area of used nuclear fuel management, NEI recommends a program that includes at-reactor storage, centralized interim storage, research, development, demonstration and deployment of recycling technology, and eventual disposal of the byproducts resulting from recycling uranium fuel at a national repository."

"Within that framework," said Flint, "the proposed funding level of $196 million for the Yucca Mountain repository program, though far from ideal, reflects current political realities."

NEI believes the blue-ribbon commission to be named by Energy Secretary Steven Chu must be established soon and assigned credible members and an appropriate charter. "It should define the policy direction that the administration proposes for the management of both commercial used nuclear fuel and government nuclear waste," Flint said.

Flint said there must now be an end to the collection of hundreds of millions of dollars each for the Nuclear Waste Fund. Established by Congress in 1982, the utilities collect one-tenth of a cent for every kilowatt-hour used from consumers of nuclear generated electricity to pay into the waste fund for the nation's used nuclear fuel disposal program.

Until the blue-ribbon commission makes it recommendations and Congress amends the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to implement a new used fuel program, "it is unreasonable for DOE to continue collecting approximately $800 million per year from electricity customers and ratepayers for the Nuclear Waste Fund," said Flint. "The fund has a balance in excess of $22 billion and additional collections cannot be justified until the extent of changes to the existing program is determined."

Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, calls Yucca Mountain, the "failed $100 billion dinosaur in the Nevada desert."

"Waste from reactors can be safely stored in dry-cask storage at current locations for the next 100 years, Berkley said. "Meanwhile the nuclear industry continues to press lawsuits seeking to collect billions in damages from taxpayers via the U.S. Treasury."

"Ending Yucca Mountain now," she said, "will allow us to begin addressing this liability merry-go-round."

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Power Engineering Magazine
July 31, 2009

Senate cuts funds for Yucca Mountain review

31 July 2009-- The Senate July 30 voted to cut next year's funding to support efforts by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review a controversial license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. The Senate voted to cut funding to $29 million, less than the $56 million President Obama had requested.

The Associated Press said money for the NRC review would be eliminated for fiscal year 2011. Losing the money would sap the agency of resources necessary to review the application.

"This is a major victory for Nevada," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the AP. "I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain project."

President Obama has opposed using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste site. The NRC said in July it would continue with a license review.

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World Magazine
July 31, 2009

Mountain of bureaucracy

ENERGY: The Senate and House are caught in an energy industry battle over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository | Jacob Parrish

WASHINGTON—On the back of a $34.3 billion energy spending bill, the Senate this week moved closer to closing Yucca Mountain, the only developed nuclear waste repository site in the United States. Supporters of the Yucca Mountain project, which is located 90 miles from Las Vegas, say this is another case of Washington bureaucrats mishandling what should be managed by private industry.

The Yucca Mountain project, which is 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making, was on track to begin safely storing at least 77,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste. But now experts say 155,000 tons of spent radioactive fuel rods will instead remain in already crowded temporary storage facilities beneath nuclear power plants across the country.

An earlier House version of the same bill pushes to keep the Nevada option alive, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has fought hard to close the site and search for alternatives. The Senate, in voting to cut the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s funding in half, sapped it of the resources needed to approve a Yucca opening, and Reid said the Obama administration assured him it would cut such funding completely by 2011.

“Reid uses every bit of his weight as leader of the Senate to strong-arm people into supporting the death of Yucca Mountain, but I don’t think that he’s killed it,” said Jack Spencer, a nuclear energy expert for The Heritage Foundation.

The Senate will still have to negotiate with the House during a conference committee to hammer out the final version of the bill.

Since the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, energy companies and consumers have been required to pay over $29 billion into a fund that the government promised to use to construct and operate a permanent nuclear waste repository by 1997. Energy companies already have grown weary of government delays and are threatening to stop their payments. By burying the site that was supposed to bury nuclear waste, the government would be in complete default of its 1982 agreement.

“I don’t think it’s closing,” Spencer told me. “It will muddle along until there is a better resolution for it.” He added that the United States needs a geological repository not only for nuclear power plant waste, but also for approximately 7,000 tons of radioactive military waste.

Reid and President Obama, who promised in his campaign to put the brakes on Yucca Mountain, have remained staunch in their objections to using the site. Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Yucca Mountain was “off the table” and he commissioned a blue-ribbon study group to search for alternatives. But the July House bill required the commission to continue to consider Yucca as a solution.

Critics say the transportation of nuclear waste across the country could be extremely dangerous and Nevada lawmakers for years have used a fight against Yucca as a political rallying device. Obama, however, granted $196 million in funding within the federal budget to keep the site maintained and there is no viable long-term storage alternative.

“No technical study has ever shown that Yucca is not safe,” Spencer said.

One alternative to storing spent fuel rods is to recycle them, as France and Japan do, using them a second time to create nuclear energy. Experts say this would cut 155,000 tons of waste to only about 5,000 tons needing to be stored, however, the waste would then be 50 times more radioactive.

The United States currently does not allow nuclear recycling, but experts say overflow waste could be held in interim storage facilities for at least a decade as recycling facilities are developed, and a new government entity could be created to handle the volatile recycled waste.

Spencer says the real solution is to put the energy industry, not the federal government, in the driver’s seat to negotiate this process and come up with a viable long-term solution.

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Senator Harry Reid
July 30, 2009

Reid Cuts Yucca License Funding By $27 Million

Energy and water bill passed by Senate funds key projects across Nevada

July 29, 2009

Washington, D.C. – In leading the U.S. Senate toward passage of the 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, Nevada Senator Harry Reid was successful in cutting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s license application funding for the Yucca Mountain Project from the President’s requested $56 million to $29 million. The Senate-passed bill follows the President’s budget level of $196.8 million to terminate Yucca and fund the Secretary of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission to develop alternative nuclear waste management solutions.

“The Senate’s vote today affirms the President’s budget to terminate Yucca Mountain and to begin working on more responsible alternative solutions for nuclear waste,” Reid said. “I’ll continue my work with the Administration and our congressional delegation to prevent Nevada from ever again being considered as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.”

In addition to his efforts to kill Yucca Mountain, Reid secured more than $57 million for Nevada energy and water projects ranging from renewable energy planning, infrastructure and development to water reclamation and flood control projects.

“This funding will help address many of Nevada’s infrastructure needs while creating jobs and further positioning our state to be the leader in clean renewable energy.”

Details of the funding Reid secured are below.

Energy Projects

Project: Nevada Renewable Energy Integration and Development Consortium
Location: Washoe County, Clark County, and other Nevada counties
Amount: $3,000,000
Summary: The Consortium is an association of DRI, UNLV, UNR, and community colleges. Funding will be used for collaboration with business and industry on research, development, demonstration, deployment, commercialization, education and training related to renewable energy technologies. Nevada has some of the nation's best solar and geothermal energy resources in the United States and the Consortium is well positioned to develop and commercialize technologies to tap these resources, which will benefit the entire region economically and work towards the President's clean energy priorities.

Project: Development of Biofuels Using Ionic Transfer Membranes
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $1,500,000
Summary: Funds will be used to research an electrochemical process to produce a lower-cost biofuel with no hazardous contaminants and reduced waste steam. This scalable project will reduce the cost of biodiesel manufacturing processes and allow for on-site production of the catalyst, reducing transportation costs, avoiding shelf-life costs, and reducing safety hazards.

Project: UNR- Biodiesel from Food Waste
Location: Reno
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: Funding will advance UNR's work on an alternative bio-diesel fuel from food and beverage waste. It is estimated that this process could potentially add 340 million gallons of bio-diesel to the world’s fuel supply and UNR is working with local companies to develop a pilot plant using this technology. This project fulfills DOE's high priority of advancing alternative transportation fuels research, especially biodiesel, and developing new feedstock for such fuels.

Project: Solar energy zone planning and infrastructure
Location: Nye County
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: Funds will be used to identify, secure necessary permits and/or rights of way, and install infrastructure to support a solar energy zone with adequate resources to support at least 1,000 MW of electricity from either solar PV or solar thermal facilities. Demonstrating a new process by which the Federal government can work with solar energy developers to site and permit solar energy projects on Federal lands will help facilitate the development of many large clean renewable energy projects.

Project: Washoe Wind Turbine Demonstration Project
Location: Gardnerville
Amount: $50,000
Summary: Funds will be used to install 6 wind turbines with a capacity of 18 kW for a demonstration project. The turbines would be located at two HeadStart educational buildings, two community centers, a gas station and the Washoe agricultural ranch. The project will help the Tribe become less dependent on other Federal funds and serve as a model project for how clean renewable energy can be incorporated with tribal economies.

Project: Great Basin College- Direct-Use Geothermal Demonstration Project
Location: Elko
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: This research initiative will enhance the existing geothermal "users group loop", which provides geothermal energy to a number of public facilities. An expanded system will provide a learning laboratory for students at Great Basin College's Career and Technical Education Programs. The project will increase the production of clean geothermal energy, and serve as the anchor of a training program for green jobs. Northern Nevada has tremendous renewable energy supplies that this program will help create capacity to develop in the near future.

Project: Renewable Energy Initiatives for Clark County, Nevada Parks and Recreation
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: Funds will be used to provide solar energy facilities for parks, including the Nellis Dunes ORV Recreation Park. The project will provide clean solar energy - an abundant resource in southern Nevada - for a public recreational facility open to residents and tourists.

Project: Fallon Paiute- Shoshone Tribe Demonstration Energy Park
Location: Fallon
Amount: $200,000
Summary: Requested funding will provide support for a feasibility study of the solar resources available on the Tribe's land and planning for a demonstration project for a commercial scale solar project. This is a first of a kind project for the Native American community and will stimulate cooperation with Tribes on clean energy development on Tribal lands. This approach could be replicated with other Tribes.

Project: Alternative Energy School of the Future
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $1,200,000
Summary: Funding would complete installation of a solar photovoltaic (PV) powered regenerative fuel cell system to provide energy to the school and teach students about alternative energy. Nevada has some of the nation's best solar energy resources, and educating students about renewable energy and its value, while also saving school costs with clean renewable power achieves multiple policy objectives at once.

Project: UNR- Mass Exchanger Technology for Geothermal and Solar Energy Systems
Location: Reno
Amount: $1,200,000
Summary: This project would develop a heat exchange process designed to dramatically improve heat/mass exchange performance via boiling/condensation, solar, and water treatment. This research could lead to breakthroughs that allow energy utilities to harness the power of renewable energy.

Project: NIREC- Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization- Facility
Location: Reno
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: Funding will be used to commercialize research projects and accelerate renewable energy solutions into the marketplace. Incubating and accelerating viable renewable energy technologies is a national interest. Federal funding is a prerequisite to attracting private sector funding for subsequent production scaling (bridging the gap between investors and inventors), and will stimulate the creation of a large number of jobs

Project: Development of Ultrafiltration Membrane-Separation Technology for Energy-Efficient Water Treatment and Desalination Process
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $800,000
Summary: This project will develop new membrane-separation technology for water treatment and desalination processes using the membrane materials synthesized at the project's lab. This environmentally benign process could potentially benefit dry regions and enhance security by providing a new source of drinking water more efficiently than traditional desalination.

Project: Renewable Energy Feasibility Study and Resources Assessment for White Pine County
Location: White Pine County
Amount: $500,000
Summary: Funds will be used to develop a feasibility study and renewable energy resource assessment for White Pine County, as well as nurture any planned development of renewable energy resources. White Pine County is home to substantial wind and solar energy resources, but it is sparsely populated with little tax base. This funding will help Nevada and the region develop clean energy resources that will create jobs.

Project: Gas heat pump cooperative training program
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $250,000
Summary: This project will establish a technical training program for energy efficient and eco-friendly air-conditioning/refrigeration systems. Funding will help achieve the President's goal of building capacity to create green jobs to deploy energy efficiency technologies quickly.

Project: DRI Renewable Energy Center (REC)
Location: Reno
Amount: $500,000
Summary: Funding will establish a Renewable Energy Center to coordinate DRI's research, development and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. Nevada has some of the nation's best renewable energy resources, and DRI is well-positioned to perform research and commercialize technologies that will help best use the state's resources for the nation's benefit.

Project: UNR- Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy
Location: Reno
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: The Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy is an economic engine for the Great Basin's geothermal industry. Funding will support competitive research, education, and outreach through the Center. The Center's activities provide a cohesive research and outreach program designed to meet the needs of the growing geothermal industry in the Great Basin. This capacity is needed to train the next generation of geothermal geoscientists, plant operators, and engineers.

Project: Solar electric power for nonsectarian educational and social services facility
Location: Reno
Amount: $500,000
Summary: This project will install solar panels on Chabad of Northern Nevada's major service buildings used to provide nonsectarian educational and social services. Funded through DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program, this project will broaden the deployment of distributed solar power. Money saved on electricity will be used to provide expanded social services. Chabad provides nonsectarian educational and social services to 140,000 individuals annually. This project will reduce the load on the grid, and money saved from clean distributed power will be used to provide expanded social services.

Project: Algal-Based Renewable Energy for Nevada
Location: Reno
Amount: $800,000
Summary: Funding will demonstrate the feasibility of algal-based energy systems in Nevada, using renewable energy to produce biodiesel from algal strains. Nevada has little conventional biomass resources, but abundant supplies of solar and geothermal resources make the State particularly well suited for growing algae. Developing methods of generating algae-based biofuels from solar, geothermal and other renewable energy will benefit areas with few biomass resources. Alternative feedstock for clean fuels will provide more options for helping reduce the nation's dependence on oil.

Project: Nevada Water Resources Data, Modeling, and Visualization Center
Location: Reno
Amount: $500,000
Summary: Funding will equip a data center needed to better understand the current potential future distribution of water resources in Nevada, including use of supercomputer with DRI’s visualization facilities for visualization of water resource scenarios. Water is a critical natural resource that is limited in the southwestern US. This project will provide essential capacity for fully understanding the current distribution of water supplies and predicting future conditions and their impacts due to climate change and increased demand.

Project: Performance Assessment Institute
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $1,000,000
Summary: Funding will provide support for a partnership with the National Supercomputing Center for Energy and the Environment and Sandia National Labs to improve our nation's performance assessment capabilities by enhancing and extending High Performance computing resources for advanced modeling applications and training. Performance assessment is a useful tool for determining risk and proper system performance that can be used in a wide variety of applications involving new technologies.

Project: Northern Nevada Renewable Energy Training Project
Location: Reno
Amount: $500,000
Summary: This project will establish a renewable energy technician training program to address the need for a skilled workforce to build and maintain renewable energy facilities. Comprehensive community-based renewable energy training programs like the one proposed in this project will play an important role in preparing our nation for a revitalized clean energy economy.

Water Projects

Project: Rural Nevada Water Infrastructure- Sec. 595
Location: Nevada (Statewide)
Amount: $15,000,000
Summary: Funds will be used to support Sec. 595 of WRDA 1999 to provide rural localities in Nevada with funding for the design and construction of water supply, wastewater treatment, environmental restoration and surface water protection projects. The project will provide much needed improvements and construction for Nevada's rural water systems, helping compliance with stringent Federal drinking and wastewater standards and providing communities with safe reliable supplies of water.

Project: Las Vegas Wash Improvement Project; Las Vegas Wash/Lake Mead
Location: Las Vegas
Amount: $1,200,000
Summary: The requested funding will provide for the development and implementation of restoration, habitat enhancement, and water quality improvement projects. Lake Mead is the Colorado River's largest reservoir that serves downstream communities in Nevada, California, Arizona and Indian Tribes with potable water. Wash improvement will improve water quality and protect the surrounding environment.

Project: North Las Vegas- Water Reclamation Facility
Location: North Las Vegas
Amount: $2,000,000
Summary: Funding will provide support for a wastewater reclamation facility needed to eliminate the use potable water for irrigating large turf areas and industrial uses. State and city funds are financing the bulk of the project, but Federal funds are needed to quickly deploy the facility to conserve water.

Project: Truckee Meadows, Nevada Flood Control Project
Location: Reno
Amount: $10,000,000
Summary: Funding will continue engineering and design work and start of initial construction on the Truckee River Flood Control project, which will provide flood damage reduction, eco-system restoration and recreation along the Truckee River. It will provide 100 year or better flood protection in downtown Reno and in the Meadows, protecting local population and businesses from devastating flooding.

Project: Tahoe Restoration (Section 108)
Location: Lake Tahoe
Amount: $3,000,000
Summary: Funding will provide design and construction assistance for stream zone restoration and the control and treatment of urban storm water, which are critical components of the Environmental Improvement Program to restore the watershed in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The Lake Tahoe watershed is more than 75% federally managed, and the Lake is an "outstanding natural resource water" and an "impaired water body" under the Clean Water Act. Funding will further the Federal interest of maximizing the Corps' environmental restoration goals and enhance water quality in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Project: Urban Flood Demonstration Program
Location: Reno
Amount: $2,500,000
Summary: This funding will support an ongoing collaboration between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Engineer Research and Development Center to reduce flood damage in urban areas and develop integrated design tools for stream restoration. Flood management and stream restoration are key components of Corps of Engineers and FEMA's missions. This project will contribute to the nationwide need for technology development in flood control and stream restoration in urban areas, which are in risk of severe economic damage as a result of flood damage.

Project: Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse Program
Location: Clark County
Amount: $2,500,000
Summary: Funding will demonstrate the chemical and microbiological safety of recycled and reclaimed water, and improve the efficiency of desalination. Funds will be used to address the ongoing impacts of drought in the west by advancing critical science and technologies to reduce costs of utilizing alternative water supplies. Access to safe and reliable water supplies will ensure a stable economic base throughout the nation, but particularly in areas like the southwest.

Project: Tahoe Partnership
Location: Lake Tahoe
Amount: $400,000
Summary: Requested funding will support for the design and construction of a stream zone restoration to control and treat urban storm water. The Lake Tahoe watershed is more than 75% federally managed, and the Lake is an "outstanding natural resource water" and an "impaired water body" under the Clean Water Act. This funding will further the Federal interest of maximizing the Corps' environmental restoration goals and enhance water quality in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Project: Lake Tahoe Regional Wetlands
Location: Lake Tahoe
Amount: $2,500,000
Summary: Requested funding will Lake Tahoe regional wetlands development and restoration. This funding will further the Federal interest of maximizing the Corps' environmental restoration goals and enhance water quality in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

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AP Google
July 30, 2009

Reid says more cuts ahead for Yucca Mountain

Kevin Freking

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Obama administration will seek to eliminate funding for a review needed to open a nuclear waste respository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The loss of funding, beginning with the 2011 budget, would sap the agency of its ability to continue with a review that began last year.

President Barack Obama promised to oppose the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, but the 1987 law requiring that waste be stored at the site remains on the books, so the project could in theory be revived.

The Bush administration Energy Department submitted a license application with the NRC last year seeking approval to construct the repository. On Wednesday, the Senate voted to cut next years' funding for the review to $29 million. The president had requested $56 million.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 30, 2009

Reid: White House to cut off Yucca funding

Budget for pursuing a license application cut to zero in fiscal 2011

By Lisa Mascaro

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today that the White House and its Energy Secretary have agreed to cut off all funding to pursue the license for Yucca Mountain in next year’s budget.

President Barack Obama promised Nevadans the nuclear waste repository north of Las Vegas would not be built on his watch, and substantially cut funding in his first budget for fiscal 2010 now before Congress.

Yet Obama had allowed the funding for the pursuit of the license application to continue before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, worrying Yucca Mountain opponents who feared a new president could one day open the dump.

Reid’s office said this afternoon that following conversations with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the White House the administration has agreed to cut off all funding to pursue a license application in fiscal 2011.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said in a statement. The only funding allocated for Yucca would be to conclude the work being done at the site, bringing the project to a close.

“I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain Project. I look forward to continuing my work with the President and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste.”

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Las Vegas SUN
July 30, 2009

Yucca Mountain:

Yep, waste dump still on track for deep-sixing

Efforts to reignite Yucca project fail as Senate passes spending bill

By Lisa Mascaro

Washington — Another sign of the possible demise of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could be seen Wednesday on the floor of the Senate as the chamber worked its way through the annual energy spending bill for 2010.

The bill, which passed late in the day, reduces funding to develop the radioactive waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as part of the Obama administration’s vow to terminate the project.

The bill also reflects Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to reduce by half the amount of money to pay for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of Yucca Mountain, potentially curtailing the independent body’s ability to process the dump’s license application.

Unlike the House, which tried this month to salvage the Yucca Mountain project, the Senate was making no such gestures.

Maneuvers to breathe new life into Yucca Mountain did not materialize.

The one effort backed by the nuclear energy industry that succeeded in the Senate was an industry request to halt payments that nuclear energy utility customers have been making into a fund for waste disposal, given that the dump’s development seems unlikely.

Reid said in a statement late Wednesday that the bill’s passage affirms the president’s plan to end the Yucca Mountain project and seek alternatives.

The senator vowed to work on alternatives and “prevent Nevada from ever again being considered as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.”

In trying to keep good on his campaign promise to Nevadans that the Yucca Mountain project would not happen under his watch, Obama announced a severe financial blow to the project when he unveiled his 2010 budget.

Obama is seeking $198.6 million for Yucca, a fraction of what the Energy Department says is needed to develop the repository.

Yet Reid’s office at the time suggested that further cuts were needed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Development of Yucca Mountain is now in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s court. The agency plans to spend the next four years reviewing the repository’s license application with hearings in a courtroom-like setting in Las Vegas.

Because Obama did not halt the application process before the commission, some Yucca opponents doubted the project was truly terminated. They worry the application review could proceed until a new president decides to open the dump.

Observers say Obama has allowed Yucca’s application to continue because the administration wants to avoid legal battles with the utility companies while it forms an alternative. The companies have sued the government for failing to take the waste off their hands.

Plus Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate, has said he sees value in allowing the science to play out in the application process.

Still, Reid wanted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cut, and the energy spending bill reduces the president’s request from $56 million to $29 million, a nearly 50 percent slash.

The House and Senate bills have several differences that will need to be resolved for final passage.

The House bill includes a provision that would keep Yucca Mountain on the table as an option before the administration’s new commission that is being formed to study alternative waste sites.

Also to be resolved is whether to grant the industry’s request to cut customers’ payments to the waste fund, which now has amassed $22 billion.

The industry thinks it is unfair for customers to continue paying into the fund if the repository will not be built. But longtime dump foe Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, said if the industry “wanted to really do something good for families, they would join in our effort to dump Yucca Mountain.”

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Nevada Appeal
July 30, 2009

Senate passes energy bill that kills Yucca facility

By the Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3 billion energy spending bill that backs up President Barack Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.

The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers hundreds of water projects being undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Yucca Mountain project 90 miles from Las Vegas was designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste, but has been strongly opposed by the Nevada delegation, which had been outgunned in its efforts to kill it.

The move fulfills a campaign promise by Obama to close Yucca Mountain, which was 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. It would, however, leave the country without a long-term solution for storing highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

The waste disposal problem has become worse since the federal government scrapped plans to open Yucca Mountain. Instead, radioactive fuel rods are now stored in large concrete and steel canisters on the grounds of nuclear plants around the country.

The 1987 law requiring waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain law remains on the books, however, so the project could in theory be revived. The Yucca Mountain project would still receive the $196.8 million budgeted by Obama for work on the site — and to keep several hundred employees working — though the money won't go to ship waste there.

The House earlier this month passed its own $33.3 billion measure covering energy programs and water projects that also contained the Yucca Mountain provision.

The two bills now go to a House-Senate conference committee to work out differences before a final bill can be sent to the president.

The Senate also adopted an amendment by California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to allow for water transfers to help farmers in California's Central Valley suffering from severe drought conditions.

“I view this as a breakthrough in the water wars in California,” Boxer said. “We were able to bring environmentalists together with the water districts.”

The provision would facilitate transfer of water from the eastern portion of the valley to the western part of the San Joaquin Valley particularly affected by a multiyear drought. Comparable language is in a House measure that passed two weeks ago.

The underlying bipartisan measure has money for a wide variety of programs, including clean energy research, and has more than 600 so-called earmarks for lawmakers, mostly for Army Corps of Engineers projects.

Unlike virtually every other spending bill moving through Congress for the 2010 budget year that begins Oct. 1, the measure essentially freezes spending for the programs covered by it. Most of the other spending bills contain spending increases far exceeding inflation.

But the corps and the Energy Department got almost $60 billion in February's economic stimulus bill. The government has been slow to spend the money, with lawmakers especially unhappy over foot-dragging on water projects.

Earlier Wednesday, transportation and housing programs received generous funding increases under draft legislation adopted by a Senate Appropriations panel.

Grants for mass transit programs fare especially well, while Obama's high-speed rail program wouldn't get nearly the increases sought by the House in companion legislation that passed that chamber last week.

The $117 billion transportation and housing measure is one of 12 annual spending bills setting agency operating budgets for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

For programs directly appropriated by the transportation and housing measure, there's a 23 percent increase over current levels — if the stimulus funding isn't included in calculations.

The bill adds $480 million, or 26 percent, to Obama's request for new or expanded grants to local governments for mass transit programs such as purchases of new cleaner-fueled buses. There's also a $500 million increase above current levels for airport construction and improvements.

But in providing $1.2 billion for high-speed rail programs, the Senate is falling well short of the House, which added $4 billion for the new program — on top of $8 billion provided in the stimulus bill. Obama requested $1 billion.

And the bill provides Obama's request of $175 million for a much-criticized program that subsidizes rural air travel. The 40 percent increase for the Essential Air Service would help entice small airlines to fly unprofitable routes to places such as Scottsbluff, Neb., Vernal, Utah, and Jamestown, N.Y.

Many critics regard the program as a boondoggle that deeply subsidizes nearly empty flights. The Obama administration has promised reforms but has yet to send lawmakers any ideas on how to fix the program.

The troubled Washington Metro system would also get a $150 million capital infusion to make repairs and replace rail cars. The system has long-overdue maintenance needs and recently experienced a crash that killed nine people.

The subsidy for the Amtrak passenger railroad, always a battle under the administration of George W. Bush, would be $1.5 billion, in line with current funding and Obama's request.

Highway funds for the states, however, would remain flat under the measure, which caps spending from the Highway Trust Fund at $42.5 billion, a 4 percent increase. The spending measure doesn't provide the highway money; it instead comes from gasoline taxes.

But with gas tax revenues slumping, the trust fund is about to go broke. The Senate's move came as the House passed a bill to transfer $7 billion from the general treasury to shore up the highway fund through Sept. 30.

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AP Google
July 30, 2009

Senate passes energy and water bill

By Andrew Taylor

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3 billion energy spending bill that backs up President Barack Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.

The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers hundreds of water projects being undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The House earlier this month passed its own $33.3 billion measure covering energy programs and water projects that also contained the Yucca Mountain provision.

The two bills now go to a House-Senate conference committee to work out differences before a final bill can be sent to the president.

"I view this as a breakthrough in the water wars in California," Boxer said. "We were able to bring environmentalists together with the water districts."

Earlier Wednesday, transportation and housing programs received generous funding increases under draft legislation adopted by a Senate Appropriations panel.

The $117 billion transportation and housing measure is one of 12 annual spending bills setting agency operating budgets for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

For programs directly appropriated by the transportation and housing measure, there's a 23 percent increase over current levels — if the stimulus funding isn't included in calculations.

The subsidy for the Amtrak passenger railroad, always a battle under the administration of George W. Bush, would be $1.5 billion, in line with current funding and Obama's request.

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Los Angeles Times
July 30, 2009

Senate passes bill to close Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site

The $34.3-billion energy measure would also allow water transfers to help California farmers suffering from severe drought conditions. Similar legislation has been approved by the House.

Washington -- The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3-billion energy spending bill that backs up President Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.

The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers water transfers to help farmers in California and hundreds of water projects by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The House passed a similar bill two weeks ago. Once the measures are reconciled, the bill will go to the president for his signature.

The Yucca Mountain project, 90 miles from Las Vegas, was designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste but has been strongly opposed by the Nevada delegation.

The move fulfills Obama's campaign promise to close Yucca Mountain, which was 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. It would, however, leave the country without a long-term solution for storing highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

The 1987 law requiring waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain remains on the books, however, so the project could in theory be revived. The Yucca Mountain project would still receive the $196.8 million budgeted by Obama for work on the site, although the money wouldn't be used to ship waste there.

The Senate also adopted an amendment by California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to allow water transfers to help California farmers suffering from severe drought conditions.

"I view this as a breakthrough in the water wars in California," Boxer said. "We were able to bring environmentalists together with the water districts."

The provision would facilitate transfer of water from the eastern portion of the San Joaquin Valley to the western part of the valley that has been particularly affected by a multiyear drought. Comparable language is in the House measure.

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NASDAQ
July 30, 2009

Sen Reid: Obama Administration To End Funding For Yucca Mountain Review

Siobhan Hughes
Dow Jones Newswires

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Thursday said that the Obama administration will seek to end funding for a review of a proposed nuclear-waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, effectively ending the program.

Last year, the Bush administration's Energy Department applied for a license for the first national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Moutain. The application was filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would lose funding for the review under a fiscal 2011 budget.

"It'll be terminated," Reid told reporters on a conference call. With no money, "there's no way to do it." Reid said he had spoken with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who plans to appoint a blue-ribbon panel to study how to deal with nuclear waste.

Nuclear waste is currently stored at 121 locations in 39 states around the country. The waste is supposed to go to Yucca Mountain, but can't because the site hasn't been licensed by the NRC.

"I am convinced that for the foreseeable future - the next 50 to 100 years - we'll simply store the spent fuel rods on site," Reid told reporters. He said that the advantage was "we don't have to worry about transportation," which is " where it gets dangerous."

--By Siobhan Hughes
Dow Jones Newswires
202-862-6654
Siobhan.Hughes@ dowjones.com

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New York Times
July 30, 2009

Sen. Dorgan Anticipates Easy Conference on Energy and Water Bill

By Ben Geman and Taryn Luntz

Merging the House and Senate fiscal 2010 spending bills for the Energy Department and federal water projects should be relatively easy, an appropriations cardinal said after the Senate passed its bill last night.

The Senate approved, 85-9, the $34.3 billion energy and water spending bill (pdf) that funds the Energy Department, the Army Corps of Engineers' water projects, the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation and several independent agencies.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, told E&E that he envisioned a smooth negotiation with the other chamber.

"I suspect that merging the two bills will provide some interesting moments, but we have generally had a good relationship with the House committee, and we have already begun some discussions about how we would begin to work on it," he said.

"I don't anticipate that this process is going to be full of controversy. I think we will be able to do this in fairly short order. We have somewhat different numbers on water issues and certain areas of energy, but I think we will get this done," Dorgan added.

The Senate bill provides almost $27.4 billion for DOE, $5.4 billion for the corps and almost $1.2 billion for Interior water programs. House and Senate lawmakers must now work out several funding differences between the spending bills. The House passed its bill, H.R. 3183 (pdf), earlier this month.

The Senate and House bills diverge in funding for new Army Corps projects. The Senate version includes no new project starts or investigations next year, breaking with President Obama's request for five new construction programs and seven new investigations or maintenance projects. The House bill includes the Obama-requested measures.

The Senate bill also funnels $89 million more to corps flood reduction projects in the Mississippi River Valley, and $93 million more to the Bureau of Reclamation.

On the energy front, the House plan provides nearly $618 million for DOE fossil energy programs, matching the White House request, while the Senate measure provides $699 million. Elsewhere, the House provides $812 million for nuclear energy programs, while the Senate provides $761 million, matching the White House request.

Both bills go along with Obama administration plans not to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and sharply cut funding to roughly $197 million. The money is mostly to continue a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process that DOE has now cast as an educational exercise, and not an effort to proceed with the project.

The decision to abandon the Yucca Project is a victory for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "I'll continue my work with the administration and our congressional delegation to prevent Nevada from ever again being considered as the nation's nuclear dumping ground," he said in a statement last night.

Reid's office also said he had cut NRC's Yucca license application funding to $29 million, compared to $56 million in the White House budget request. A Reid aide said last night that this was among the various amendments cleared as a group before the bill's passage.

Elsewhere, the House and Senate bills buck a DOE effort to end funding for hydrogen-powered vehicles research, with the Senate bill providing $190 million for hydrogen programs overall.

Energy amendments

The Senate approved a host of amendments yesterday to the measure en route to passage.

That includes Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) plan to steer $15 million into district energy and combined heat and power systems.

The amendment, adopted by voice vote, authorizes technical assistance grants from DOE's industrial technologies program to a range of parties, such as utilities, universities and local governments.

District energy systems provide heating and cooling to multiple buildings from a central plant through underground pipes, while combined heat and power systems provide both thermal energy and electric power from a single source, using heat that would otherwise be wasted.

The grants would be for uses such as engineering and feasibility studies, design work, and for analysis to overcome financial, permitting and other barriers, according to Sanders' office, and would have to be matched at various levels depending on the use of the grant.

Sanders said the technologies provide a "huge opportunity" to curb greenhouse gas emissions while creating jobs and providing reliable heating, cooling and power. He cited the usefulness of capturing what is now lost as waste heat at power plants and using it to heat and cool nearby buildings.

The Senate approved by voice vote a wind energy amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) that she said would fill a gap in current research and development programs. It steers $8 million of the bill's wind energy R&D funding specifically to be competitively awarded for purchase of wind turbine equipment to study problems with premature failures and performance problems, Hutchinson said on the floor.

The chamber also approved, 79-18, a Dorgan amendment (pdf) that seeks to prevents funds from being used for DOE contracts unless they are competitively bid, but it does not apply in all cases.

Dorgan's amendment came in response to Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) contracting amendment that would have required competitive bidding for all grants and contracts under the bill. It failed on a 26-71 vote.

Dorgan told E&E that Coburn's plan was too sweeping and would have caused serious problems, noting that competitive bidding is not appropriate in all cases, such as DOE agreements for cutting-edge research.

"That doesn't lend itself to that kind of contract bidding," Dorgan said, while adding his amendment. "Simply said, we want things competitively bid where it is appropriate to do so."

Lawmakers turned back several other amendments, including Coburn's plan that would have reduced DOE funding by $13.8 million, citing inspector general reports that found wasted energy by the department. The vote was 35-62. Coburn said the agency that plays the lead federal role in promoting energy efficiency is failing to address the issue adequately itself.

"This is a common sense amendment that we need to lead by example," spokesman Don Tatro said.

Also rejected was Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R-Tenn.) amendment that would have provided the government's ownership stakes in General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to taxpayers as stock, and also barred further use of money from last year's Wall Street bailout to aid the automakers. The amendment failed when a point of order against it was sustained on a 38-59 vote.

Water amendments

The Senate cleared an amendment by California Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein that authorizes voluntary water transfers among contractors in the state's drought-ridden Central Valley agricultural community.

The provision makes it easier to transfer water between counties and specifically authorizes water transfers between the Friant Division on the east side of the Central Valley and south-of-delta agricultural water service contractors on the west side of the valley.

Lawmakers also agreed by voice vote to an amendment from Delaware Democratic Sens. Ted Kaufman and Tom Carper that blocks the Army Corps from funding the Delaware River Main Channel Deepening Project until the state issues a permit for it. The bill allots $10 million for the controversial plan to deepen the Delaware River ship channel from 40 to 45 feet.

Delaware officials last week denied the corps' permit application for the project, and New Jersey is also opposed to the 12-year-old plan, which critics say will wreak excessive environmental damage for minimal economic benefit.

A provision from Reid and fellow Nevada Sen. John Ensign (R) that allocates $66.2 million to establish the Walker Basin Restoration Program cleared the Senate by voice vote. The program will target the restoration and maintenance of Walker Lake, a natural desert terminal lake in Nevada, according to the amendment text.

The measure also sets aside an additional $7.5 million for other water projects in the state.

The Senate also accepted an amendment by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) that increases funding for the Ten Mile Creek Water Preserve Area, part of the Everglades Restoration Project in Florida.

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Politics Daily
July 30, 2009

Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Killed by Senate

Bonnie Goldstein

Fulfilling Barack Obama's campaign promise to close Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada, the Senate has passed a measure that will prevent further construction.

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UPI
July 30, 2009

Nevada nuclear waste dump appears doomed

WASHINGTON, July 30 (UPI) -- A proposed nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain appears doomed with a U.S. Senate decision to reduce spending, a lawmaker said.

The Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday funding for the radioactive waste dump site was cut as part of the 2010 annual energy spending bill the Senate passed Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said passage of the bill is in keeping with President Barack Obama's desire to end to the Yucca Mountain project and seek alternatives.

Obama is seeking $198.6 million for Yucca -- a fraction of what the U.S. Energy Department says would be needed to develop the nuclear waste dump.

In a statement Wednesday, Reid promised to work on alternatives and "prevent Nevada from ever again being considered as the nation's nuclear dumping ground."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is to continue reviewing the repository's license application, the Sun said.

The newspaper said Obama has allowed the application to continue so his administration can avoid legal battles with utility companies while it seeks an alternative. The companies have sued the government for not taking nuclear waste off their hands.

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The Tennessean
July 30, 2009

Reader Views

Q: What do you think of Alexander's proposal for 100 nuclear plants in 20 years?

A: There is no doubt that there is a lot of confusion over the difference between a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor. Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal, if you read it, does an excellent job recounting both the history and basic technology of reactors.

Four things pop out that everyone should consider: 1) Chernobyl happened because of an incredibly foolish design, while Three Mile Island was not a Chernobyl because its American design made a meltdown physically impossible; 2) 97 percent of nuclear waste is recyclable, as proven by the French; 3) past problems were primarily the result of each facility being unique, whereas new reactors are highly standardized, leaving little chance for operator error; and 4) the nature of reactor construction makes them incredibly resistant to attack.

I am a firm supporter of developing renewable energy technology and believe that America would be foolish not to lead the development of new energy sources. However, even with this as our primary focus, the nuclear industry's maturity of technology and its modern ability to both fund and insure itself make this proposal something we should take seriously as a steppingstone to using completely renewable energy.

Jim Carls
Nashville 37221

A: I think Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal for 100 nuclear power plants is out of touch with reality. We recently invested millions in a nuclear waste storage area in Yucca Mountain in a desolate Western mountain range miles from the nearest city.

Political forces in the area have all but stopped our use of the site. We presently store most of our spent dangerous radioactive materials from our existing power plants on-site. How long can we do this? The French have buried their waste in the ocean and deep wells, disregarding future contamination.

We have had close calls of nuclear-reactor meltdowns in this country. Nuclear waste is millions of times more deadly than coal ash. My brother-in-law lived in Wilmington, Del., downwind from the Three Mile Island disaster. He contracted leukemia about two years later, along with others living downwind. We always suspected that it was caused by the accident. Do we need 100 more potential disasters, maybe one near you?

G. Reynolds
Nashville 37205

A: Sen. Lamar Alexander does not believe the U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants over the next 20 years. The old pitchman for the coal industry plainly doesn't know what to believe. Why else would he make such a statement? I think he is really just putting his energy vote up for sale to the highest bidder.

One out of every five people in this state is out of work or working part-time, and he's trying to put the most subsidized energy program in history on our backs. Water is getting scarce, and he is backing the greatest drain on our water supply since the earthquake of 1811.

Our infrastructure is crumbling, and he supports the industry that poses the greatest danger to public safety in our state's history.

I think what Sen. Alexander is really saying with his 100 nuclear plants proposal is "gentlemen, start your bidding."

David Clark
TULLAHOMA 37388
CLARKDAVID01@BELLSOUTH.NET

A: Environmentalists consider climate change "the inconvenient problem of the century," but for these iconoclasts nuclear power is not the "convenient answer."

President Obama recently declared that Iran can produce all of the electricity they need using nuclear power, but some members of Congress still condemn the use of atomic power here in the U.S.

Recently, Sen. Lamar Alexander proclaimed, "The answer to a clean energy future is not 'cap and trade,' but to build 100 new nuclear power plants in the next two decades." The issue of nuclear plant safety has been the stumbling block toward expanding our clean nuclear program.

Yet, according to the World Nuclear Safety Commission, designs for nuclear plants being developed today are the safest and cleanest in history. Additionally, there has not been a major nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986, and those plants are no longer built. Although the use of nuclear power remains a highly contentious issue in the U.S., it can become a viable part of the solution to combat global warming.

If used wisely, it could become the new energy backbone of our industrial economy while creating thousands of jobs nationally.

William Haupt III
Mt. Juliet 37122

A: Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal for 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years is a good idea that should have been started 20 years ago. If it hadn't been for the ACLU and the EPA, we would have had them in operation and wouldn't be forced to purchase oil from those people who don't like us too much and would really like to see us dead.

Lamar Alexander is a fine man who has the future of mankind in his thoughts, so let's hope and pray he succeeds in his efforts.

Hershel Butts
Mt. Juliet 37122

A: Many processes involve the production of intended products and the production of some form of waste. Many of the current conversations about energy production focus on carbon emissions, which we currently deem to be a waste product. Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal for construction of nuclear power plants does not adequately address the waste of the nuclear power process. Unlike organic waste such as carbon emissions, nuclear waste has a very long shelf life.

We've had ramifications from the usage of nuclear materials since before World War II, and we still haven't adequately solved the issue. We've had ramifications from the use of coal- and carbon- emitting power plants for much longer and are continuing to make significant progress in the disposal of that waste.

I continue to hope that society will one day address the demand side of this equation instead of always focusing on the supply side and how that supply is created.

Todd M. Liebergen
Madison 37115

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Gadsden Times
July 30, 2009

Waste fee needs to be rescinded

Money for rateholders should be returned now

When President Barack Obama virtually ended the discussion of storing nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, talk began about the amount of money ratepayers have paid for such disposal.

Now that the disposal looks to be in for a lengthy political fight, ratepayers and some service providers are questioning why they have to pay one cent per 10 kilowatt hours of electricity created by nuclear power.

It is a strong question. It only makes sense that if someone raises money for something then that something does not happen, then the money should be returned to the giver. At least, another viable solution should be created.

The way it looks now, ratepayers and service providers, like Southern Co., the parent company of Alabama Power, will not receive a cent from the $16.7 billion paid to the waste fund. It has now, with interest, grown to more than $33 billion, but that money has been funneled into the Treasury Department to fund other projects — not for its original purpose.

In Alabama alone, $746 million has been paid to the fund through the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry nuclear plant, in north Alabama, and the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan.

The government makes up the rules as it goes along sometimes, and this is a good example of that. Since the fund was required because of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, maybe the act should be amended, 27 years after the fact.

At the least, the program should be suspended, preventing ratepayers from paying any more needless money into a broken program.

Then, in the future, if a solution is found, the rates can be started up again. But in the meantime, since the government is so eager to spend money for a stimulus, a stimulus in itself would be to return money to citizens, which it rightly belongs to now that the program is broken.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 28, 2009

Paulsen leans to conservative side in his balancing act

The new congressman isn't doing anything flashy but is sticking to policy. But could his voting record - 91 percent with the GOP - hurt him in his district?

By Eric Roper
Washington

After seven months in Congress, Rep. Erik Paulsen is living on the edge.

The Republican from Eden Prairie faces the complex task of representing a swing district in one of the most volatile political and economic climates in recent history. But unlike his moderate predecessor, Jim Ramstad, Minnesota's newest representative is emerging as a decidedly conservative lawmaker.

A 44-year-old freshman in the minority party, Paulsen holds one of the toughest positions on Capitol Hill, where his lack of seniority can impede him from substantial legislative victories.

Perhaps because of this, he has remained largely out of the spotlight in Washington, although behind the scenes he has dug into his work on the House Financial Services Committee and focused on a message of fiscal conservatism in an era of unprecedented spending.

"In general, I'm concerned that the government's kind of taking over the financial sector and banks, took over auto manufacturing with 60 percent ownership and now with health care it's a similar situation that causes concern," Paulsen said in a recent interview.

He justifies his voting record largely on the basis of job creation, taxes, spending and the effects on small businesses -- which so far has put him in opposition to many major Democratic initiatives.

"I want [my daughters] to have the same opportunities and choices as all my constituents' children," Paulsen said. "And I'm worried about their future, about all of the debt and spending that's going on."

His politics clearly have resonated with party leaders such as GOP Whip Eric Cantor, a political mentor during the campaign. Cantor, R-Va, named the former Target executive to the minority whip team, which is tasked with keeping Republicans together on key votes.

"He certainly has a background in business and can bring a dose of reality to a lot of the discussion around here that is often very theoretical and lacking pragmatism," Cantor said.

One of Paulsen's early achievements came in March, when he was the lead Republican on a bill creating oversight for President Obama's bank bailout program, which was approved unanimously. Three successful amendments since then have addressed veteran-owned businesses, financial crime enforcement and medical technology.

A nuclear energy proponent, Paulsen also has authored a bill that would force the president to decide whether to designate Nevada's Yucca Mountain a nuclear waste disposal site -- an ongoing deliberation that has accumulated billions in taxpayer revenue with no action.

"It's become a slush fund is what it's become," Paulsen said.

Paulsen has differentiated himself from other freshman by making policy a priority over more localized issues, said Kathryn Pearson, a University of Minnesota political science professor.

"Often you sort of see, particularly early on, a real connection between the very specific needs of a district and members' legislation and speeches," Pearson said. "And he's broader than that."

A tough race ahead?

Paulsen voted with his party 91 percent of the time on key legislation this year, according to Congressional Quarterly. In contrast, Ramstad, received a 70 percent rating in 2008.

Such party loyalty could prove problematic in 2010, some analysts say, considering Paulsen did not win a majority in his election and his district narrowly supported Obama in 2008.

"If you were to just look at the numbers, a political scientist would predict Paulsen would vote against his party more than any Republican in the House," Pearson said.

Paulsen's message of fiscal discipline is likely to resonate in his district, she said, but "he is vulnerable to the attack that he is a party-line voter for Republicans."

Paulsen, who calls his approach "solution-oriented," says he is not as worried about being a conservative in a contentious district.

"Minnesotans are ticket splitters," he said. "They look to the candidate, not the party, which is the way it should be, and that's only going to help me."

So far no one has committed to a 2010 run against Paulsen, although Third District DFL chair Marge Hoffa said, "We've got some good candidates that are thinking about it."

Anticipating a tight race, the National Republican Congressional Committee has labeled Paulsen's seat as vulnerable and will devote extra resources to his campaign.

"This is a district that has frustrated Democrats for some time now," said Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, who also noted that only 34 Republicans hail from districts that went for Obama.

"I'll be curious to see if there's a major vote on which Paulsen departs from the party line," Wasserman said. "Because we've seen other Republicans who were elected in districts such as these vote with Democrats on more issues than Paulsen has."

So far, Paulsen's key departures from the party have been voting for children's health insurance, credit card reform and to give the FDA oversight over tobacco.

A sparse lifestyle

Outside of his legislative work, Paulsen lives an equally conservative lifestyle, as he adjusts to the far-from-glamorous routine of a freshman member of Congress.

He shares a small apartment near Capitol Hill with three other representatives, Republicans Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, Kevin Brady, of Texas, and John Shimkus, of Illinois. The sparse accommodations are not unusual for young members. Paulsen said he and his roomies sometimes sit around late at night discussing their families and committee work.

He often does not leave the office until about 11 p.m., soon after a video-chat with his four daughters in Minnesota via his desk computer. He stays late, he says, to catch-up on work and personally sign letters. Lacking a car, he usually walks or takes the Metro back to his apartment.

His priorities outside of work are obvious from the dozens of photos of his children scattered about an otherwise unadorned office.

"That's been hard being away from the family, because Washington can be lonely," Paulsen said. "When you tune out of all the activity, that's like, you're alone."

Eric Roper • 202-408-2723

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 27, 2009

RADIOACTIVE REMNANTS: Scientists monitoring groundwater from Nevada Test Site area for contamination

Monitoring relies on plugging data into computer model

By Keith Rogers
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Radioactive groundwater laced with remnants of Cold War nuclear weapons tests is inching its way beyond the Nevada Test Site boundary where scientists expect they will soon find it for the first time.

The concentration of tritium is much higher than safe drinking water guidelines, but Department of Energy officials note it will be found within the surrounding Air Force range in an area not accessible by the public.

The pad and sump, or pit, for what's labeled Well EC-11 are being completed, with the first samples to be collected as drilling proceeds in the next three months, the federal scientist in charge of the project said Friday.

A recently completed well upstream of that one near a cavity of the powerful Benham nuclear test has produced field results 3,000 times in excess of the safe drinking water limit for tritium, said Bill Wilborn, director of the federal agency drilling campaign and groundwater characterization strategy.

"Under our strategy we don't do any remediation. The only thing we can do at this point is adopt a long-term monitoring plan," he said, discussing in a telephone interview a 687-page report on the effort to figure out where the tainted water is traveling.

The effort relies on plugging data from a network of wells into a sophisticated computer model.

A state official said that if the contamination appears to be heading toward a public water supply well, the Department of Energy will be required to provide water to impacted residences and communities in Nye County.

"Obviously we're not close to that," said Tim Murphy, federal facilities bureau chief for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.

Nevertheless, he said, "We want to know what direction it is flowing and at what rate. Then when it gets to this point we're going to have to figure out options" for protecting the public.

"Unfortunately, today there is no technology to clean this up," Murphy said.

"What do we do if the model shows this is streaming downhill? We're going to have to direct the Department of Energy to provide another (water) source," he said.

DOE's Wilborn said preliminary indications are the contamination won't reach Beatty. Instead, perhaps hundreds or 1,000 years from now it will head between Beatty and Yucca Mountain, where the Department of Energy had planned to dispose of the nation's spent nuclear fuel until the Obama administration declared the site not an option for building a repository.

Drill rigs in a remote area of Pahute Mesa more than 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, have been working to confirm what computer modeling predicts about the slug of tritium contamination moving slowly through water layers about 1,500 feet beneath the surface.

If or when it will reach Coffer's Ranch windmill, the nearest long-term public monitoring well 15 miles southwest, is a low-probability guess.

"It's a complicated answer. We have mostly conceptual models of when contamination will be off the test site and how far down-gradient it will go," said Wilborn, a geologist.

"It's going to be more probabilistic. There will be more uncertainties and unknowns down-gradient," he said.

The time frame for reaching Coffer's Windmill, he said: 50 years on the low end, 1,000 on the high.

The tainted water is emanating from Pahute Mesa where devices for the Benham and Tybo nuclear tests were exploded in 1968 and 1975, respectively. Benham, the more powerful of the two, produced a yield equivalent to detonating 1.15 megatons of TNT, much larger than the yields from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

In a micro-second burst, scientists believe contamination from the Benham detonation, including trace amounts of plutonium and isotopes that take much longer to decay to safe levels than tritium, were injected through bedrock and into groundwater layers.

Tritium is used to enhance the power of nuclear bombs. Some is created when special materials explode in the chain reaction. It has a half-life of more than 12 years, meaning that's the time it takes for half of its radioactive atoms to decay.

Other isotopes with much longer half-lives such as those from chlorine, iodine and technetium have dissolved and are moving along with the water. In addition, traces of plutonium have been found.

Said Murphy: "We're fortunate that the groundwater flow up there is very slow."

Based on a range of rates between initial wells, tritium in the water travels about nine feet per year. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will analyze sample results next year to link the contaminants to particular nuclear tests.

In all, 82 underground nuclear tests were conducted in Pahute Mesa out of at least 828 throughout the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1992, plus 100 above ground shots.

Under an agreement with the state, DOE is required to collect very high levels of radioactive-laced water from the wells in a lined sump or vessel.

Each well costs between $5 million and $7 million to drill including costs for road-building, constructing pads and sumps.

The project will cost $33 million this year and $35 million next year. In all, nine wells will be drilled over the next three years using $12.1 million in government stimulus money to augment part of the effort, Wilborn said.

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

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World-Wire
July 27, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Push For New Nuclear Power Sputters, But Old Reactors Still Pose Cancer Risks

CHICAGO, Illinois, July 27, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Nuclear reactors in the United States should be phased out, and replaced by technologies that don’t threaten public health with the emission of radioactive chemicals, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

A recent energy bill sponsored by Congressional Republicans proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors across the United States in the next 20 years.

The proposal, which would double the current U.S. total of 104 operating nuclear reactors, would amount to a nuclear renaissance, as no new reactors have been ordered since 1978.

Concerns about global warming gave utilities the idea for this revival since reactors don’t emit greenhouse gases while generating power, and utilities have stopped closing old reactors while proposing 33 new ones to be sited in New England, throughout the South and Southeast, and in Texas, Utah and Idaho.

(For a list of applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of new reactors click here. http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-files/expected-new-rx-applications.pdf)

But this month, two Swedish scientists published an article concluding that a large increase in nuclear reactors will not solve global warming.

The utilities, of course, fail to report that greenhouse gases are emitted throughout the entire nuclear fuel cycle, and operating the reactor itself is the only exception. Both the nuclear reactor industry and its support industries spew radioactive materials into local air and water, posing a serious health hazard, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

In the 1970s, Wall Street investors stopped funding new reactor projects due to cost and safety concerns. Today, these issues are unchanged, and private investors again gave a thumbs-down to nuclear power. A 2005 law authorizing $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees would only cover two reactors.

The Bush administration was a willing partner in the nuclear revival. George W. Bush became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a nuclear plant since a grim-faced President James Carter toured the damaged Three Mile Island reactor on April 1, 1979.

President Barack Obama has poured cold water on the renaissance. He rejected a request for $50 billion in loan guarantees in the stimulus package. Additionally, he rejected further funding for developing the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain Nevada, leaving utilities with no place to permanently store their highly radioactive nuclear waste. It is now being held temporarily at 55 storage sites licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at Department of Defense sites and national laboratories across the country.

The major threat posed by nuclear reactors is not the addition of new reactors, but continuing to operate old and corroding ones, says Dr. Epstein. U.S. reactors are granted licenses for 40 years, and many are approaching that mark. Many utilities have asked regulators to extend their licenses for an additional 20 years.

"Each of the first 52 requests has been given a rubber-stamp approval, even though operating a 60 year old reactor would be a huge risk to human health," says Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

Notable exceptions are state government officials in New York and New Jersey, who are opposing the attempts to extend licenses for reactors in their states.

About 80 million Americans in 37 states live within 40 miles of a nuclear reactor, including residents of New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Boston. "If a meltdown were to occur, safe evacuation would be impossible and many thousands would suffer from radiation poisoning or cancer," warns Dr. Epstein. "The horrifying specter of Chernobyl, or of terrorists attacking a nuclear plant, is not lost on concerned Americans."

Reactors are a real health threat, not just a potential one, a fact largely ignored by mainstream media, he declares.

To generate electricity, over 100 radioactive chemicals are created – among the most dangerous chemicals on Earth, and the same toxic mix in atomic bomb test fallout. These gases and particles, including Strontium-90, Cesium-137, and Plutonium-239, are mostly stored as waste. But some must be routinely released into air and water. Humans breathe, eat, and drink them - just as they did bomb fallout - raising the cancer risk, especially to children.

Industry and government officials argue that reactor emissions are too small to cause harm. But for years, scientists have produced study after study documenting high cancer rates near reactors. For example, a 2007 review of the scientific literature by researchers from the University of South Carolina found elevated rates of childhood cancers, particularly leukemia and brain cancers, in nearly all 17 studies examined. A 2008 study of German reactors was one of the largest ever done, and it also found high local rates of child cancer.

Mangano and colleagues published a January 2002 article in the journal "Archives of Environmental Health," showing that local infant deaths and child cancer cases plunged dramatically right after shut down whenever a U.S. reactor closed. Because the very young suffer most from radiation exposures, they benefit most when exposures are removed. This research indicated that there would be approximately 18,000 fewer infant deaths and 6,000 fewer child cancer cases over the next 20 years if all nuclear reactors were closed.

Over half the states in the United States, 31, currently host nuclear power plants. Illinois has the most with 11, Pennsylvania has nine, New Jersey has four.

While waiting for the federal government to phase out nuclear power in favor of safer alternatives, state governments should act to warn and protect their citizens, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

Governors have responsibilities to take whatever political action they can to phase-out nuclear plants. In the first instance, governors should tell their citizens of the danger.

In 1954, Atomic Energy Chairman Lewis Strauss declared nuclear power “too cheap to meter.” President Richard Nixon envisioned that the nation would have 1,000 reactors by this time. But the dreams of people like Strauss and Nixon were dashed by staggering costs and built-in dangers.

The attempt to revive this Cold War-era dream has been, and still is, largely talk. While the talk goes on, the nation is fast developing technologies like solar and wind power, which never run out and don’t pollute. Putting millions of Americans at risk of cancer by hanging on to old reactors – that produce only 19% of America's electricity and 8% of the country's total energy – is a reckless gamble. Nuclear reactors in the U.S. should be phased out, and replaced by options that don’t threaten public health.

CONTACT:

Samuel S. Epstein, MD
Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Chicago, Illinois
www.preventcancer.com epstein@uic.edu
312-996-2297

Rosalie Bertell, PhD
Founding Member European Committee on Radiation Risk
International Association for Humanitarian Medicine
http://www.iahm.org/eng/home.htm
Founder and President emeritus International Institute of Concern for Public Health
http://iicph.org/
rosaliebertell@greynun.org

Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA
Executive Director Radiation and Public Health Project
http://www.radiation.org/
Odiejoe@aol.com

---------------------------

Gadsden Times
July 26, 2009

Alabama ratepayers have paid nearly $750 million for nuclear waste disposal

By Dana Beyerle
Times Montgomery Bureau

MONTGOMERY — Alabama electric customers have paid $746 million into a federal nuclear waste storage fund, money the nuclear energy industry is asking Washington to stop collecting because the storage plan is on hold.

Ratepayers have shelled out $16.7 billion to the nuclear waste fund. With interest, that’s grown to $33.2 billion, the Nuclear Energy Institute said.

With interest, Alabama’s $746 million has grown to $1.3 billion, an amount that is theoretically but not realistically available for a refund to ratepayers. The NEI said the money is an I.O.U. in the treasury.

"In 1997, there was adjustment having to do with the deficit and although in name it’s considered a trust fund it’s lumped in with the treasury," said NEI spokesman Mitch Singer.

The Obama administration canceled the planned Yucca Mountain waste disposal plan in Nevada and nothing to replace it has been finalized. A "blue ribbon" committee is looking into an alternative.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., opposes Yucca Mountain as a disposal site and praised Obama’s decision.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., agrees with the NEI. "This is one of the most mismanaged programs in government history as far as I’m concerned, the waste fund," Sessions said Friday. "Congress passed a law that said Yucca Mountain will be the site, and the president can’t unilaterally change that. Maybe he can argue about it and get Congress to agree."

Sessions said he previously sponsored legislation to put the waste fees into a trust fund.

The NEI earlier this month asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu why ratepayers should continue to pay 1 cent per 10 kilowatt hours of electricity created by nuclear power for the fund.

"Our argument is why should customers and utilities continue to pay a fee that is not being used for its intended purpose?" Singer said.

Energy department officials said there hasn’t been enough time to give a public response.

The fund was required under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, but politics have kept the Yucca Mountain site from being used to store waste from nuclear plants and from weapons production. Nuclear plants are storing used fuel in pools or in casks on site.

In Alabama at the Tennessee Valley Authority Browns Ferry’s nuclear plant, the on-site storage pools became full last year, the Nuclear Energy Institute said.

One unit of the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan ran out of on-site pool storage space in 2006 and will lose pool storage capacity for Unit 2 next year, the NEI said.

The science (that is disputed) says Yucca Mountain is as safe as you’ll get to store nuclear waste. Last year the Environmental Protection Agency said Yucca Mountain is safe for 1 million years.

Nuclear waste disposal is an emotional issue that includes political, financial, psychological, social, geographic and perceived or real environmental concerns. Operating or disposal arguments include transportation accidents, fear of radiation leakage, nuclear proliferation and Murphy’s Law.

Singer said the NEI isn’t asking for the money back.

"My guess is if the fee is suspended I would think the utilities would stop collecting from ratepayers," he said. "This is a political decision."

The Tennessee Valley Authority hasn’t taken a position on it, spokesman Terry Johnson said, but the Southern Nuclear Operating Co. has. Southern is the nuclear operating arm of the Southern Co., the parent of Alabama Power Co.

Southern spokeswoman Carrie Phillips said if the direction the government is going is unclear then the Department of Energy has an obligation to conduct an annual fee assessment.

"If you’re only allocating funds to continue the licensing questions then they ought to be able to reduce or suspend the fee," she said.

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Gadsden Times
July 26, 2009

Is nuclear power making comeback in South?

By Dana Beyerle
Times Montgomery Bureau

MONTGOMERY — After decades of being in the doghouse, nuclear power may become a big component of the nation’s future energy freedom, but there are mixed signals from Washington about the controversial power source.

For about 30 years, no new nuclear power applications were filed, but in the last couple of years there have been applications for 34 nuclear units, including four to serve Alabama electric customers.

Mitch Singer is a spokesman for the pro-nuclear power Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington. He said since the late 1970s there were financial, psychological, low-demand and political reasons for the lack of applications.

That could change in the face of foreign energy reliance and the real or imagined potential for fossil fuel pollution.

"There’s been a stellar operating record of nuclear plants over 20 years," he said. "They operate over 90 percent capacity factor. That coupled with the fact that it’s the largest source of emission-free power, this is becoming a compelling argument."

The nuclear energy arm of Alabama Power Co.’s parent company has filed a request for two new reactors in an existing Georgia nuclear plant. The power will feed Alabama and the nation’s electric grid.

"We have an additional base load generation need to meet customer needs in the 2016 and 2017 time frame," said Southern Nuclear Operating Co. spokes-woman Beth Thomas.

Alabama Power’s parent is the Southern Co., and Southern Nuclear Operating Co. is its nuclear arm.

"What we’re doing is we feel we’re going to need all the options of a diverse fuel portfolio," said Southern Co. spokeswoman Valerie Hendrickson. "We’re looking at clean coal and utilizing existing coal units as well as renewables and converting existing plants to biomass, as well as nuclear."

The Tennessee Valley Authority that serves north Alabama has filed an application for two reactors at the Bellefonte plant in Jackson County. The TVA also is going ahead with a construction permit for a third new nuclear unit in Tennessee.

For 25 years, the idle twin cooling towers at Bellefonte have been visible from U.S. Highway 72, but by mid-decade they could be cooling hot water that spins turbines to make electricity. TVA hasn’t made a decision to build the two reactors if the applications are approved.

The TVA board two years ago voted to reactivate an existing permit to build a second nuclear unit at the Watts Bar plant. Also two years ago, TVA restarted the long-idled third nuclear reactor at Browns Ferry in Limestone County.

"The industry as well as TVA went through different phases but ultimately we didn’t have the need for the base load power," TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said.

He said the utility is tweaking fossil fuel plants and will seek renewable energy production. Given current technology, nuclear power is seen as the immediate way to handle expected new demand.

"TVA’s goal tied to environmental policy is to have 50 percent of generating capacity of low- or zero-carbon emissions by 2030," said Johnson. "That would be 50 percent from hydro, nuclear and renewable."

TVA’s total capacity including purchased power is about 36,700 megawatts, so adding up to three nuclear units of about 1,200 megawatts significantly increases the capacity.

TVA’s existing nuclear plants can produce about 6,900 megawatts of power, about 30 percent of TVA’s capacity from all sources except purchased power. TVA said nuclear can power 3.5 million homes.

With virtually all streams and rivers in the TVA and Alabama Power areas dammed for hydroelectric power, the future is in nuclear, renewable power such as turbines, natural gas to meet peak demands, and low-emission coal, if technology can deliver new sources 24 hours a day at a reasonable cost.

"Our plan is to meet new demand and (seek efficiencies), use renewables and use additional nuclear," Johnson said. "At this point in time, we are not looking at any new coal plants."

The Southern Co. has a current generating capacity of 42,600 megawatts. Of that, 68 percent is supplied by coal and 15 percent by nuclear. The Southern Co. has no new coal plants in the works.

Alabama has five operating nuclear reactors, three at Browns Ferry and two at the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan. Farley is a Southern Nuclear Operating Co. plant.

The nation has 104 licensed nuclear power plants, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (Some plants are being closed.) Adding 34 units during the next 10 or so years will enable utilities to handle the expected increased power demand.

Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity and about 14 percent of the world’s power. Forecasters expect a 20 percent increase in electricity demand in the next two decades.

"The power forecast shows 2017 to 2022, somewhere in there, we’ll need an additional large base load unit," TVA’s Johnson said.

Most of the world’s nuclear power plants are in the United States, Europe and Japan.

In France, nuclear supplies at least 75 percent of the country’s power. But France, as someone once said, has no gas, no oil and no coal, so it has "no choice."

Germany has legislation to eventually end reliance on nuclear power that provides about 25 percent of the nation’s electricity. Alternatives being discussed include buying more nuclear-generated electricity from France and building coal-fired plants in addition to renewable sources.

Science says nuclear power is virtually emission-free, making it attractive as a power source compared with fossil fuels.

Nuclear power plants can produce huge amounts of electricity, nearly 1,200 megawatts each. A megawatt is 1 million watts, a whole lot of 60-watt light bulbs.

But, there are emotive operating and waste disposal concerns. One opposing group calls TVA’s nuclear power expansion plans "insanity."

The Obama administration says it supports nuclear power "and has vocalized this on a number of occasions," the NEI’s Singer said. But at the same time Obama stopped development of an on-site nuclear waste dump in Nevada, threatening nuclear expansion.

New energy Secretary Steven Chu said he supports nuclear power and clean coal energy, but the problem of recycling and storing nuclear fuel needs to be solved.

"I’m supportive of the fact that the nuclear industry should have to be part of the energy mix in this century," Chu said, according to Politico. "And recycling ‘nuclear waste’ in the long term can be part of the solution."

(In a Wednesday op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in support of the administration’s cap-and-trade energy policy, Chu did not mention nuclear power as part of the future mix in emission controlling power options.)

Chu’s spokesperson wasn’t available for comment.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said Obama’s suspension of Yucca Mountain and commissioning a new "study" sends a mixed signal about the administration’s commitment to nuclear power.

"They have stopped Yucca Mountain, and the study will take two years to complete, so what do you do about Yucca Mountain and nuclear energy in general?" Sessions said in an interview. "What they effectively have done is put nuclear power on hold for two years.

"I agree with (Tennessee U.S.) Sen. (Lamar) Alexander that we need a goal of 100 new nuclear power plants in the next 20 years," Sessions said.

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San Antonio Express
July 26, 2009

Expanding energy coverage as key decision dates approach

Robert Rivard

After four public hearings, CPS Energy officials have found citizens information-starved and unconvinced that San Antonio should move forward with a multibillion-dollar expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear facility.

In fairness to CPS, no one welcomes the news that utility bills will climb about 25 percent over a decade, and few subjects are more complicated than future energy sources or needs. A certain percentage of the public is adamantly pro- or anti-nuclear, but for the undecided, complex questions require more informed consideration.

Metro columnist Scott Stroud will weigh in on the nuclear debate in his Monday column. David Hendricks and Carlos Guerra already have staked out pro and con viewpoints in their columns.

Express-News reporters are working on a series of front-page stories that will appear each Sunday from Aug. 9 through late September when the CPS board, a small group that includes Mayor Julián Castro, will vote on expansion. A City Council vote on issuing $300 million to $400 million in bonds to continue funding the expansion will come in October if the CPS board approves the project when it votes Sept. 28.

Some of the Sunday topics:

• Will the mayor and council rubber-stamp CPS' plans or take an independent look at expansion? Castro is using the council's Aug. 12 B session to host a town hall meeting on the subject.

• What alternative energy programs could CPS and the city pursue with the estimated $5.2 billion it will cost San Antonio for a 40 percent interest in the proposed $10 billion STP expansion?

• Conservation as a means to reduce our energy use. CPS' Save for Tomorrow Energy Plan, or STEP, is supposed to save 771 megawatts, the equivalent of an entire power plant, by 2020. Are we on track? What can we learn from other cities?

• How reliable is the $13 billion estimate, including construction and financing costs, put forth by CPS' partner NRG Energy of New Jersey? Across the country, there are plans on the drawing board for more than 30 new plants or plant expansions after a 30-year construction hiatus. Will cost overruns and construction delays plague the industry as they once did?

• Radioactive waste storage and processing remains an unresolved problem. Federal plans to build a central storage site beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain are long stalled. STP now stores more than 1,000 tons of waste in on-site pools.

• Plant safety, including the need to guard against terrorist attacks. No major accidents have occurred at U.S. plants since Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, although groundwater and soil contaminated by radioactive waste leaks has been a problem at other sites.

• Why did Austin opt out of STP expansion? How will Austin Energy, that city's public utility, meet its future energy needs?

MySA.com editors are preparing an online reader Q&A, an op-ed site, archived stories and links to relevant sites.

The San Antonio Clean Technology Forum is sponsoring a Sept. 16 forum on STP expansion at the Pearl Stables. I will serve as moderator and hope to see you there.

--Robert Rivard is editor of the Express-News. E-mail him at rrivard@express-news.net or reach him on Twitter at @editorrivard.

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 24, 2009

Hollis reaffirms belief: Yucca Mountain not dead

By Mark Waite
PVT

Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis signed a letter objecting to comments by Bruce Breslow, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, that the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program and Yucca Mountain itself, is dead.

"There still appears to be considerable support for Yucca Mountain in Congress and your speculation on its death is premature," Hollis wrote. "Yucca Mountain is an integral part of our nation's overall energy policy."

The project won't go away until the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is changed, he said.

Hollis teed off on comments Breslow made June 23 about the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a program that would involve recycling spent nuclear fuel. It was a program endorsed by Nye County for its potential of creating jobs at Yucca Mountain.

A programmatic environmental impact statement was issued on the GNEP program, but it never advanced past a draft.

The Obama administration has taken a different approach to Yucca Mountain, advocating a blue ribbon panel to look at the disposal of nuclear waste. Congress has reduced the Yucca Mouontain budget, which was $494.5 million in the year ending Sept. 30, 2007 under the Bush administration, to $386.4 million last year, to $288 million this year.

The House Appropriations Committee passed a bill this month allocating $196.8 million for Yucca Mountain in the 2009-10 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a long time opponent of the project, has vowed Yucca Mountain will die a slow death.

The State of Nevada has taken a position opposing Yucca Mountain, in contrast to Nye County which has a policy of constructive engagement working with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Breslow referred to an updated article in an industry publication on the end of the GNEP program, adding it appears the U.S. Department of Energy will start over after the Blue Ribbon Task Force.

"I have personally been involved with nuclear issues for over 30 years and helped Nye County assemble an expert team of scientists and engineers to protect Nye County's interest," Hollis wrote in a letter to Breslow.

"Your conclusion that DOE's decision to not publish the GNEP Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement finally kills the program is misleading and factually incorrect."

Hollis wrote the GNEP will continue under another name. He said the program didn't address issues of nuclear proliferation or over 20 agreements with other countries.

Hollis said the EIS on GNEP was controversial, Nye County questioned the selection of sites for the program and the best technology.

"States and local communities across the country expressed interest to be the location of nuclear fuel recycling facilities and they volunteered sites for DOE consideration. Nye County, specifically the Nevada Test Site, was co-opted out early in the process," Hollis said.

The goal of the EIS dealt with a range of options on nuclear fuel rather than a site selection process, Hollis wrote.

"It would appear that the State of Nevada's position precludes our consideration for these projects that have the potential to generate billions of investment and thousands of jobs in addition to money for schools, roads and hospitals. These potential sites wanted the high technology jobs and investment but none of the sites volunteered to be a site for a repository or long term storage facility," Hollis wrote.

In bold-faced wording, Hollis wrote, "do not be fooled. Every one of these technologies requires a repository at some point. Storing wastes on site or at a central facility simply delays the inevitable and generates more waste and additional cost."

When he attended a forum on the dry storage of nuclear waste held by the Nuclear Energy Institute in May, Hollis said the industry demonstrated on site storage at reactor sites works and there are plans being made for such storage for the next 100, even 500 years.

"However across the board everyone understands that sooner or later there needs to be a repository for whatever waste ultimately comes from the generation of electricity with nuclear power," Hollis wrote.

He concluded: "I guess that at the end of the day I'd rather see Nevada as part of the solution, not the problem."

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 24, 2009

Back then: 20 years ago

Two more government scientists said they thought more studies were needed by the Department of Energy where Yucca Mountain was concerned. At the same time prototype drilling of boreholes was under way ... in Milford, Utah.

That site was chosen because "rock in that area is similar to volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain."

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New York Times
July 24, 2009

Administration Appears Close to Filling Nuclear Panel's Vacancies

By Peter Behr

The Obama administration is close to a decision on filling two vacancies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to industry and congressional sources. The appointments would come at a pivotal time for the industry's hopes of a revival, as NRC weighs operating license applications for a handful of new reactors and a review of its waste fuel policy.

The administration is believed to have settled on former Energy Department official William Magwood and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor George Apostolakis as the nominees. Both would be welcomed by the industry, officials said.

NRC is headed by chairman Gregory Jaczko, chosen in May for the position by President Obama, and two Republican commissioners, former chairman Dale Klein and Kristine Svinicki. Apostolakis could not be reached for comment yesterday. Magwood said, "I've heard the same rumors," but declined to comment further.

The two NRC appointments "are very important," said Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy. "A number of utility boards are looking to that as a possible sign of where things are going in the future," he said. "There has been great apprehension [that] the wrong appointments could really set a bad tone."

The industry's concerns have focused on Jaczko, former science adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid has led a battle to kill the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in his state.

Apostolakis, a professor at MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, is a member and former chairman of NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and an expert in complex risk and reliability analysis. "He knows the industry. He knows the technology," said Jay Silberg, an attorney handling nuclear energy issues with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. "He'd be someone the industry would be comfortable with."

Before leaving the Energy Department in 2005 to enter consulting, Magwood had been director of nuclear energy, science and technology, the federal government's senior nuclear technology official. Silberg said he has known Magwood for decades: "He would be very good." Silberg said he has heard reports that the two were under consideration for NRC but did not know whether they had been finally selected. Several sources said that the two men are at the top of the administration's list.

Multibillion-dollar issues await

The outlook for a potential revival of nuclear reactor construction in the United States rests on several key decisions that are pending from NRC and the Energy Department.

NRC is currently reviewing three new and one modified reactor designs, and has received applications for operating licenses for 26 new reactors. These applications include four projects that have been chosen by the Department of Energy as candidates for a total of $18.5 billion in federal construction loan guarantees. The guarantees are essential to funding the projects, the industry says.

NRC is also reviewing what it calls its Waste Confidence Policy, a finding that spent fuel and other high-level radioactive reactor wastes can be "permanently disposed of safely," in the words of a court mandate. That decision has been complicated by Obama's decision to terminate federal funding for the Yucca Mountain site, an industry official said.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu plans to appoint a blue-ribbon committee to review nuclear waste policy, presumably including options for recycling spent fuel. Guith said the makeup of this panel will be another test of the administration's intentions concerning nuclear power's future.

Economic question marks loom large

The nuclear industry's future now awaits NRC decisions on new reactor designs and licensing. If the new reactor designs and operating licenses are approved and the plants go forward within the next few years, they could be online in 2016 or 2017, industry planners say. These new plants would provide a vital benchmark on whether nuclear power can be a competitive, affordable option in reducing the utility industry's carbon dioxide emissions.

Nuclear power opponents and skeptics said it is the fast-rising cost estimates for new projects, not regulatory hurdles, that pose the greatest threat to a nuclear power revival. "The NRC can't save the industry from itself on the economic side," said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and a former Energy Department official.

But new nuclear plants cannot be built -- and indeed, construction costs cannot be pinned down -- until NRC completes certification of at least two new designs, experts say. While the design review has been under way for several years, no new designs have been approved, and Jaczko said the commission's work has been hampered by continuing modifications to designs.

A critical factor in the cost of plants will be the length of time required for construction once a project has been approved. NRC's new policy for reviewing nuclear plant proposals is meant to expedite the process, and the commission's ability to do so without compromising on the safety of plant design and operation will be a central issue in nuclear power's future, experts agree. NRC commissioner Svinicki referred to that balancing act this spring, telling an energy conference, "The nuclear industry remains ... just one accident away from retrenchment."

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Gainesville Sun
July 24, 2009

Diane Forkel: The costs and risks of nuclear energy

People are conserving energy and GRU revenues are declining, except during periods of extreme weather conditions. However, electric battery-charged cars are on the horizon. They will likely take up any slack in energy use, and then some.

Progress Energy is looking ahead to increasing energy use. Their plans are to build two new nuclear power plants. However, electric customers beware, excessive cost overruns (and defects and deficiencies) at a Finnish power plant have been reported in the New York Times. If Progress Energy experiences similar problems, utility customers should brace for a double-cost whammy in their electric bills.

Nuclear power plants carry a good deal of financial risk, so the industry is heavily backed by the government. Currently, applications are being made for billions of dollars in loan guarantees, aka government bailouts. And they could end up being just that.

A Union of Concerned Scientist website notes in 1985 Forbes magazine called the nuclear industry bailout of that era "the largest managerial disaster in business history." Is there reason to believe the industry will do better this time around?

The nuclear power plant carbon footprint (CF) is also quite large. It encompasses plant construction, plant decommissioning, and construction of a huge waste storage facility, such as Yucca Mountain, and/or other additional storage facilities. I am sure new research buildings and experimental plants for nuke waste technological breakthroughs will also add to CF.

Nuclear waste storage is a given, but other options are emerging. The French, for instance, commercialized a MOX facility to fabricate nuclear fuel assemblies to capture energy remaining in "spent" reactor fuel. The French firm Areva is building a MOX facility at the Savannah River Site. Yet a setback was encountered when structural problems emerged during the MOX plant's construction. Blame is placed on a lack of experience.

Inexperience is also blamed for Areva's costly nuclear power plant construction problems in Finland. Yet Areva has more experience than its U.S. counterparts in building nuclear facilities.

Areva's costly construction issues are unnerving. Structural construction problems raise safety concerns. An accident at any nuclear facility could be devastating in terms of loss of live and long-term environmental damage.

I have to wonder if this country is adequately prepared to handle radiation fallout from a nuclear accident. And the financial burden of a nuclear accident, or even just a huge bailout, could cause the country's soaring deficit to shatter and crash.

Nuclear power may have a place in a country's energy portfolio, but nuclear energy isn't all that earth-friendly – and the costs associated with nuclear energy are high, and with some risk.

Diane Forkel
Gainesville

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Columbia Daily Tribune
July 24, 2009

Against The Grain

Seminar stirs anxieties over nuclear power

By T.J. Greaney

Last weekend I came face to face with the promise and pitfalls of nuclear energy.

Along with more than a dozen other journalists, I toured the facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tenn. We were part of a conference on nuclear power put on by the University of Tennessee.

Tucked into the emerald foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Oak Ridge is home to one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, which churn data at the unfathomable speed of a thousand trillion operations per second, called a “petaflop.”

The computer is used to generate rainbow-hued mockups of Earth and project what it might feel like during global warming. The lab is also home to a particle accelerator that, like a giant indoor racetrack, hurls ions at 86 percent of the speed of light to produce the world’s most intense neutron beams.

Basically, Oak Ridge is Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for nerds.

But we journalists were there to see how scientists are solving the problem of nuclear waste. And for that we were taken to a room where people behind multiple layers of glass were manipulating robot arms to reprocess spent nuclear fuel pellets. This, we were told, just might be the future.

“We have been able to process commercial spent nuclear fuel and ultimately create new fuel pellets,” said Sherrell Greene, the Nuclear Technology Programs director at Oak Ridge. Pointing to a sandwich bag with a tiny pellet inside, he added, “This contains uranium, neptunium and plutonium while never having created pure plutonium in the process.”

This, he said, is a big deal.

During World War II, Oak Ridge was the first facility in the world to reprocess nuclear waste, but the United States has fallen behind since then.

Countries like France and Japan now reprocess much of their sizable nuclear waste and reuse it while we reuse nothing. Instead, we choose to toss out fuel rods with more than 90 percent of their energy value still intact.

As a consequence, the waste is piling up inside concrete casks and ponds near nuclear reactors. Utilities have put aside $22 billion to pay for a national nuclear repository like the one proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but that plan has fallen under the weight of not-in-my-backyard concerns, and no other state appears ready to allow waste storage.

“Nuclear waste is the world’s ugliest bride with the world’s largest dowry,” said Matthew Wald, a New York Times reporter who attended the Knoxville conference.

So Greene was understandably excited to show us his prized pellet. If the process works as intended, he said, it could transform 20 kg of waste into 19 kg of new reactor fuel. Pointing to the baggie, he said, “That pellet right there in a commercial reactor would produce all the electricity any one of you would use for about five to six weeks.”

And more important, Greene added, unlike other reprocessing techniques, this one does not produce plutonium as a byproduct. Plutonium is a key component of a nuclear weapon and is considered a major factor in worldwide proliferation.

“Nowhere in the process did we generate a pure plutonium stream,” Greene said.

But with nuclear power, nothing is ever that simple. A member of our tour group, Edwin Lyman from the watchdog organization the Union of Concerned Scientists, rushed forward to say the reprocessed fuel pellet could, indeed, be used to make weapons.

“Isn’t neptunium-237 a weapons-usable isotope that has to be controlled just like plutonium-235?” Lyman asked the scientist.

Greene shot back that the question was irrelevant. The neptunium isotope is much less potent than plutonium and has never been used to make a bomb. But it was too late: The nuclear cat was out of the bag. Suddenly, instead of thinking about the energy breakthrough, we were all picturing mushroom clouds.

This, I’ve realized, is the curse of nuclear power. The nuclear industry has a safety record over the past 30 years that, by most accounts, has been stellar. Nuclear power is the most potent carbon-free power source on the planet in an age when everyone is worried about carbon footprints. Some advocates like U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are calling for a nuclear renaissance that will include the construction of 100 reactors in 20 years.

But still we’re suspicious.

The specter of meltdowns and weapons use hangs darkly over the science. We haven’t built a new nuclear plant in this country in more than 30 years — not since the 1979 partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island essentially froze the entire industry in its tracks.

These days most nuclear engineers are at or near retirement age, and no one really knows how much it will cost to build a new reactor in the current regulatory environment.

Nuclear power has a higher threshold to scale than any other new energy source. Our default position is to dismiss it. “We just want to be treated like everyone else,” Harold Lee Dodds, head of the UT nuclear engineering department, said in a frustrated response to criticism.

But that might be impossible. As we were leaving Greene’s laboratory, each one of us was asked to put our hands and feet inside “contamination monitors” to make sure we hadn’t been exposed to radiation.

As I slipped my hands inside the two metal slots that felt like large toaster spaces, I was smiling at the overabundance of caution. It was reassuring. But when the readings came back: “.01” milirems on my hands and “.03” milirems on my feet, my smile faded. All of a sudden I was sweating.

I nervously asked an official what this meant. “It’s probably just from the noise,” he said. Those readings are, in any event, minuscule, he assured me. It was much less than the exposure I would receive on my flight home.

But my reaction shows just how fearful many of us still are of nuclear power. We just don’t understand it. If a nuclear renaissance is ever going to occur, we’re going to have to work hard to educate ourselves, and the industry is going to have to keep setting the bar for safety higher and higher.

This page has been revised to reflect the following correction:

SECOND THOUGHTS:

This column incorrectly identified the Union of Concerned Scientists as an anti-nuclear watchdog organization. It should have simply called it a watchdog organization.

Tribune reporter T.J. Greaney’s column runs on Thursdays. Reach him at (573) 815-1719 or tjgreaney@columbiatribune.com.

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Columbia Missourian
July 24, 2009

Callaway nuclear power plant balances decommission funds

BY Erik Haugsby

AmerenUE's nuclear plant in Callaway County is licensed to generate electricity through 2024, but the funds being saved for the decommission are shrinking and costs are rising.

The federal government requires that all operational nuclear power stations set aside funds dedicated to the cost of dismantling reactors.

The fund for decommissioning the Callaway plant held $268 million in 2007, but the amount had shrunk to $236.19 million by 2009, according to biennial reports filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by AmerenUE, the utility that oversees the Callaway plant. Over the same period of time, the estimated costs of decommissioning the plant increased from $586.52 million to $693.91 million.

Beth Hayden, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said estimates from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are limited to the costs of removing materials contaminated with radiation, and does not identify costs associated with removing structures that have not been contaminated by radiation. The NRC estimates the average cost for decontaminating a nuclear power plant is between $400 million and $570 million, Hayden said.

There are many factors that influence the cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant, and AmerenUE has reported the total cost could be well below or above its latest estimate of $693.91 million. The utility puts the cost as low as $405.7 million if it uses third-party vendors, such as hospitals, to take nuclear waste from the plant. If the waste was buried in a repository the cost could be as high as $760.5 million.

At the Callaway plant, 82.5 percent of the total cost, or $572.47 million, would be used for the “physical decontamination and dismantling” of contaminated parts of the facility, according to AmerenUE’s most recent report to the NRC.

Demolition of designated structures and limited site restoration accounts for $86,738,375, or 12.5 percent, and the remaining $34,695,350, or 5.0 percent, would be allocated to management and transfer of spent fuel, the report reads.

The annual contributions to Callaway's decommissioning fund are $6.76 million, an amount that will be paid annually through 2023. In 2024, the last year of the plant’s 40-year operational license, the scheduled contribution would decline to $5.07 million, according to the report.

The contributions are held in a trust fund, with 65 percent of the amount invested in equities and 35 percent placed in bonds.

AmerenUE determined these annual additions “adequate to meet the cost of decommissioning the Callaway nuclear power plant,” according to an April 30 press release from the Missouri Public Service Commission.

The Callaway plant is a regulated utility, so it works with the state’s public utilities commission to collect money for the decommission fund. Regulated utilities assess the cost of decommissioning their facilities and then add a surcharge to the utility bill sent to all ratepayers, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said.

This surcharge is just one factor that goes into calculating utility bills, and would amount to “a tiny, tiny fraction of an individual bill” for Ameren-UE customers, Mike Cleary, spokesman for the utility, said.

AmerenUE's report to the NRC is similar to those provided by all other nuclear power stations in the U.S., and updated reports must be filed every two years while the plant is in operation. From these reports, the NRC determines if there would be enough money in each plant’s fund for a successful decommission. If the NRC believes there could be problems with the funds, the plant must revise its plan to account for, or at least eliminate, that discrepancy within the calendar year, Burnell said.

A June 19, 2009, report from the NRC identified 18 nuclear plants from around the country that must adjust their funding plans after submitting their reports to the NRC. Callaway Unit 1 is not listed in the report.

There are locations around the country where former nuclear plants stood, Burnell said. These include the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Bath, Maine, the Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant in Charlevoix, Mich., and the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Rainier, Ore. At all three plants, spent nuclear fuel remains onsite in dry cask storage.

Since the Callaway plant continues to produce electricity, used fuel rods are stored within the facility in a stainless-steel-enclosed pool about the size of a tennis court, Cleary said. He added that because the plant does not produce much spent fuel, the pool is large enough to store all fuel used through 2020.

When the plant is decommissioned, these rods will be transferred to dry cask storage, Cleary said. This too, would be considered a temporary solution, he said.

“There would be a need for a permanent geological facility” in which large amounts of spent nuclear fuel could be stored, Cleary said. The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could have served as this facility, but it is no longer being considered byPresident Barack Obama's administration.

After a nuclear power plant is decommissioned, the location can be returned to one of two levels of cleanliness.

Unrestricted-use sites are fully protected against any residual radiation that could remain at the site, and could be used for housing or farms. Restricted-use sites, which have slightly higher levels of radiation, could not support full-time inhabitation but could still be used for facilities such as factories, Burnell said.

The plant was constructed on the site of the former town of Reform. Although AmerenUE does not have plans to use the site once nuclear power plant is disassembled, it will be safe for habitation.

“Our plan in Missouri would be to return the site to unrestricted use,” he said.

Callaway Unit 1 is Missouri's only nuclear power plant. It was first issued a 40-year operational license in 1984, Cleary said, meaning it can operate until Oct. 18, 2024. He added that in 2011 the utility intends to file for a 20-year extension so the plant could remain open through 2044.

Because a planned decommission is so far away, Cleary said the projected costs might not be accurate.

“They would be pure speculation at this point, because there would be newer technologies available in the future,” he said. “We’re making our best estimate on what we know today. We have a lot of years before the plant would be decommissioned so that would give us time to adjust our funds as we see fit.”

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Columbia Missourian
July 24, 2009

Saving funds for shutdown of nuclear plants proves tricky

By Dave Gram and Frank Bass
The Associated Press

VERNON, Vt. — The companies that own almost half the nation's nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The shortfalls are caused not by fluctuating appetites for nuclear power but by the stock market and other investments, which have suffered huge losses over the past year and devastated the plants' savings, and by the soaring costs of decommissioning.

At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material.

But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the most severe of risks. Radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or be released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists.

During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.

The power companies have been hammered by the same declining market returns as colleges, companies and private investors. Industry critics say reactor owners weren't saving enough even before the financial collapse, and that federal regulators have not held the industry to a high enough standard.

Federal regulators recently released a report about shortfalls at 30 of the nation's 104 nuclear plants that asks operators for details about how they plan to resolve the problem.

The amount of money set aside for dismantling the plants has decreased at nearly four of every five reactors, according to an AP analysis of financial records provided every other year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The government could force plant operators to set aside more money.

While AmerenUE's nuclear plant in Callaway County was not among the 30 cited, the utility's fund for decommissiong costs has declined.

Plant owners say they have several ways to close the gap. In addition to idling the plants, the government can simply extend licenses to operate them. And investments could recover in the years to come. Industry officials say a 6 percent annual rate of return is a reasonable long-term goal.

Most nuclear plants will be operating for several more decades and will be able to recoup their fund losses, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

Nuclear power critics say those plans are not enough.

"No one at the NRC wants to acknowledge what is absolutely obvious to us, that the funds are inadequate and that the industry has bare assets," said Arnold Gundersen, a retired nuclear engineer and decommissioning expert.

Those critics say the industry is making assumptions about their investments that do not account for another market collapse, political obstacles to getting the licenses renewed and unforeseen safety problems that could make nuclear power less palatable.

Last week, British officials reported on a 2007 leak in a cooling tank at the decommissioned Sizewell-A nuclear plant. If the leak had not been promptly discovered, officials said, nuclear fuel rods could have caught fire and sent airborne radioactive waste along the English coast, harming plant operators or the public.

The average cost of dismantling a nuclear reactor is now estimated at $450 million. The average plant owner has about $300 million saved up for the job. Typically, the money is raised through a small surcharge on electric rates.

NRC records show utilities are trying to close the gaps:

—Owners at 19 plants have won approval to mothball reactors for as long as 60 years. A method called Safestor has been approved for reactors including the three Palo Verde units in the Arizona desert and the Three Mile Island 1 reactor near Harrisburg, Pa.

Under this method, radioactive fuel is removed from the reactor and the spent fuel storage pool and is stored in dry casks on plant property. Plant systems are drained of water, and the remaining radioactivity in the plant is left to decay until the facility is dismantled.

But some analysts worry the utility companies that own nuclear plants might not even exist in six decades.

"Our concern is that they'll just walk away from it," said Jim Riccio, a Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst. "It's like a sitting time bomb. The notion that you can just walk away from these sites and everything will be hunky-dory is just not true."

—The operators of 54 nuclear plants, or more than half in the U.S., have already received 20-year license extensions. Sixteen more are being reviewed, and the commission expects to receive 21 more applications in the next several years. To date, the NRC hasn't turned down any license extensions.

While companies ask for extensions for other reasons — primarily to keep producing power and making money — some companies have explicitly told shareholders they will use license extensions to meet their decommissioning obligations.

—Some plants are calculating growth projections for their investments with an annual return of 6 percent. While that is roughly what leading market indexes make over decades, the NRC found plant owners lost an average of 13 percent over the past two years.

In Texas, state rules govern utilities' investments, said Ashley Monts, a spokeswoman for Luminant Corp., which owns two nuclear plants near Glen Rose, Texas. Five years before a plant is set to close, she said, Luminant is required to have 60 percent of the cost available. Two and a half years out, the gap must be completely closed.

Luminant has about $385 million set aside to close its two plants in 2030 and 2033. Two years ago, that figure was $439 million. The cost of decommissioning the reactors is $824 million, almost $90 million than was estimated before.

—Plant operators appear to benefit from NRC rules that don't require them to set aside money to store old nuclear fuel, demolish buildings, or return the plant sites to pristine states. Although some states require a full site restoration, the federal government does not.

The waste disposal problem has become especially acute since the federal government scrapped plans to store nuclear waste at a secure facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Instead, radioactive fuel rods are now stored in large concrete and steel canisters on plant grounds that are guarded around the clock and tested often for leaks.

The Vermont Yankee plant, in southeastern Vermont along the banks of the Connecticut River, was hailed as the future of power production for New England when it opened in 1972. Its license is set to expire in 2012, and its decommissioning fund has less than half the money expected to be needed.

As recently as December 2007, the fund held $416 million. Now it stands at about $384 million — a rebound from where it stood a few months ago but not even close to the estimated $932 million it will eventually cost to dismantle the plant.

Entergy Corp. is seeking a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee, and is hoping to have enough money in the fund to decommission the plant in the 2030s. Jay Thayer, the plant's vice president for operations, said that if the decommissioning fund continues to perform poorly, the company may ask for permission to idle the plant for as long as 60 years under the Safestor program. That would put off the dismantling until 2092.

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Duluth News Tribune
July 24, 2009

Local view: Nuclear energy is more reliable than the alternatives

Wind is free but is unpredictable. You can have lots of wind turbines but, sometimes, no power. Glasgow, Scotland, is an excellent example. Glasgow is very close to Europe’s largest on-shore wind site, which features 140 turbines that generate 322 mega-watts of electricity. This is enough to power 180,000 homes. However, from Feb. 4 through Feb. 10 this year, there was little wind, according to the city’s newspaper, the Telegraph. The turbines generated virtually no power. This was evidence of the need for a backup power source to supply electrical demand when the wind does not blow.

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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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