Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, August 31, 2009
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
August 28, 2009
Reprocessing isn't the answer
By Richard L. Garwin
There are 104 commercial nuclear power reactors in the United States, which supply about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. These are light water reactors (LWR) fueled with low-enriched uranium (LEU), containing initially about 5 percent of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Each nuclear plant receives about 25 tons of LEU fuel annually, in the form of long pencil-thin rods of uranium oxide ceramic enclosed in thin metal "cladding", that are bundled together (in bunches of 300) to form fuel elements. Each year, nearly the same amount of spent fuel is removed from each reactor, but it's now intensely hot, both thermally and radiologically. In fact, even after five years of cooling in the "swimming pool" associated with each reactor, a fuel element would soon glow red-hot in the atmosphere because of the continuing radioactive decay of the products of nuclear fission. At this point, spent-fuel elements can be loaded into dry casks and stored at reactor sites on outdoor concrete pads with two casks added each year per reactor.
The country's long-term disposal plan has been that all spent fuel from U.S. reactors, plus some high-level waste from defense programs, would be entombed at the Yucca Mountain mined geologic repository in Nevada. But the senators from that state have opposed its opening, and President Barack Obama may have effectively killed the project by slashing funding and convening a blue-ribbon panel to find an alternative.
Some commercial interests argue that such spent nuclear fuel should be reprocessed (or "recycled," which is the industry's current term) into fresh fuel. They claim that this will greatly reduce the need for mined uranium and for underground repositories, and is, in any case, desirable--just as is all recycling of material such as paper, glass, aluminum, and steel. In reality, however, recycling spent nuclear fuel from U.S. reactors wouldn't solve any problems and would add additional cost and hazard.
In my congressional testimony, speeches, and published articles PDF, I have provided technical details and abundant references to explain my opposition to reprocessing of LWR fuel back into fresh fuel as is practiced in France and a few other countries. France has decades of experience in technically successful reprocessing of its LWR spent fuel. It currently obtains one usable mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel element, a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides, from every seven LWR spent fuel elements. But aside from the almost 1-percent plutonium in the spent fuel and the 94-percent uranium 238, the other 5 percent of mass (called "fission products") is removed and melted together with glass into a vitrified product that is encased in welded stainless steel canisters. These are stored at the French reprocessing plant at La Hague, awaiting the availability some decades hence of a mined geologic repository. In fact, for all the U.S. delays and roadblocks, it's far ahead of France in planning for a permanent repository.
In truth, reprocessing doesn't eliminate or even significantly reduce the need for a repository, as demonstrated by the authoritative presentations of Idaho National Laboratory Associate Director Phillip J. Finck, who has worked in the French program and is now in charge of a major portion of the U.S. government nuclear energy research program. According to Finck, Yucca Mountain could accommodate only about 10 percent more spent MOX fuel and vitrified fission products as produced at La Hague than it could normal spent fuel. This is because after four years in a reactor MOX fuel is much hotter than normal spent fuel, and so fewer spent MOX fuel elements can be accommodated in the same space as ordinary and cooler spent fuel (also called UOX, for its uranium-oxide content).
What's the long-term plan then? Well, there is no plan, but there are proposals. One of the more foolish was the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) PDF, advanced by the Bush administration and abandoned by Obama. It planned on building a U.S. reprocessing plant to recycle spent UOX into MOX fuel not for light water reactors, but for a new generation of fast reactors that would, if they were built, burn up the plutonium and the so-called higher actinides such as neptunium, americium, and curium in spent fuel. This would have had the advantage of reducing the long-persisting decay heat from spent MOX, which would make it simpler to store it in an underground repository.
But because the fuel for these specialized fast reactors would have to be reprocessed many times over, the cost would have made the GNEP approach uneconomical as a waste-treatment option. GNEP proponents also never specified what form they would store the hottest and most hazardous fission products--strontium 90 and cesium 137--each of which has a roughly 30-year half-life and would need to be stored for 300 years.
Reprocessing of LWR fuel also fails to save uranium, a common argument in favor of recycle. Although 1 percent of the fuel is plutonium and can be burned as MOX; recycling all LWR fuel, including reuse of uranium, would save at most 20 percent of the necessary supply of raw uranium ore. Analysis shows this isn't worth doing unless the cost of natural uranium rose to something like $750-$1,000 per kilogram. Its current price, however, is much lower, on the order of $70 per kilogram. Even at a price of $750 per kilogram, reprocessing would only be marginally preferable.
Although the French experience with reprocessing has been technically successful, if costly, the British experience has been a failure. Britain built a government-operated plant at Sellafield, but it hasn't performed reliably and the physical fabrication of MOX for sale to Japan and other customers has been stymied by Sellafield's failure to produce MOX fuel pellets to specification. Furthermore, Britain has no plans to use MOX in its own reactors. France plans to hold its spent MOX fuel until a currently unplanned fleet of fast "breeder" reactors are built that, in principle, would produce (or "breed") more plutonium than they burn. At that time, the MOX could be reprocessed to make fuel that would have 10-20 percent plutonium, rather than the typical 5-7 percent plutonium content necessary for use in LWRs. Unfortunately, there is no successful commercial experience in the world with plutonium-fueled fast reactors. France operated a 250-megawatt-electric fast reactor named Phénix, and, briefly, a commercial scale 1,250-megawatt-electric version named Superphénix, but the latter operated only a tiny fraction of the time and has been dismantled.
My own view is that if plutonium-fueled fast reactors could be demonstrated to be less costly than the typical LWR "burner" reactor, and if it could be demonstrated to be just as safe, then recycling of nuclear fuel would make sense. One would still need mined geologic repositories for the spent fission products and other high-level wastes, however.
To help, I have proposed a world breeder reactor laboratory that would focus on improving computer simulations of fast-reactor designs and safety analysis; so that one could more confidently simulate and analyze not only normal operation but also potential accidents that can't be experimentally investigated. After perhaps 20 years, a thorough cost and safety analysis of fast reactors compared with LWRs might be possible. And if a convincing demonstration by simulation were achieved, then it might be time to go ahead and build a prototype reactor to confirm the simulation.
Whether or not fast reactors eventually are economical and safer than LWRs, more LWRs should be built if they can compete economically with fossil fuel-burning plants at costs that include an appropriate carbon tax. The spent LWR fuel should be stored at the reactor sites or in centralized storage locations in standard dry casks. This will suffice for 100 years or more, while the world addresses more sensibly the provision of suitable, mined long-term geologic repositories. If fast reactors become safer than LWRs, and economically competitive with them as well, the world will be happy not to have wasted its plutonium by burning it once in an LWR rather than essentially forever in a fast reactor.
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CounterPunch
August 28, 2009
Reprocessing the Lies
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again
By Saul Landau
A group of scientists, military officials and government bureaucrats signed an informal pact with the devil. The contract became public in August 1945, when U.S. bombers nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Since then, no other nation has used a nuclear weapon, but thousands of radiation-emitting tests have occurred and nuclear energy plants mushroomed, with promises of cheap, safe and clean power. Over the decades, however, “the nuclear industry” has faced repeated cost over-runs, and serious “accidents.” Thousands died at the Chernobyl power plant (Ukraine) and a near catastrophe occurred at the Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) facility. Air Force planes dropped H bombs in the ocean off the Spanish coast and innumerable leaks, fires and “mishaps” occurred routinely at military and civilian nuclear installations.
In 1980, Jack Willis and I produced “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang” for public television. Our documentary showed government officials and nuclear mavens colluding to obfuscate their failure to keep their “cheap, safe and clean” promise. In 1977, Jacobs, a reporter (and non-smoker) covered the nuclear issue since the 1950s. He developed lung cancer, his doctors speculated, after he had inhaled a plutonium particle while covering U.S. government atomic tests. He also looked skeptically at U.S. claims of benign radiation levels near the Nevada test site.
In a 1957 story, Jacobs reported his Geiger counter jumping scale in a “safe” area. In his story (The Reporter), he revealed the lies told by Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) spokesmen about actual levels of radiation. Jacobs had surreptitiously acquired from a Public Health office in Las Vegas a classified document revealing AEC knowledge that so-called low level radiation constituted serious health hazards. Indeed, from later de-classified internal memos, Jacobs discovered the AEC had classified the health report not to keep it from Soviet officials, who knew about radiation’s perils, but to keep the U.S. public sedated so people wouldn’t think about choosing between nuclear tests and getting cancer.
In 1977, Willis and I returned with Jacobs to the “down wind” area he had investigated 20 years earlier. In southern Utah, Jacobs found those he had previously interviewed were dead or had cancer. In St. George, Utah, directly in line of the fall-out path from Nevada nuclear tests, he found a near epidemic of cancer and a public that had endured years of nuclear nervousness.
Before he died, he added up costs and liabilities: damage done by bombs dropped on Japan, and too many thousands of civilians and U.S. service men who served as guinea pigs during the 1950s. The Pentagon, seeking to test soldiers’ responses to nuclear battlefield conditions, positioned men near the blast, had them cover their eyes and then measured their ability to fight. We interviewed Sergeant Bates, one of the GIs ordered to “dig a trench and crawl in.” The blast, he said, “threw me fifteen feet into the air. It made all of us sick.” In 1977, he had terminal cancer.
Hot hailstones pelted the “downwinder” civilians, accompanied by bare-faced lies from the Atomic Energy Commission and agencies that later replaced it, assuring them of the benign nature of the blasts’ radiation levels.
Death and disease, however, did not deter the gang -- which included major companies that made nuclear generating plants. Over the decades, various facilities accumulated “hot waste” with a half life of thousands of years, but without secure burial places. Nevadans don’t want it in their backyard (Yucca Mountain). Nor do Indians or poor African nations. In 1995, Russian sailors poured a thousand tons of radioactive liquid into the Sea of Japan.
The current energy crisis atmosphere seems to have induced amnesia about past nuclear “mishaps.” Nuclear lobbyists have even induced some Greens to convince Obama officials to subsidize its energy plans. But, reported Jim Snyder in The Hill, even the $18.5 billion the nuclear industry will receive in government financing won’t suffice to cover unexpected costs of “the next generation of plants.” The Nuclear Energy Institute -- euphemism for industry trade group -- demands $20 billion more in loan-guarantees “to kick-start the long-awaited industry revival.” (June 21, 2009)
Before funding the nuclear gang, Members of Congress should read from the long list of accident reports. Here are two of many:
1. For two decades, from the 1950s on, “thousands of workers were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Workers …inhaled radioactive dust while processing the materials as part of a government experiment to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel.” (Washington Post, August 22, 1999)
2. In July 2000, wildfires near the Hanford facility hit highly radioactive waste disposal trenches, raising airborne plutonium radiation levels in nearby cities to 1,000 times above normal. (http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html)
In 64 years, those who promised to perfect nuclear power still plead (over many dead bodies): “Give us time!”
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The Wire
August 28, 2009
Nixing Nukes
Written by Matt Kanner
Russian activists discuss nuclear plant decommissioning in Portsmouth
Few people are as familiar with the inherent complications of shutting down nuclear power plants as Oleg Bodrov. In 2002, the Russian nuclear engineer-physicist was attacked while walking home from his office. He suffered a serious head injury and spent weeks in the hospital.
Bodrov believes the attack was motivated by his activism against a Russian plant that was re-smelting radioactive metal. Bodrov is co-founder and chairman of the environmental organization Green World, which is currently focused on determining best practices for decommissioning Russia’s aging nuclear reactors. Among the obstacles to shutting down nuclear plants is that they employ thousands of people who are not keen on losing their jobs. The attacker who assaulted Bodrov was trying to send a message, he believes.
But the incident didn’t stop Bodrov from pursuing his work. He has led study trips to overlook the decommissioning of nuke plants in Lithuania and Germany, and his work recently brought him to New England.
Bodrov is part of a Russian film team making a documentary about the decommissioning of the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Wiscasset, Maine. He spoke about the decommissioning process at Portsmouth Public Library on Aug. 20, along with Elena Ilina, program coordinator for the Center for Safe Energy in California.
Also present at the event were Seacoast Anti-Pollution League executive director Doug Bogen and president Herb Moyer, along with Friends of the Coast representative Ray Shadis. Friends of the Coast was active in the successful decommissioning of the Maine Yankee plant, a process that stretched from 1997 to 2005.
Shadis stressed that conducting safe, environmentally responsible cleanups of former nuclear sites is in the interest of both supporters and opponents of nuclear power. If you want to promote nukes, he said, it helps to demonstrate that they won’t leave a radioactive mess when they’re shut down.
“This is not a pro- or anti-nuclear position,” Shadis said. “What underlies this is that in Maine we were able to convince the company that it was in their best interest to do the best possible cleanup they could do.”
Shadis said he invited representatives from Florida Power & Light Co., which operates the Seabrook Station nuclear plant, to attend the event in Portsmouth. They declined, telling Shadis they were suspicious of his motives.
Bodrov’s talk made clear his general distaste for the nuclear industry and its political underpinnings. His concerns about nuclear power are understandable. Bodrov worked in the Soviet nuclear industry for many years, initially testing reactor units for submarines. When the Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986, the building where Bodrov worked was destroyed, and some of his colleagues lost their lives.
“It was like a signal for me that I need to change my activities,” he said.
About 25 to 30 percent of the 400 nuclear reactors in the world have exceeded their design limits, Bodrov said. That’s also true of Russia’s fleet of 31 reactors, many of which are Chernobyl-style facilities operating past their intended lifespan.
“It’s like driving a 25-year-old car—it can break anytime,” he said.
Concern over these facilities led Bodrov to begin observing decommissioning strategies in other Balkan countries. Nuclear plants have caused thermo-pollution in the Baltic Sea and killed millions of fish, he said, and the amount of waste they produce could cause a catastrophe that dwarfs the Chernobyl disaster in magnitude.
“We decided to investigate the best strategies in different countries,” Bodrov said. “Chernobyl shows that it’s not possible to separate each country from the accidents.”
The decommissioning of the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant took more than seven years and cost about $500 million, but Shadis and Bodrov said it was an exemplary process conducted under the nation’s strictest standards.
There is still one particularly tricky problem to resolve at Maine Yankee, however—what to do with the 900 tons of spent fuel rods still locked away at the site. One possibility is a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that idea has been tangled in political and civilian opposition.
Plants in Russia, some of which are much larger than Maine Yankee, have the same problem. The Russian government wants to transport nuclear waste to a site in Siberia, a plan similar to the Yucca Mountain proposal. “The nuclear industry in the United States and Russia have the same mentality” and have since the Cold War, Bodrov said.
Asked what he thinks is the best long-term strategy for storing nuclear waste, Bodrov did not have a specific solution. He said dry casks are better than storage pools and stressed that nuclear waste should be stored in areas where the energy was consumed. He called the practice of dumping waste near people who did not consume the energy “immoral.”
According to Ray Shadis, there are currently nine nuclear plants in New England, four of which are either decommissioned or in the process of decommissioning. Doug Bogen, of the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, said Seabrook Station’s license does not expire until around 2025. But Shadis doesn’t think the plant will last nearly that long. He believes wear and tear to the facility will force it to shut down much sooner.
The Russian film team was at the Maine Yankee site for five days filming and conducting interviews for the documentary. Green World and the Center for Safe Energy stress the importance of engaging the public on the issue of decommissioning nuke plants, and their efforts stretch across national borders.
“We may be different, but we also find that we have so many things in common,” said Elena Ilina. “We all live on one planet.”
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Fox5 KVVU
August 27, 2009
Nevada Dems Lament Kennedy Loss
Reid: State Has Lost An Ally
LAS VEGAS -- Harry Reid felt the label “Kennedy liberal” was a badge of honor. He hopes future generations of Democrats will be proud to wear it.
“Ted Kennedy was the epitome of what a legislator should be,” Reid said Wednesday at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. “He was willing to make deals to get things done for the American people.”
Kennedy’s passing at the age of 77 leaves a hole in the senate and Nevada without a major ally, Reid said.
“No one stepped out of their shoes more to help me than Ted Kennedy,” he said, crediting the Massachusetts senator for fighting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility north of Las Vegas.
“I think it’s a loss for us all and the end of an era,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley, Nevada’s longest-tenured congresswoman.
Berkley and Reid said they will continue Kennedy’s fight for health care reform, a key issue the senator championed his entire career but ultimately never saw come to fruition.
But Democrats said Kennedy’s legacy will always be cemented by his success with other major causes including education, immigration and civil rights.
The latter is one for which Nevada State Sen. Steven Horsford is grateful.
“I think he does represent the dream. We continue to fight for the ideals of what this country is all about, hope, opportunity and justice,” he said.
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PR Newswire
August 27, 2009
Another Major Setback for 'Nuclear Renaissance': Industry Goes 0-6 in 2009 Efforts to Overturn State Bans on New Nuclear Reactors
More Lobbying Expected in 2010 in Even Tougher Environment After Yucca Mountain and Soaring Cost Estimates; Outside of Bans, Industry Falters on CWIP in Missouri and Key Fights in Other States.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The so-called "nuclear renaissance" is finding few friends among state lawmakers in the United States. The nuclear power industry has been shut out across the board in 2009 in its efforts in all six states -- ranging across the nation from Kentucky to Minnesota to Hawaii -- where it sought to overturn what are either explicit or effectively bans on construction of new reactors, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Efforts to overturn bans also have failed to advance in Illinois and West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Beyond failing to reverse a single state-level ban on new reactors, the industry also suffered a wide range of major defeats, including an effort to repeal a ban on "Construction Work in Progress" (CWIP) payments that would have been imposed on Missouri ratepayers to finance a new nuclear power plant, which was then promptly mothballed. Industry efforts to get nuclear declared "renewable" by the states of Indiana and Arizona also failed to achieve results. Also going nowhere is a California bill to lift the state's pioneering law banning new reactors until a high-level waste dump is in place. That follows a 2008 California statewide referendum drive with the same focus that failed for lack of sufficient signatures to get it on the ballot.
Michael Mariotte, executive director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: "While the nuclear power industry and a few members of Congress claim the U.S. is on the verge of a nuclear power resurgence, the industry looks more like a critical patient struggling to get by on life support out in the real world beyond the Beltway. No one seriously expects the industry to go away. But the truth is that things will be even tougher for their state lobbyists in 2010 now that the freeze on Yucca Mountain has taken long-term waste disposal off the table and also in the wake of new evidence of runaway construction costs that make nuclear power even more of a boondoggle."
Dave Kraft, director, Nuclear Energy Information Service, Chicago, IL., said: "Authorizing construction of new nuclear reactors without first constructing a radioactive waste disposal facility is like authorizing construction of a new Sears Tower without bathrooms. Neither makes sense; both threaten public health and safety."
Jennifer Nordstrom, Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free coordinator, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Madison, WI., said: "Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight: There are too many other serious downsides that cannot be ignored. Fortunately, it is both technically and economically feasible to go both carbon-free and nuclear-free by 2050. Here in Wisconsin, we have a carbon-free, nuclear-free coalition in support of Wisconsin's current law on nuclear power, and a 100 percent renewable Wisconsin."
Commenting on the defeat of an industry-sought CWIP repeal in the Missouri Legislature this year, Mark Haim, chair, Missourians for Safe Energy, Columbia, MO., said: "New nuclear plants are far too risky and expensive to attract investor funding. Utilities will only build them if they can transfer the risk to the taxpayers or their ratepayers. Here in Missouri AmerenUE attempted to repeal a voter-enacted state law that bans Construction Work in Progress charges. Their goal was to get the ratepayers to assume the risks. When our legislators heard from consumer, senior, low-income and industrial groups all opposing CWIP, the CWIP repeal went nowhere. Once Ameren realized they couldn't get CWIP, they announced that they were abandoning efforts to build a new nuclear reactor. The pattern is clear, investors find nuclear too risky and utilities will only go down the nuclear path if their customers or the taxpayers underwrite the project."
NIRS provided this overview of the six states where industry efforts to overturn what are explicit or effective bans on new reactors failed:
MINNESOTA. The 1994 law in Minnesota provides that the state will not approve "the construction of a new nuclear-powered electric generating plant..." The Minnesota House voted 70-62 on April 30, 2009 to keep the state's nuclear moratorium in place. Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, has stated publicly that the issues that led to the 1994 law are still not resolved. "We hear about advancement in technology, but we haven't solved the issue of waste -- a million-year radioactive toxic legacy that we'll pass on to untold generations," said Hornstein.
Since then, Minnesota has seen the launch of a group calling itself "Sensible Energy Solutions for Minnesota" including a retired power company CEO and the self-proclaimed head of a wildlife group who also headed up an organization called "Sportsmen for Bush." According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the new organization was founded by "three veteran Republican operatives": Matt Burns, spokesman for the 2008 Republican National Convention; Ben Golnik, who last year was Midwestern manager of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign; and Tom Steward, a campaign spokesman for McCain and communications director for former Sen. Norm Coleman. By contrast, the Minnesota House's upholding of the moratorium was supported by the Clean Water Action Alliance of Minnesota, Environment Minnesota, Izaak Walton League of America-Minnesota Division, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Sierra Club North Star Chapter.
WEST VIRGINIA. In 1996, section 16-27A-2 of the West Virginia State Code was enacted, stipulating that any nuclear facility must be approved by the Public Service Commission, comply with environmental requirements, be economically feasible for in-state rate payers, and, most importantly also that "a functional and effective national facility which safely, successfully and permanently disposes of any and all radioactive wastes associated with operating any such nuclear power plant, nuclear factory or nuclear electric power generating plant has been developed and that such facility has been proven safe, functional and effective by a minimum of twenty-four months' operation or experience." This spring, a bill to repeal West Virginia's effective ban on nuclear power plants died in the 2009 Legislature.
WISCONSIN. Wisconsin law sets two conditions that must be met before new nuclear power plants can be built in the state. One is that there must be "a federally licensed facility" for high-level nuclear waste. In addition, the proposed nuclear plant "must be economically advantageous to ratepayers." As the Center for Media and Democracy noted on March 26, 2009: "Given the near-death of the planned waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, and the estimated $6 to $12 billion cost of building one nuclear reactor -- not to mention the lack of interest from private investors and the tanking economy -- Wisconsin's law effectively bans new nuclear plants in the state. The major industry group Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) registered four lobbyists in Wisconsin. NEI is lobbying state legislators on issues related to 'nuclear generation... engineering education and other issues related to state policies on energy, job creation, and environmental law,' according to disclosure forms. It's the first time that NEI has had lobbyists in Wisconsin since at least 1996, though the group has organized public and media events here, especially in recent years."
As the Milwaukee Journal reported on April 21, 2009: "Supporters of nuclear power made a big push earlier this spring to overturn the state's ban on construction of nuclear reactors. The supporters included (Patrick Moore) a co-founder of Greenpeace who now is working for an energy coalition funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute... [A] coalition of environmental groups and others concerned about nuclear power responded, saying the high cost of nuclear power and the challenge of radioactive waste -- the spent fuel left over from production of electricity from reactors -- make nuclear the wrong choice for the state. 'Given nuclear power's high costs and its legacy of nuclear waste, expanding the use of nuclear power is not a responsible choice for meeting future electricity needs in Wisconsin,' Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups said in a letter to Gov. Jim Doyle and members of the Legislature.
HAWAII. Hawaii's ban on nuclear reactors dates back to the state's 1978 Constitutional Convention, which added Article XI, Section 8 to the State Constitution: "No nuclear fission power plant shall be constructed or radioactive material disposed of in the State without the prior approval by a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature." Industry-supported bills to lift this constitutional requirement failed in the 2009 Legislature.
ILLINOIS. Illinois' law requires either a federally-approved waste disposal strategy or the state legislature's approval for a new reactor project. According to the Nuclear Energy Information Service, the repeal attempts of the Illinois nuclear construction moratorium did not move in the 2009 legislative session in the Capitol. Bills introduced in the Illinois House and Senate died in both chambers. These restrictions may be linked to the fact that Illinois is described as "the Most Nuclear State in the USA". Illinois has 11 operating power reactors, three power reactors prematurely closed, and hearings underway for a new plant. Illinois also has a waste closed and leaking dump for "low level" radioactive waste, a storage facility for spent fuel, and Manhattan Project waste buried in a forest preserve.
KENTUCKY. Kentucky's law not only requires a high-level nuclear waste facility "in actual operation" by the time the new nuclear reactor would require it, but also insists on detailing "the cost of [waste] disposal... with reasonable certainty." A combination of industry-backed bills designed to remove these restrictions died in the 2009 Legislature.
According to NIRS, the nuclear industry's 2009 defeats in 10 or more state capitols -- including all six efforts to overturn bans on new reactors -- were offset by only one win. Georgia state lawmakers approved CWIP, empowering a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Co. to collect $2 billion from its customers before a single watt of power is produced from two planned nuclear reactors. Outside of the South, CWIP bail-outs for the industry have made little headway to date.
About NIRS
The year 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service http://www.nirs.org). NIRS was founded to be the national information and networking center for citizens and environmental activists concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues. NIRS does not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power.
--EDITOR'S NOTE: A streaming audio recording of the news event will be available on the Web as of 6 p.m. EDT/3 p.m. PDT on August 27, 2009 athttp://www.nirs.org.
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Hilton Head Island Packet
August 27, 2009
Coal-fired power station no longer a local threat
If newly-reported mercury levels in Lowcountry rivers are any indication, the region stands to benefit from Santee Cooper's decision Monday to shelve a new coal-fired electricity-generation plant.
But taking the $1.25 billion plant planned for Florence County out of the mix points to a need for better alternatives.
The cleanest, easiest and cheapest alternative is greater energy efficiency. That option needs to take a giant leap forward if it is to ever move from a talking point to a way of life.
Monday's decision also points to the federal government's duty to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Nuclear energy is produced without the carbon dioxide emissions that played a big role in killing the proposed coal-fired plant along the Great Pee Dee River.
But nuclear energy produces dangerous waste that currently has nowhere to go. The answer was to be the Yucca Mountain facility that has been 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making.
President Barack Obama is starving the budget for Yucca Mountain to fulfill a campaign promise to kill it.
That leaves the nation without a long-term solution for storing highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. This comes from a president who also says nuclear power will have to be a greater part of our clean energy future.
Killing Yucca Mountain is bad policy, if it can be called policy at all. Denial is a better word for it. The result is bad for a nation that depends on electricity, and has military nuclear waste scattered around the country, including the Savannah River Site near here.
Coal is obviously a poor alternative for the production of electricity. In fact, its documented downsides exceed the dangers we've seen linked to the Yucca Mountain repository.
Attorneys general from seven states and the District of Columbia opposed the permits needed for the Santee Cooper plant, saying it would undermine national efforts to protect the environment.
Santee Cooper, a state-run utility based in Moncks Corner, saw other opponents to the coal plant: dollar signs. The potential for a federal carbon tax and demands for new technology to limit the damage of carbon dioxide were daunting. And meanwhile the recession caused consumption to fall.
The change in plans has to be good news when a recent U.S. Geological Survey report said South Carolina rivers already are poisoned with some of the highest levels of mercury in the country. Mercury contamination in Southern rivers comes from air pollution that rains back down to earth, largely from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources, the researchers said.
The demise of the new coal-fired plant can help us all breathe easier. But it's time to get busy on real alternatives.
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Metro Spirit
August 27, 2009
Nuclear war
New energy initiatives at SRS or more nuclear missions? Two groups have two differing ideas.
By Eric Johnson
AUGUSTA, GA - As the nation settles in for a long and increasingly contentious health care debate, residents of the CSRA are starting to draw battle lines of their own regarding the future of the Savannah River Site (SRS).
According to the Department of Energy’s Strategic Plan for the Savannah River Site, the 310-square-mile site is poised to become the DOE’s premier location for new energy initiatives.
It’s got the land, the infrastructure, the brainpower and the workforce.
All it needs are the initiatives.
Skeptics of such an energy park, however, suspect the only real initiative the DOE is interested in involves prolonging its involvement in nuclear activities.
“I think it’s all a big ruse,” says the Sierra Club’s Susan Corbett. “What they really want are more nuclear missions.”
Corbett says that with the closure of Yucca Mountain’s nuclear waste repository, she’s afraid that SRS will become a temporary solution for the long-term problem of nuclear waste storage. Other reactor sites are going to have to dispose of their waste somewhere, she says, and right now SRS has all the resources in place to be that site.
“They might do some pittance of this,” she says of the other energy proposals, “but the Holy Grail is the reprocessing of spent fuel.”
According to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Engineering & Technology Mark Gilbertson, Environmental Management’s mission, which is to clean up the environmental repercussions of 50 years of nuclear production and research, is going to eventually result in a significant redistribution of the local economy if other energy missions aren’t discovered.
“If EM is successful, then jobs are going to go away,” he said. “That’s part of what this is about.”
The energy park concept being explored would focus on bringing conventional and advanced energy technologies to SRS, including renewable energy sources like solar, wind, biomass and geothermal; fossil fuels; hydrogen generation and, of course, nuclear.
The fact that the meeting was held at such an early stage, with no real firm plans to debate, put the DOE at a disadvantage when it came to the debating the future of the site.
The protest-minded in the crowd were outwardly skeptical about the lack of specifics.
Corbett maintains the whole meeting was just about money.
“It’s pretty obvious to me that this is just more looking for federal handouts, because none of these projects that they seem to have online have a commercial or private viability.”
That said, she claims to be for some of the potential missions discussed for SRS.
“We welcome the idea of a truly green energy park,” she says. “We think that’s a fantastic idea and that plenty of work can be done down there in all kinds of different areas.”
One thing Corbett and several others took issue with, however, was Dr. Samit Bhattacharyya’s claim that only 15 people died as a result of the nuclear accident atChernobyl. Bhattacharyya is the laboratory director at Savannah River National Laboratory.
“He completely discredited himself in my eyes,” she says. “He has no credibility for me now, because if he can excuse that he can excuse anything.”
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Grist Magazine
August 27, 2009
A look at his legacy
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, champion of the environment and clean energy, dies at 77 2
by Joseph Romm
He was a great champion of progressive causes, and his death is a great loss, particularly for health care reform. You can read read his staggering list of accomplishments here [PDF].
His legacy on “Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Efficiency” is below. How many Senators would even mention “energy efficiency” among their achievements?
Holding Oil Companies Accountable
During consideration of a 1975 tax cut proposal, Kennedy introduced a provision targeting the oil depletion allowance, which since 1926 had enabled oil producers to exclude 22 percent of their revenues from any taxes. Kennedy’s initiative passed overwhelmingly, trimming the allowance for independent producers and ending it for the major oil companies.
Raising Fuel Economy Standards
Senator Kennedy has a long and distinguished record supporting clean renewable sources of energy and reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. More than 30 years ago he cosponsored the first law to establish fuel economy standards. And in 2007, he supported a law which increased fuel economy standards, which is essential to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Promoting Energy Research and Development
In 2007, Senator Kennedy’s “America COMPETES Act” was passed by both chambers of Congress and sent to the White House to become law. That bill established an Advanced Research Projects Authority at the Department of Energy to be the focal point of federal efforts to support breakthrough research on new clean energy technologies.
In 2009, Senator Kennedy urged that funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act be used to build a wind blade technology testing facility in Massachusetts, and in May 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that $25 million of such funds will be available for the project at the Autoport in Charlestown.
Improving Energy Efficiency
Senator Kennedy was a strong proponent of increasing energy efficiency, which is an essential part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He was a long time supporter of programs like the weatherization assistance program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps those most in need reduce their energy bills by improving home energy efficiency.
Kennedy Fought to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Address Global Warming. During consideration of the FY 2002 Budget Resolution, Senator Kennedy cosponsored an amendment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address concerns related to global climate change. The amendment sought to promote voluntary programs for reducing emissions in the near term. In addition, Senator Kennedy’s amendment included provisions designed to assist developing countries in addressing the danger of global warming and specifically increased funding to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the amendment provided additional funding for programs that assist U.S. businesses willing to export clean energy technologies to developing nations.
Kennedy Criticized the Administration’s Proposed Changes to the Clean Air Act. Senator Kennedy was a vocal critic of the Bush Administration’s efforts to essentially repeal the “New Source Review” section of the Clean Air Act. The New Source Review provision requires industrial plants to install modern pollution control mechanisms when expanding or upgrading their old facilities. This standard has helped reduce smog- and soot-forming pollution by hundreds of thousands of tons each year. President Bush’s proposal eliminated this requirement, significantly increasing the probability of higher pollution levels and endangering the lives of millions of children, mothers, and elderly persons. Senator Kennedy strongly supported an amendment that would have delayed implementation of the new rule until a study was completed to determine its effect on air pollution and public health. The amendment failed on a party-line vote.
Kennedy Fought for Additional Personnel to Enforce Environmental Regulations. After a 2003 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report detailed the Agency’s substandard efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act, Senator Kennedy cosponsored an amendment to the VA-HUD Appropriations Act to reverse proposed cuts in the EPA enforcement staff. The amendment provided additional funding to maintain personnel levels and prevent layoffs to enforcement officers. The failure of the EPA to address a significant number of environmental violations exposed the negligence of cutting enforcement personnel. Senator Kennedy’s amendment maintained the previous year’s officer level.
Kennedy Opposed the Permanent Nuclear Waste Storage Facility at Yucca Mountain. Senator Kennedy is a strong opponent of the plan to create a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The potential for groundwater contamination from the site is yet to be determined, and the transfer of nuclear materials to Nevada from almost every state in the nation raises serious safety concerns. In addition, in March 2005, the Department of Energy admitted that falsified documents were used to ensure the credibility and safety of operations at Yucca Mountain. Until questions are resolved that will guarantee the health of both the public and the environment, it is irresponsible to approve a permanent storage site for nuclear waste.
Kennedy Cosponsored Legislation to Increase Funding for Amtrak Senator Kennedy cosponsored legislation to increase funding for passenger rail service in the United States. Amtrak is a vital component to the country’s transportation infrastructure, especially in the Northeast. Despite its importance, the Administration over the last three years has severely underfunded the passenger rail system, forcing it to delay critical capital investments. In his budget for FY 2006, President Bush proposed to eliminate all funding for Amtrak, hoping to force it into bankruptcy and shift the bill for passenger rail to state governments. Senator Kennedy’s bipartisan amendment would have restored the subsidy for Amtrak, ensuring service for the next fiscal year. Kennedy sponsored a similar amendment in 2003, which allowed Amtrak to maintain critical services during 2004.
Kennedy Fought for Increased Mass Transit Benefits for Commuters During consideration of the highway bill, Senator Kennedy was a key cosponsor of an amendment that increased the monthly amount of the employer-based federal mass transit tax benefit from $105 to $200. This puts the monthly benefit on par with the current federal parking benefit. The amendment was modeled after the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, of which Senator Kennedy is a cosponsor, and could help up to 194,000 T commuters in and around Boston. Encouraging the use of mass transit will help reduce traffic congestion and lower the cost of commuting, especially important at a time of escalating energy prices. Kennedy’s amendment was included in the highway conference report, which was signed into law by the President.
Kennedy Secured Record Transportation Funding in Highway Bill In 2005, Senator Kennedy successfully secured record transportation funding in the Transportation Equity Act, also known as the highway bill. Massachusetts will receive $3.658 billion for highways for the next six years – a $568 million increase over the last highway measure signed into law. In addition, the bill includes a substantial increase in funding for mass transit priorities in the state. The funds contained in the highway bill are critical to improving infrastructure in Massachusetts and reducing traffic congestion for the state’s commuters.
Kennedy Supported Additional Funding to Protect Water Resources. In 1972, the Federal Water Pollution Act was enacted to provide funding to states for water pollution prevention and clean-up. Despite substantial progress in protecting and improving water quality in the United States, serious pollution problems remain. A 2002 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study disclosed a $535 billion gap between current spending and projected water funding needs over the next 20 years. Payments from the Federal Water Pollution Control State Revolving Fund are essential to protecting vital water resources, wildlife and the public health in the U.S. To ensure adequate funding for the account, Senator Kennedy introduced an amendment to the FY 2006 Budget Resolution that expressed support for increasing water pollution payments to states.
Kennedy Fought to Cleanup Brownfields Sites and Revitalize Local Communities. In 2001, Senator Kennedy was a lead sponsor of the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act, which authorized funds for assessment and cleanup of “brownfields” sites. Brownfields are former industrial sites that at one time were determined unsuitable for development because of environmental contamination. Today, however, these sites are being cleaned up and redeveloped, enhancing the environment, creating jobs and expanding economic development in communities across the country. Massachusetts alone has identified over 7,000 such sites in the state. With over 500,000 brownfields sites in the United States, Senator Kennedy’s legislation provided important grants and revolving loans to states and local governments to inventory, assess, and cleanup contaminated sites. Unfortunately, despite its ability to bring economic vitality to communities throughout the country, the Administration’s budget for FY 2006 incorporated large cuts in the program.
Massachusetts Received Millions of Dollars to Clean Up Brownfields Sites. The year following passage of Senator Kennedy’s Brownfields revitalization bill, eleven communities in Massachusetts were selected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to receive federal grants for their Brownfield Assessment Demonstration Pilot programs. The total of more than $3.4 million helped these communities establish new methods of assessment, cleanup, and redevelopment.
Kennedy Fought to Prevent Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) represents one of the last remaining protected wilderness areas in the country, and is home to a variety of unique wildlife. The FY 2004 Budget Resolution contained language allowing energy drilling in ANWR, opening the environmentally protected area to development. Senator Kennedy introduced an amendment to eliminate the language and prevent the consideration of drilling in the refuge. Energy Department forecasts predict that, if retrieved all at once, the refuge would produce at most six months’ worth of American oil, and would not start flowing until 2013. This is a fruitless effort that would convert this spectacular ecosystem into nothing more than an oilfield, and damage the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for future generations.
Kennedy Supported an Amendment to Prevent Drilling in ANWR During consideration of the FY 2006 Budget Resolution, Senator Kennedy strongly supported an amendment to remove language that opened the door for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In recent years, the Senate has voted down attempts to allow drilling in ANWR, which would destroy one of the last remaining wilderness areas in the country. Drilling would do little to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and would have almost no impact on energy prices. Although the amendment was defeated, Kennedy will continue the fight to ensure this environmentally sensitive area remains free from oil drilling.
Kennedy Helped Defeat Drilling in ANWR Senator Kennedy and his colleagues were successful in defeating a provision from the Defense Department Appropriations bill that would have allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Republican leaders attempted to include the special interest provision in the Defense bill, but it was removed after being determined unrelated to the underlying measure.
Kennedy Supported the Goals of National Oceans Week. Oceans contribute vitally to the nation’s economy, the quality of the environment, and the health of the population. Providing oxygen to breathe, food to eat, and a wealth of natural resources, these waters play a critical role in sustaining life on earth. As a result, the United States has a responsibility to promote and practice stewardship of the ocean. In 2003, Senator Kennedy cosponsored a resolution to designate the week of June 9, 2003, as National Oceans Week, and urged the country to exercise programs to advance ocean literacy and education.
Kennedy Worked to Expand Ocean Research and Apply it to Human Health In 2004, Senator Kennedy cosponsored legislation to establish a federal research program examining ocean resources and their application to human health. The bill would have created the Oceans and Human Health Program at the Department of Commerce, and directed the Department to establish an outreach effort with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Centers for Disease Control (CDC). This coordination would help merge oceanographers and biomedical researchers to collaborate on marine research and its impact on human health. Senator Kennedy’s legislation passed in the Senate, but stalled in the House of Representatives.
Kennedy Cosponsored Legislation to Protect Coastal Lands and Wetlands In 2003, Senator Kennedy introduced legislation to help preserve America’s coasts and wetlands, and protect these unspoiled areas from development. The bipartisan bill would have provided grant funding to states and non-governmental organizations for land conservation at the state and local level. Funding would have been targeted to protect important coastal and wetland areas with significant conservation, recreation, and ecological value. The program would have supported coordination between private organizations and federal, state, and local governments for land acquisition and protection. The Coastal and Estuarine Land Protection Act failed to reach the floor for consideration.
And finally, you can see his major votes in recent years on energy, oil, and the environment here.
They say no one is indispensable, but some are irreplaceable. Ted Kennedy was both.
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Washington Examiner
August 26, 2009
Max Schulz: Obama's Yucca budget bungle
By: Max Schulz
OpEd Contributor
For someone who vowed to restore science to its rightful place, President Obama seems awfully interested in playing politics when it comes to nuclear waste. The result is a grotesque misuse of taxpayer dollars that puts the nation's nascent nuclear renaissance at risk.
Consider the recent crowing from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, about his late July phone chat with the president. Reid claims that Obama personally assured him that he will eliminate funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the 2011 budget, which will be crafted next year.
That effectively would prohibit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from conducting its independent scientific assessment of the site's suitability for storing nuclear waste some 90 miles from Las Vegas.
This is highly disturbing. If Obama truly intends to kill Yucca Mountain, then why did he propose to spend nearly $200 million on it in his 2010 budget? And why did he work with Congress in February to agree to spend $288 million this year? That's nearly half a billion dollars, which, if Yucca Mountain is to be shuttered, might as well be buried underground.
Perhaps $488 million is not all that much money considering the $700 billion stimulus package or a $2 trillion deficit this fiscal year. But remember that at his first cabinet meeting Obama instructed agency chiefs to find $100 million in cuts as a way to close the public's "confidence gap" over government spending.
It turns out that taxpayers may be on the hook for a lot more if Obama terminates Yucca Mountain. Under the terms of a 1982 law, the federal government is obligated to take nuclear waste off utilities' hands, and has collected more than $30 billion from ratepayers over the last several decades to do it.
The feds were supposed to start taking possession of waste in 1998, but with politics delaying Yucca's construction, utilities have been storing the stuff on-site. Some have sued, winning nearly $7 billion in judgments against the government for failing to live up to its end of the bargain.
Those judgments have been suspended, however, since the Department of Energy can claim a good-faith effort to build the repository. Evidence of that good faith is the 8,600 page license application DOE submitted to the NRC last year.
Cutting off funding for the license application, as Reid claims Obama intends, would have the practical effect of withdrawing it. And that would put the federal government in default. The treasury would have to start writing huge checks to the utilities operating the nation's 104 commercial nuclear reactors. It would also call into question control of the roughly $22 billion that remains in the so-called Nuclear Waste Fund.
It's worth noting that, as a presidential candidate, Obama declared his opposition to the relicensing of existing nuclear reactors until the storage question is resolved. Plans to build new reactors, meanwhile, may hinge on the unsettled waste issue.
Yet it is precisely Obama's Yucca Mountain chicanery that makes it unlikely that there will be a satisfactory resolution any time soon. Obama has offered no alternative to Yucca other than to convene a blue-ribbon panel--the classic government cop-out--to study the issue.
Most appalling is Obama's seeming hostility to sound science. Government scientists have spent several decades and billions of dollars determining that Yucca Mountain could safely hold the nation's nuclear waste.
The experts at the NRC have been prepared to spend several years conducting their own independent review of that claim. But Obama aims to pull the plug. Does Obama consider science's rightful place to be on the shelf?
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Las Vegas SUN
August 25, 2009
Federal inspector: Tighten Yucca Mountain credit card use
By Mary Manning
A federal inspector recommended tightening how staff of the Yucca Mountain Project Office use federal credit cards after reviewing two years worth of purchases.
"We concluded that operation of the Yucca Mountain Project's purchase card programs was not consistent with applicable policies and procedures and contained weaknesses that could expose the department to the risk of fraud, waste or abuse," wrote Herbert Richardson, principal deputy inspector general in the 18-page report completed Aug. 20.
The project has offices in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas. The Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and a contractor at the time, Bechtel SAIC LLC, were scrutinized by the inspector general's office from January 2007 to February 2009.
The Yucca Mountain Project's mission is to oversee the proposed first high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The inspector general's review discovered that Yucca Mountain credit card holders had purchased $3.6 million worth of goods and services, including paying the monthly power bill of roughly $360 per month for a total of $4,370 a year.
The OCRWM acting director, Christopher A. Kouts replied that the project should have a contract to pay the electric bill by Dec. 1.
During interviews with seven of nine cardholders, the inspectors learned that four of them did not get approval before making purchases on their cards.
In reviewing all cardholders' accounts from June 2008 through January 2009, about 56 percent of the statements totaling $76,218.35 had not been reviewed by a designated approval official by the required date. Some reviews did not occur for seven months and several had not been reviewed at all.
One of three OCRWM approving officials had not completed required certification training. OCRWM said that as of May 7, 2009, that official's approval authority had been suspended.
Two cardholders said that they had shared credit card numbers with co-workers, although that is not federal policy.
A Bechtel cardholder has also split a purchase of $8,400, paying $2,800 and then two days later buying $5,600 in order to overcome the $5,000 single-purchase limit.
Kouts replied to the inspector's report and said that all recommendations and changes had been implemented.
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GovExec
August 25, 2009
IG: Energy employees violated purchase card rules at Yucca Mountain
By Katherine McIntire Peters
Energy Department officials did not follow established policies and procedures for using purchase cards at the Yucca Mountain Project, the proposed storage facility for spent nuclear fuel 90 miles west of Las Vegas, according to a review of transactions between January 2007 to February 2009 by the department's watchdog.
In a report released on Tuesday, Herbert Richardson, Energy's principal deputy inspector general, found that a key official did not approve or review purchase card transactions in advance and did not always review cardholders' account statements in a timely manner. Another approving official was not certified for the role, despite acting in that capacity, and two purchase cardholders shared account numbers and allowed others to make purchases using those numbers -- all violations of federal requirements.
Such weaknesses "could expose the department to the risk of fraud, waste or abuse," Richardson wrote, although he noted that the audit did not uncover any improper purchases.
The IG review included a General Services Administration purchase card program administered by Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, as well as the purchase card system administered by Bechtel SAIC Co. LLC, the managing contractor from Nov. 14, 2000, to March 31, 2009. The IG's office reviewed $3.6 million worth of transactions that occurred between January 2007 and February 2009 in both programs.
Four out of nine cardholders told auditors they usually did not obtain pre-approval for purchases, despite the fact they did not hold blanket letters of approval from an approving official, as required by department policy.
Of the account statements reviewed from June 2008 through January 2009, auditors found 56 percent had not been reviewed by a designated approving official by the required date. Some were not reviewed at all, while others weren't reviewed until several months after the billing cycle ended.
The office's "failure to adhere to both pre-purchase and post-purchase requirements undermines internal controls intended to assure that department funds are not wasted or misused," Richardson wrote, noting that approving officials' review of purchases is the most essential management tool in controlling abuse of purchase cards.
While not an explicit violation of department policy, the office also had been using purchase cards to pay for monthly utilities, something that is not considered among best practices, the report noted.
The report recommended that officials in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management issue blanket letters of approval where appropriate; that designated officials approve all transactions prior to payment; that all approving officials be certified as such; that officials enforce the prohibition against sharing purchase card numbers; and that the office consider paying recurring utility bills under an appropriate service contract.
Christopher Kouts, acting director of the office, agreed with all recommendations in a memo to Richardson.
The Obama administration and Congress intend to end the Yucca Mountain Project next year. In the meantime, the project is essentially on hold while a blue-ribbon panel seeks an alternative plan for nuclear waste storage and disposal.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 25, 2009
About 70 attend solar meeting
By John G. Edwards
Las Vegas Review-Journal
A German company's plan to build a $1 billion solar thermal power plant in the Amargosa Valley 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas stirred controversy at a meeting Monday night.
Some of the about 70 attendees at a Bureau of Land Management meeting at the Centennial Hills YMCA said they feared the project would deplete underground reservoirs. Many who objected to water consumption plans, however, favor the Amargosa Farm Road Solar Project and want it designed to use less water.
Solar Millennium, the German power plant developer, wants to build a pair of solar power plants with wet cooling, because it is more efficient than dry cooling.
The company proposes to use curved gas panels to focus the heat of the sun. The heat would make steam to spin turbines and generate a total of 484 million watts of electricity, some of which NV Energy is expected to buy.
The project would provide up to 1,600 jobs during construction and 180 permanent maintenance and operation jobs.
Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa, called the solar power project a good alternative to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal repository, which he opposed.
Water for the solar plant would be diverted from alfalfa farms and would not increase the amount of water pulled from underground reservoirs, Goedhart said.
Goedhart said the level of water in his well wasn't dropping. Goedhart rejected statements to the contrary from Amargosa resident George Tucker, who cited studies.
Judy Bundorf said she worried that drawing water for the power project would affect the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, an uncommon desert oasis where 24 unique plants and animals live, including the pupfish.
Erin DeLee argued that the project could help the economically struggling residents and school children. "The kids don't have any money," she said."There's nothing out there for the kids at all."
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Denver Post
August 25, 2009
Udall, McCain united in call for nuclear power
By Bruce Finley
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK — Sens. Mark Udall and John McCain strolled somberly through a meadow Monday inspecting beetle-killed pines, lamenting the damage of global warming and pledging their bipartisan support for nuclear power as part of the solution.
As part of an August congressional recess tour of the West, Udall, a Colorado Democrat, and McCain, an Arizona Republican, then held a formal Senate hearing in the Estes Park town hall. They took testimony detailing the changes scientists are studying here and in other national parks.
But none of the testimony hit home quite like seeing the browning of the trees. Udall and McCain say action to address climate change must be the next major priority after health care.
"All you have to do is look around and see the trees that are dying because of the pine beetle," McCain said, standing with Udall and with Longs Peak visible behind them.
President Barack Obama must put forth a White House plan as soon as possible that congressional leaders can debate, McCain said.
"The president, or administration, would be better able to negotiate" with the likes of China and India at an upcoming international summit in Denmark, he said, "if we had some kind of agreement."
While McCain long has supported nuclear power as part of a strategy to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions, Udall previously had hesitated.
"I agree with Sen. McCain that nuclear power has to be part of the mix," Udall, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's subcommittee on National Parks, said Monday in the meadow. "It is clear that if we want to respond to climate change, nuclear power has to be part of the solution."
Later in an interview, Udall said his support includes emphasis on safety by improving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and issuance of mining permits. Udall also noted that a project to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada appears to be "a dead project."
At some point, he said, "you have to have a geologic depository that is safe."
The hearing Monday — following Udall and McCain's two-day weekend swing through Grand Canyon National Park — focused not on the complexities of "cap-and-trade" legislation and energy policy but rather on using national parks as "canaries" to signal specific changes and convey them in a way that mobilizes tens of millions of Americans.
About 100 residents attended the hearing, where experts from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Park Service and other institutions warned that human activities are disrupting natural processes.
Diseases and beetles that thrive in warmer temperatures have killed more than 2.5 million acres of lodgepole, ponderosa and limber pine forests in Colorado, said Alice Madden, climate-change coordinator for Gov. Bill Ritter.
Colorado's ski industry, firefighters and the ability to deliver water to other states as promised all might be compromised soon, Madden said.
"Colorado is going to have to come to grips with conserving water," she said.
Beyond Colorado, some of the nation's 58 national parks might become unrecognizable, said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and former overseer of national parks under then-President Bill Clinton.
"Glacier National Park could lose all its glaciers," Saunders said. "Joshua Tree National Park could lose all its Joshua trees, and Saguaro National Park could lose all its saguaros."
--Bruce Finley: 303.954.1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
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Charleston Post Courier
August 25, 2009
Santee Cooper wisely decides to end its push for coal plant
Santee Cooper's announcement Monday that it will suspend its attempt to build a coal-fired power plant in the Pee Dee continues a national trend. Utilities across America, both public and private, are moving away from coal, which has not just environmental but growing economic drawbacks. Santee Cooper's board members wisely recognized those flaws in ending their push for that $1.25 billion coal facility.
Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter, in a column on today's Commentary page, cites the likelihood of a "carbon tax" as one of the reasons behind the change of direction.
Many South Carolinians share his concern that Congress will pass, and President Obama will sign, a cap-and-trade bill making coal a far costlier source of electricity in the decades to come. The Democratic-controlled House already has passed such legislation with strong support from the administration. The Democratic-controlled Senate could follow suit as soon as next month.
And as a public utility, state-owned Santee Cooper should be particularly sensitive to public opinion, which in South Carolina and beyond has increasingly been turning against coal power. Rising alarm that the new coal plant would inflict serious ecological harm on air quality, waterways and wetlands in our state has been repeatedly expressed at public hearings.
Santee Cooper's decision is a clear victory for environmentalists. Yet our state's future energy needs must still be met somehow. Once the economy rebounds, so will electricity demand. If we are to obtain sufficient energy without adding more coal plants, we must develop alternative energy sources (including wind and solar power), intensify conservation efforts and expand our nuclear-power capacity.
Unlike the coal-fired generation of electricity, the nuclear generation of electricity doesn't produce the greenhouse-gas emissions that a global scientific consensus regards as a significant factor behind climate change.
Congress should address the primary environmental problem with nuclear power by following through on past pledges to open Yucca Mountain, Nev., as a waste-disposal site. Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continues to block that overdue step.
Debates over that and other critical energy issues will persist. But on Monday, the debate over Santee Cooper's quest for a new coal plant in the Pee Dee ended.
It was reassuring to see the utility's board prudently responding to changing times -- and to well-informed public input -- by joining the accelerating shift away from coal.
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Global Security Newswire
August 24, 2009
Yucca Mountain Funding Nears Its Demise
By Darren Goode
CongressDaily
WASHINGTON -- House and Senate Democrats are well on their way to helping the Obama administration kill Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (see GSN, July 30).
Both chambers have approved fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bills that match the administration's $197 million request to let the Energy Department officially keep the project open on paper for a year while funding Energy Secretary Steven Chu's blue ribbon panel to develop an alternative plan for storing and managing nuclear waste.
The current 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste are held in temporary surface storage facilities at 131 sites in 39 states.
One difference between the two bills is that the House matches the administration's request of $56 million to also keep alive for one more year a Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of a Bush Energy Department application to build the long-stalled repository, primarily to avoid a legal challenge.
The Senate bill only asks for $29 million. There is no time line for conference negotiations, although a Senate aide said conference talks should be smooth enough for a bill to get finished before the next fiscal year starts Oct. 1.
Since the start, the repository has met stiff resistance, especially from Nevadans, particularly Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.).
Reid recently said President Barack Obama reaffirmed his plan to kill the program by zeroing out funding in FY11 for the NRC review of the repository's application.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the creation of a National Commission on Nuclear Waste in its broad energy bill to perform a two-year study on the best way for the United States to move forward on a permanent nuclear waste repository.
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Republicans said that simply delays a permanent solution to the problem and unsuccessfully tried to add language to the bill giving the Energy secretary the authority to enter into cost-sharing agreements with private companies and contracts with local governments for hosting nuclear waste storage facilities.
Panel Democrats expressed concern that local governments could enter into agreements without consulting a state government.
The panel turned down an attempt by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to express support for making Yucca Mountain a permanent nuclear waste repository.
Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said he supported this idea, but the "administration has made it clear" that it will not move forward on Yucca Mountain.
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MSN Money
August 24, 2009
Nuclear Energy group spent $570K lobbying in 2Q
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nuclear Energy Institute spent $570,000 lobbying the government in the second quarter on legislation designed to reduce pollution linked to global warming and create clean energy jobs, according to a recent disclosure report.
The institute, the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry, also lobbied on legislation that would certify the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada would remain the designated site for the development of a repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. It also lobbied on legislation that would prohibit importing certain low-level radioactive waste into the U.S. and on a bill to improve the a loan guarantee program to help finance the development of energy technology.
For the April-June period, the group lobbied Congress, the departments of Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security and State, as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to the disclosure filed with the House clerk's office on July 20.
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Chattanooga Times Free Press
August 23, 2009
Nuclear power heating up
Jessie Blair gets up every weekday at 4 a.m. to travel 120 miles to school in Chattanooga.
The 24-year-old Atlanta student doesn't usually get home until 7:30 p.m., but he says he couldn't be happier.
As one of the first welding students in Westinghouse's new Chattanooga training facility, Mr. Blair sees a bright future working in the nuclear power industry.
"I know the industry is going to need younger guys like me," said Mr. Blair, who completed a welding course from Medix School in Smryna in March but couldn't find a welding job. "This is the best place for me right now and for the future."
Mr. Blair is part of a new generation of workers entering what nuclear power supporters hope is an industry renaissance.
After two decades of cutting nuclear production and plant jobs in the Chattanooga area, nuclear power is heating up again.
The $21 million Westinghouse center in Chattanooga where Mr. Blair is being trained to weld is part of more than $5 billion of regional investment under way or on the drawing board for new nuclear manufacturing and generating plants.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is looking to obtain most of its additional baseload generation from nuclear power in the next decade with plans for new reactors at Watts Bar near Spring City, Tenn., and at its Bellefonte site in Hollywood, Ala. Other U.S. utilities have applied for 25 other new reactors -- the first new American nuclear plants to be initiated in more than three decades.
To supply parts for the new plants and refurbish the 104 existing reactors, Alstom Power is building a $280 million fabrication facility on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga. Twenty miles downstream, Chicago Bridge & Iron is preparing plans for a $110 million nuclear fabrication plant on the river in South Pittsburg.
Collectively, the new nuclear investments could create more than 3,000 full-time and temporary jobs in the Chattanooga region over the next decade. Local development officials say they are eager for even more investment.
"Chattanooga has the work force, background and location to be a key player in the growth of nuclear power," said J. Ed. Marston, vice president of marketing for the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, which has targeted nuclear power manufacturing as one of its growth industries.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., wants the United States to build another 100 reactors in the next 20 years. That would match the pace of construction during the first generation of nuclear plants started in the 1960s and 1970s when most of the 104 existing reactors were built.
Nuclear Retrenchment, Revival
Chattanooga may never regain all of the nuclear jobs the city had in the 1970s when Combustion Engineering was one of the world's biggest manufacturers of nuclear components and TVA's staff swelled above 50,000 employees when the utility was designing or building 17 reactors.
Only six of TVA's reactors were finished, although TVA is now in the midst of a $2.5 billion program to finish a seventh unit by 2012 at Watts Bar. TVA scrapped plans in the early 1980s for nuclear plants in Hartsville and Surgoinsville, Tenn., and in Iuka, Miss., when the demand for power slumped and construction costs jumped.
Alstom and Westinghouse are successsors to the former C-E facility, although their combined employment is less than 20 percent of the 5,700 workers once employed at Combustion.
Since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, no new nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States.
But 17 utilities, including TVA and Georgia Power Co., have applied for combined operating licenses for up to 26 new reactors. None of the next-generation reators are yet under construction, however.
TVA is building the only new nuclear plant in the United States at the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar plant near Spring City, where the last American reactor was completed in 1996.
Limits on Growth
The long-promised nuclear renaissance still faces a number of economic and political obstacles.
The recession-induced drop in power consumption and growing interest in energy conservation are combining to cut the need for new generation. TVA power sales are down nearly 8 percent this year, and the utility projects another 2 percent drop in fiscal 2010. That will cut power usage near where it was a decade ago.
At the same time, nuclear power faces an uncertain political environment.
The industry secured loan guarantees from Congress in 2005 and public support for nuclear power appears to be growing, according to the industry-based Nuclear Energy Institute.
But a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in June calls for utilities to generate at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy by 2020. Congress spurned attempts to include nuclear power in the renewable portfolio standard.
The Obama administration also has effectively canceled plans for an underground storage facility for nuclear wastes in Yucca Mountain, Nev., and rejected a loan guarantee request for a U.S. uranium enrichment plant to reprocess nuclear fuel.
U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp., R-Chattanooga, said he fears the White House may be throwing a wrench in plans for a nuclear revival.
U.S. Enrichment Corp. is laying off employees in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Piketon, Ohio, this month after the Department of Energy turned down the initial application for federal loans for the American Centrifuge enrichment facility. The plant is seen as key to bringing back uranium fuel enrichment to the United States and beginning to reprocess fuel to limit wastes as is done in France.
"For months, we have heard from the secretary of energy, both in private and public meetings, that nuclear power must be part of the U.S. energy strategy," Rep. Wamp said. "But I'm most concerned about the decision against going forward with this project and recognizing nuclear as a safe and emission-free source of energy for the future."
Rep. Wamp said TVA should be a leader in developing more reactors. But TVA President Tom Kilgore conceded last week that the federal utility is bumping up against the congressionally imposed debt ceiling and may need Congress to raise the current $30 billion cap to build more reactors beyond Watts Bar.
By the end of 2012, TVA projects it will have $28 billion in debt "and there is going to be growing pressure on our debt cap."
More Deliberate Approach
Nuclear power critics in Tennessee still worry about a repeat of TVA's exuberance for nuclear power displayed a generation ago when the utility overbuilt and overspent on its nuclear program.
"The expense of nuclear plants doesn't justify building them," said Sandy Kurtz, a member of the Bellefonte Effficiency and Sustainability Team fighting plans for TVA's Bellefonte reactors. "If we were to put that same amount of money in alternative energies, we would be able to have the electricity we need without all of the wastes and legacy issues that come with nuclear power -- and just as many jobs."
In a study of 75 U.S. nuclear reactors built a generation ago, the U.S. Department of Energy found the average plant exceeded its initial cost estimate by more than threefold.
But since then, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has streamlined its licensing process and the industry has agreed to build fewer, more standardized reactor designs to limit costs and delays.
TVA officials insist they learned their lessons from a generation ago, when the utility launched America's most ambitious nuclear power building program with different plant designs at a half dozen sites.
"Construction costs are very high for new reactors," said Ashok Bhatnagar, TVA's senior vice president for new nuclear generation, who estimates nuclear power would be cheaper than most other baseload new generation. "But once you get the plant built it is very low cost to operate and maintain."
TVA Chairman Mike Duncan said the agency is taking a more disciplined and focused approach than in the past and is more likely to meet budgets and schedules.
"I think nuclear is a key part of our baseload power future," he said last week. "But it's going to be a more deliberate process. Instead of trying to build several at one time, we're going to do these one at at time."
Three years ago, TVA's Bellefonte site was picked as the preferred test site for the Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor -- one of the next generation of what proponents claim will be a safer and simpler design. But the Vogtle plant owned by Georgia Power Co. has moved ahead of Bellefonte. Mr. Duncan said TVA has not made any final decision about what type and how many reactors may be built at Bellefonte.
Training for New Jobs
Dr. Harold Dodds, head of the University of Tennessee's nuclear engineering program in Knoxville, said growing concerns about global warming and comparatively better costs for nuclear power generation have combined to renew interest in nuclear power.
"The public's attitude toward nuclear is positive now, and no longer negative," he said.
Enrollment in UT's nuclear engineering program -- the third biggest in the United States -- has nearly tripled in the past decade, Dr. Dodds said.
Chattanooga State Technical Community College, which last year launched a radiation protection program in its two-year engineering degree program, already has 50 students in the program, according to the college's engineering technology director, Tim McGhee. This fall, a non-destructive testing program is beginning with 15 students -- the first of its kind in the South.
Westinghouse and Alstom also are gearing up this summer for more nuclear work.
Last week, Westinghouse unveiled its Chattanooga training center to local business and political leaders, and an official said another 100 jobs may be added over the next couple of years. The welding institute anticipates training up to 700 Westinghouse welders to help replenish the industry's aging work force, which now averages over 50 years old, and meet anticipated growth in new plants.
David Hamilton, manager of Westinghouse's new Chattanooga welding institute, believes the nuclear industry eventually could be a bigger job generator for the Chattanooga area than even the $1 billion Volkswagen car assembly plant set to open with 2,000 employees by 2012.
"Once these new reactors prove themselves, I think you'll see a whole wave of new construction," he said.
Alstom is framing in its $280 million factory being built on the Tennessee River on the site of the former Combustion Engineering plant. The company expects to begin fabricating turbines and other nuclear equipment before next spring. It recently hired its 100th worker for the new facility, and the plant will grow to 350 jobs by 2012, plant personnel director Kirt Greene said.
Alstom communications director Tim Brown said production will begin in the first quarter of 2010.
"We're excited about the future potential of nuclear power both in the United States and worldwide," he said.
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Daily Telegraph
August 22, 2009
US's Yucca Mountain nuclear project in meltdown
If James Bond villain Ernst Blofeld is looking for a new secret base, some interesting real estate may be about to come on the market.
By Garry White
In the Nevada Desert, the US Federal government has spent the last 22 years hollowing out the inside of a mountain – but the whole project has been a complete waste of time. In a staggeringly expensive about turn, the Yucca Mountain project is about to be canned.
Yucca Mountain was meant to solve one of the country's main energy problems, but one of the most powerful men in the country appears to have put a stop to it – just one year before the site was due to open. His name is Senator Harry Reid.
Yucca Mountain was – and technically still is – the US's official repository for spent nuclear fuel rods. A series of tunnels 1,000 feet below the mountain surface has been carefully bored. The project, which was expected to cost $96bn (£58bn) over its lifetime, is situated in the most extensively studied piece of geology anywhere on the planet. It is also extremely controversial.
As nuclear power enjoys a renaissance all over the world, the problem of what to do with spent nuclear material is once again high on the agenda. The Yucca Mountain repository was expected to hold 77,000 tonnes of nuclear waste safely away from danger.
Located in a desert, the water table is deep and the area is sparsely populated. The mountain is also within the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site, where about 800 nuclear explosions have already taken place – including more than 20 tests by the British.
The location appears ideal. In fact, given the area's past and the level of nuclear material already discharged in the area, some nuclear industry insiders have been surprised at the strength of the opposition.
Despite this, the new Obama administration is going to pull the plug. In effect, it already has.
"Yucca Mountain is dead on arrival," Jim Riccio, a spokesman for Greenpeace in Washington, told The Sunday Telegraph. "It's DOA."
The most vocal opponent of the project is now one of the most powerful men in America. Harry Reid, the senior Democratic Senator for Nevada is now the US Senate Majority Leader. He believes that his 22-year battle to scrap the Yucca Mountain project is finally at an end.
"I am proud that after over two decades of fighting the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, the project is finally being terminated," Senator Reid recently said.
In his 2010 budget, President Obama delivered the lowest funding level yet for the project, which eliminates all work on the design, construction and transportation infrastructure for the dump.
However, despite Senator Reid's strong statements that the Yucca Mountain project has ended, the law establishing the site as the US's nuclear waste repository remains on the statute books. Some in Nevada do not believe the battle is over.
"It is not dead yet," Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said. The State officials argue that the licensing application had not been withdrawn by the Department of Energy or denied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They believe Yucca Mountain could still go ahead – and on August 12 the state approved a further $10m in legal fees to continue to fight the battle.
However, it really does appear that Yucca Mountain will not now open. This leaves the US without a long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste. Waste from old nuclear plants already exists – and it has to go somewhere. Sources close to the nuclear industry told The Sunday Telegraph that if Yucca is scrapped, then the US Department of Energy already has a little-known working waste repository in New Mexico.
With nuclear new build gathering pace, disposal of nuclear waste is now a global issue. Finland is building its own repository with widespread public approval, while Canada is getting to grips with the same problem.
In the UK, we should find out next summer what the UK's disposal plan is, but industry insiders widely expect that a repository will be built at Sellafield.
Whatever happens, the UK government need to looks at what has happened in Nevada – and manage the process a lot more sensitively than the Department of Energy did. If new build is going to happen – and it looks like it is – a UK repository is not just likely, it is essential.
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Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
August 22, 2009
Letter of the day
More efficient waste of money?
Nine billion here, Nine billion there: Having just read the August 2009 issue of Scientific American magazine, I have discovered that having already spent $9 billion digging the high-tech hole in the ground called Yucca Mountain, the Obama administration is not going to use the facility.
Their reasoning is the facility would be adequate for storage of nuclear waste for only 10,000 years. They want something that would be adequate for a million years.
Oh, call me serendipitous, but I just have to believe in 10,000 years mankind would come up with a suitable solution! In the meantime, how about we just use that cave instead of the 130-plus little piles of nuclear waste scattered (above ground) all over the country?
Never mind it was paid for off the backs of taxpayers like us. Next time, why don't they just theorize a solution, then bulldoze a few billion into a hole, and get it over with? It sure would be a more efficient waste of money. What? You say the national news media never mentioned this? Do tell. Y'all have a nice day.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe" - Albert Einstein
James Fountain
Lubbock
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Heritage Foundation
August 21, 2009
With Record Unemployment, Is Now the Time to Kill Yucca?
Relying heavily on the slots and roulette tables to bring in revenue, it’s no surprise this recession hit Nevada’s economy especially hard:
The Silver State’s unemployment rose to 12.5 percent in July, while joblessness in especially hard-hit Las Vegas surged to 13.1 percent. It’s the highest jobless rate both statewide and locally since the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation began tracking data in 1976.
Bill Anderson, chief economist with the employment department, said Nevada remains mired in the longest, deepest recession since World War II, and recent labor-market trends don’t hint at any improvement. Joblessness in Nevada jumped 1.9 percentage points from April to June, the biggest three-month spike on record. Nevada shed nearly 28,000 jobs in the three-month period, including 15,000 jobs from June to July alone.”
One way for Nevada to make up some ground would be to reengage the nuclear industry. Yucca Mountain, the most studied geologic nuclear materials repository in the world, would generate over 2700 jobs during peak operations. It is not just those jobs that are at stake. According to a report done by the Department of Energy, stopping Yucca will kill 4700 jobs in the region influenced by the project. Unfortunately, this is precisely what Congress and the Obama Administration is about to do. Darren Goode of CongressDaily reports,
“House and Senate Democrats are well on their way to helping the Obama administration kill Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Both chambers have approved FY10 Energy and Water Appropriations bills that match the administration’s $197 million request to let the Energy Department officially keep the project open on paper for a year while funding Energy Secretary Chu’s blue ribbon panel to develop an alternative plan for storing and managing nuclear waste.”
But Yucca Mountain is just the beginning of the story when it comes to opportunity lost for Nevada. The state potentially holds significant leverage because of Yucca Mountain. Instead of rejecting the spent fuel repository, Nevada could have set itself up as the nuclear technology capital of the U.S. at a time when countries across the globe are looking to nuclear technology to meet their energy and environmental goals. Such a strategy could result in thousands of high paying, highly skilled jobs at the exact time that Nevada could use them.
While no one can predict exactly what sorts of facilities would be built, there are plenty of examples to go by. For example, where better to build a nuclear fuel recycling facility then next to a spent fuel repository? Building a recycling plant, according to some estimates, would create 5000 jobs. As the U.S. builds more plants, it is certainly going to need more fuel, so how about an enrichment facility? One such plant in New Mexico will employ some 321 workers.
And with these new opportunities, the residents of Nevada will need plenty of clean, affordable power, so how about some nuclear power plants? At over a 1000 workers per plant, depending on the number of reactors, we are talking real, long-term jobs. Furthermore, there are research and development facilities that could be built to support innovation in the nuclear industry.
Nevada could be the nuclear capital of the world – if its politicians allow it so.
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 21, 2009
Timbisha Shoshone concerns also aired
By Christina Eichelkraut
PVT
Native American tribes have concerns about solar power plants.
Barbara Durham, of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe in Death Valley, Calif., expressed the tribes' concerns about the proposed Solar Millennium project in Amargosa Valley at Tuesday's Bureau of Land Management public scoping meeting.
"It seems like yesterday we were having to protect our rights and our land, and here we are again," Durham said, referring to the tribes' activism on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
"I will say our tribe is in favor of alternative energy, but I think we're going to have to support the people of Amargosa Valley on how this is going to affect them and us down the road," Durham said. "We have concerns about our cultural sites here in this area.
"We have a government- to-government relationship with the BLM and we haven't even begun talking to the BLM about this project. You should at least talk to us.
"Also tearing up the grounds is a concern," Durham said. "A lot of residents have talked about the eyesore this is going to cause and the heat that's going to radiate from it. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but I'm sure it's going to be a problem in the future."
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Flathead Beacon
August 21, 2009
Guest Commentary: Ryan Zinke
The Merging of Climate Change and Energy
By Sen. Ryan Zinke
Whether one believes in global warming, climate change and our nation’s energy policies are merging. Rising global temperatures have become a divisive issue; many believe them to be a part of the natural cycle, while others point to the diminishing polar ice shields as proof that our emissions are killing our planet. Unfortunately, the issue is far from being definitively resolved. My view has always been that promoting clean air and clean water and reducing our dependency on foreign energy is a positive step forward. Once more, the sheer magnitude of what is at stake should dictate being open-minded. While the controversial American Clean Energy and Security Act offers some positive aspects, it falls short of providing the right policy. A more reasoned approach would be one that reduces our dependence on foreign sources of energy, funds research and increases production of clean domestic energy, and provides transparency of the true cost of changing our energy status quo. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of the current American Clean Energy and Security Act, better known as the “cap and trade” legislation.
First, the good. I applaud the administration’s effort to finally address reducing our dependence on foreign oil. After spending more that $1 trillion on two Gulf wars and sacrificing more than 4,300 American lives, our nation is still held hostage to foreign oil. To those who believe that America has enough domestic oil reserves, here are three facts: Two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves are found in the Persian Gulf. America’s consumption is 20 million barrels of oil a day (20 percent of the world’s consumption), and the total oil in the controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would represent less than 1 percent of the world’s oil production. The cold, hard reality is that America has less than 3 percent of the world’s petroleum reserves, and our thirst for oil far outweighs our ability to ever produce it domestically.
Second, the bad. The gap between our demand for and our ability to produce domestic energy cannot be met by alternative energy sources such as wind and solar alone. By the most optimistic estimates, the combined energy production of solar and wind would amount to less than one-third of our total energy consumption. Common sense would say that domestically produced coal, natural gas and nuclear energy should be a part of any energy policy. The “cap and trade” act would penalize these needed energy sources to give the appearance that alternative energy is a bargain. By good fortune, Montana has the world’s greatest proven coal reserves. In today’s dollars, Montana has $1.5 trillion dollars worth of coal. The problem, of course, is that coal is dirty when compared to other energy sources, and it will take billions in research to make coal emissions acceptable. The “cap and trade” bill fails to institute “clean” coal research and discounts the future of an abundant and inexpensive Montana commodity. Nuclear power faces a similar hurdle thanks to the efforts of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. After $10 billion and over 10 years of construction, the national nuclear fuel repository at Yucca Mountain is now on hold. Already expensive, any future expansion of nuclear power is unviable unless a suitable storage solution is instituted. Montana was right to promote wind generation, but without coal, our future does not look so bright.
Lastly, the ugly. Capping and trading emissions does not support transparency. While I recognize that the current administration inherited a legacy of failed energy policies, shifting the cost from the consumer at the pump to the power companies in the form of higher utility bills is disingenuous. It is a classic case of the government trying to manage the public’s distaste for higher taxes by shifting the blame to someone else. The right thing to do is to have the courage to tell it like it is. It’s time to wean ourselves from foreign oil and develop cleaner energy alternatives at home. It will be expensive and painful. To pay for it, it would be better to tax foreign oil and mandate using the proceeds to fund our domestic energy independence. Our policy should be to improve efficiency, fund research, store nuclear fuel safely, and build new wind, solar, and biomass facilities. The solution is simple and elegant, and each trip to the pump will serve to remind us of the price we are paying to fix this problem. Why is it so hard in Washington to be honest?
--Sen. Ryan Zinke, R-Whitefish, was a commander in the U.S. Navy (Ret.)
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Detroit News
August 21, 2009
Transparency apparently not on EPA's agenda
Gretchen Randall
As with most presidential campaign promises, Barack Obama's pledge of government openness isn't lasting long. A top official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appears to be indulging in the same type of cover-ups that Democrats on the 2008 campaign trail so ardently accused the Bush administration of conducting.
Al McGartland, director of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, has chastised the authors of an EPA study that knocked gaping holes of logic in the agency's decision to label life-sustaining carbon dioxide as a pollutant. McGartland's "cease-and-desist" warnings to the two scientists came to light in four e-mails, obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that vigorously defends free market principles.
The authors were told by McGartland not to publish the report or "have any communication with anyone outside" the NCEE about the EPA's decision to classify carbon dioxide as an "endangerment" to our health and the environment. Because the study so adamantly opposed the administration's decision to name carbon dioxide a pollutant in order to control energy usage, Al McGartland issued the following series of blunt "thou shall nots."
One e-mail noted: "There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls etc" about endangerment.
Another declared: "The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed. The administrator and administration has decided to move forward on endangerment and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."
Yet another cautioned: "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in this process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
And finally came the unambiguous order: "I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc." The report. which has circulated widely on the Internet, graphically illustrates why EPA kow-towers to Obama's sweeping wanted it buried -- perhaps in a lead-lined container deposited in Yucca Mountain.
Authors Alan Carlin and John Davidson -- both holders of Ph.D.s -- found that the EPA "paid too little attention to the science of global warming." Instead, they observed, the EPA accepted findings from other groups such as the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change without a "critical examination of their conclusions and documentation." They devastatingly noted that the EPA's conclusion that CO2 was harmful was based on old science which is no longer accurate. Specifically, the study by Carlin and Davidson noted:
• "Global temperatures have declined extending the current downtrend to 11 years. At the same time atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to increase and CO2 emissions have accelerated."
• "The consensus on past, present and future Atlantic hurricane behavior has changed.. . Now the consensus is much more neutral, arguing that future Atlantic tropical cyclones will be little different than those of the past."
• "The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for the operation of such processes."
• "A new 2009 study suggests that the U.N.'s IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their research suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in the earth's global temperatures."
The authors also warned the EPA not to make a hasty decision in calling CO2 an endangerment to health saying, "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030) there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."
Needless to say the usually intrepid investigative reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and the mainstream TV networks somehow managed to miss a truly scandalous story with ramifications for the American people.
Gretchen Randall is a senior partner with the political consulting company Winningreen LLC in Chicago and is a former contributing editor to Environment and Climate News, a publication of the Heartland Institute.
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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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