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Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Sun Topics
Here is the federal government’s plan to keep Las Vegas safe from the radioactive waste it wants to store at Yucca Mountain:
• High-tech metal containers for the waste.
• Multibillion-dollar titanium shields to protect the containers from drips of corrosive water.
• Robots to install the shields 100 years from now.
Too bad none of those things exist, opponents say.
Arguments over these canisters, drip shields and robots are central to their case against the Energy Department’s application to turn the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into the nation’s nuclear dump. They plan to file more than 200 legal objections, called contentions, today with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is to decide whether to license the site.
Many of those contentions will focus on what opponents call the science fiction aspects of the dump.
“At the end of 100 years they are going to send an army of robots — think ‘I, Robot’ — marching down underneath Yucca Mountain to install yet-to-be-invented titanium shields,” Rep. Shelley Berkley said in an interview this week. “It’s hard to fathom anyone suggesting it, let alone the secretary of energy.”
Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said the state will also file contentions over the mountain’s ability to isolate nuclear waste from the outside world. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designates Yucca Mountain as the nation’s prime site for storing such waste, says the mountain’s geology must provide part of the barrier between the waste and the world, Adams says.
“All the advocates say (the mountain) has been studied more than any other piece of real estate anywhere, but what the studies show is that the mountain can’t do what Congress said it must do,” she said this week. “No amount of fancy-schmancy drip shields are going to fix that.”
Adams said the drip shields are necessary to protect canisters filled with waste from highly corrosive water dripping from the roof of the tunnel in which the canisters will be buried. But the Energy Department doesn’t plan to install the shields until it permanently closes the repository 100 or so years from now.
And because the shields will be made of titanium worth an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion in today’s dollars, Bob Loux, the longtime director of Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Agency, questions whether they’ll ever be installed.
In 100 years, the mountain will be 120 degrees or more inside, according to the Energy Department’s license application, and too radioactive for human workers. That’s why remote-controlled robots will install the shields.
“The whole plan is illogical,” he said. “All this depends on systems that haven’t been built yet, on ideal tunnel conditions, on being able to seal the (drip shields) together with a seam so tight that no water can get through. And then they’ll be installed with robots that haven’t been invented. It’s fantasy.”
Rod McCullum, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Yucca Mountain project director, says there’s nothing science fiction about the plan.
The shields really aren’t that complex — they’re like huts made of metal.
“Everything’s made out of titanium these days,” he said, offering golf clubs as an example.
And remote-controlled robots are hardly a thing of fantasy, he said, pointing out that Nellis Air Force Base bombers fly remote-controlled planes in Iraq from the safety of Las Vegas.
Besides, the shields might not even be necessary. They’re more like a precaution, he said. An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute concluded that even without the shields, the canisters won’t release unsafe levels of radioactivity from the mountain, McCullum said.
“Analysis shows that most of the waste packages would be around for thousands of years out there,” he said, comparing them to ancient cave paintings that have survived without titanium or robots or canisters of any kind.
The Energy Department “either has to install (the shields) before they can close (the repository) or demonstrate that they are not necessary,” McCullum said. “It’s possible you could still have a safe repository without the drip shields.”
But that’s the scenario Yucca Mountain opponents fear most.
“Who is going to be around 100 or 300 years from now to force (the Energy Department) to install them?” Loux said. “Is there going to be a Congress around that is going to be able to appropriate that kind of money? Once the repository is filled and sitting there and everyone assumes it’s working OK, is Congress going to step up to the plate and appropriate $28 billion to $38 billion more?”
So we are supposed to believe a person who illegally gave himself and his staff a pay raise versus thousands of engineers and scientists?
As to "I Robot" references, this is obvious distortion of the design to make the public think it is impossible to install the drip shields in 100 years.
If the opponents are so sure the design is bad, let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so rule, and within 2 years YMP will be dead for real scientific independent reasons, not sound bite propaganda.
If you want to see the real design for Yucca Mountain go to http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/
That cartoon is a joke.
Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams complained that "the Energy Department doesn't plan to install the (Drip)shields until it permanently closes the repository 100 or so years from now.
Because the shields will be made of titanium worth an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion in today's dollars, Bob Loux, the longtime director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, questions whether they'll ever be installed.
State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto today is to release Lobbyist and confessed crook Bob Loux's list of hundreds of contentions that will be filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This will include questions on the Drip Shield.
Nevada opponents, if they permit an adjudication their positions on technical facts (including questions on the Drip Shield)of the program, have should have nothing to fear from a quality review process.
The LA process continues to establish the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, and is based on the science of the five supporting national labs and the USGS.
When the NRC approves the Yucca LA it will stipulate the legally binding use of the drip sheilds.
This shows that Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams and Lobbyist and confessed crook Bob Loux do not even understand the legal process.
Are Bob Loux, Reid and Obama really smarter than Steven Chu, the five national labs, the USGS, and the NRC to make a decision to stop the project.
1) The "Robots" referred to are nothing more than mechanical arms that can remove the waste safely - um we put a man on the moon, I am sure we can make a grab stick to pick up some nuclear storage containers.
2)The indestructible containers the waste is kept in have been tested for the past 60 years! They were left in the bottom of the ocean and pulled back up after that time and not ONE sign of deterioration.
3) When the repository is "permanently" closed - well, considering that the LAW says the waste must be able to be reaccessed and removed, that wouldn't make much sense would it? The waste, once able to be reprocessed safely, can be used to power future generations and NV would be the Saudi Arabia of America.
The tide is turning Reid - people are going to learn that you are keeping NV from a great amount of jobs, money, and opportunity. Shame on you.
It is funny that Sun quotes the crook Loux.
Dems just love love love their crooks.
They just can't get enough of them.
Dems must think stealing public taxpayers' money is a badge of honor.
Yucca Mountain - Turning Nevada into a wasteland.
This message brought to you by the D.O.E.
What a joke. We have the crook loux filing contentions (stole wages from NV). We have the crook reid opposing high tech jobs and a more diverse economy for NV (land deals at the expense of Nevadans). Ask dingy harry what he paid for the acreage near Laughlin. Was it 5% of market value harry?
We have the editor of this paper that has never worried about paying a bill in his life against something that would benefit NV, a californian who flies in on his private jet weekly to Las Vegas.
You would think if this rag of a newspaper was anything but a piece of propaganda they would depict actual graphics of the repository rather then a cartoon with 55 gal drums.
Is it these crooks of NV want to keep the populace down so all the service jobs in the casinos can be filled?
I see these 200 NV contentions being based on all the supposed studies loux and his group achieved during his tenure. Ask loux what actual science is behind his propaganda, he will continue to spout his BS. I foresee the NRC accepting less then half of these contentions.
PS titanium is one of the most abundant elements on earth!!!!
Advocates: why are you so willing to accept the Country's nuclear waste in your backyard?
Are you just so gosh darn patriotic?
Is there anything you won't do for money?
But Shelley knows ALL about robotic technologies! She's close to being an expert.
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd17/...
Stop it already! The government is going to finalize this thing and we're going to have to live with it. Now is the time to start negotiating with the feds to get money for hosting this monstrosity. We can get enough money from them so we'd permanently plug our budget deficit. Do it now before we lose our leverage!
LOL, dave thinks we have leverage.
It's not the state of Nevada's decision, dave. We have ZERO leverage.
Sordid-now that is funny, the only thing you missed is having a NY hat on shelley. Being the new yorker she is-does anyway really think she cares about Nevada? Its all eye wash by her and reid to mask their incompetance.
The Sun has laid out its usual fear mongering attack against the Yucca Mountain Project, ("the HIGHLY corrosive water dripping from the roof") as if the water is more corrosive here, than elsewhere--(its not).
It also quoted from the usual experts, like Shelly Berkeley, "No amount of fancy-schmancy drip shields" will help, and Bob Loux (I didn't know I couldn't write myself the checks) all to deny a basic fact.
These materials HAVE to be dealt with, sooner or later; they have to be dealt with.
The opponents like to offer two alternatives, either reprocess the wastes or leave it where it is; (but like the clean coal commercials they seem to agree with, the technology to reprocess all the waste does not exist.)
Yes we can reprocess some of it which produces weapons grade materials, (another set of problems). But not all of it-- It still exists.
That leads to the LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS--solution, leave it right next to the cities and major population centers that most of the 1 million new residents to this state came from, places like San Onofre, in Southern California, or Hope Creek, New Jersey, or Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania.
These facilities CAN store this material safely FOR A TIME, but not for the half life of the waste itself. For that we need to create a repository.
And Yucca Mountain is 100 miles away from any major population center, in a dry and stable geological area near where the government blew up almost 1000 nuclear bombs, in one of the most secure locations in the United States, the Nevada Test site. Try to go out there sometime and wander around. Not a place terrorists will easily penetrate. It is the IDEAL location.
The real agenda here is the opponents want to kill nuclear power in this country.
The opponents won't be happy until every house is equipped with its own small wind generator, maintained by the family in the same way they take care of their regular oil changes in the car.
Opps they want that gone too, I forgot.
Did you know that with all the talk about the cost of Yucca Mountain, the taxpayer is not the source of the funds?
The users of Nuclear power paid a user fee, into an account that Congress has since absorbed into the general fund--and Harry Reed refuses to release those user generated funds for the purpose they were collected.
Now the taxpayer is paying MILLIONS of dollars of court ordered fines for the government's inability to honor the contract it signed to take possession of those hazardous wastes.
This will be solved one day. Unfortunately it will rise to the absolute top of the "to do" list the day after a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility is carried out. And when that happens the press will howl at the moon and Harry Reed will be alone with the protection of the Las Vegas Sun to try to explain away all these years of stupid, obstreperous and willful blindness in opposing a reasonable solution to a not very hard to understand problem.
The water is corrosive in NV. Perhaps if Metman would go look inside his/her hose bibs
or water heater connections he/she might see.
Nuclear power should be cut back.
It is criminal, gross negligence to continue nuclear when no solution exists to the waste.
All the cities generating the waste
need to 1. Stop it. 2. Encapsulate it right where it sits. 3. Stop trying to shove it up Nevada's rear end.
Obama promised to kill Yucca.
He said in the debate with Hillary in Nevada, "I will end the notion of Yucca."
The water is corrosive.
This is like saying hot water melts ice. But hot water doesn't hurt glass or steel or any number of other materials.
Do you really think DOE engineers and scientists have selected materials that will fail?
As to nuclear power is criminal gross negligence, how about oil powered automobiles that kill 30,000 people a year directly and indirectly has cost the lives of 4500 soldiers and 1 trillion dollars. Picking the lessor of two evils if you will, nuclear wins hands down.
Where does it go after they "encapsulate it" where it sits and quit trying to shove it up Nevada's rear end?
Where does it go after Obama kills the Yucca Mountain Project?
Not just for the moment, not for the next 250 years, no I mean, where does it go eventually?
What do you do with it?
My roommate (a nuclear engineer) and I were talking about that in 1978 when I worked at a research facility in Boston. So we've now studied this site for 30 years, and the nation still can't find the political will to deal with this problem.
Oh, I know, let's leave it for those to come to solve.
Some say they will have better technology and will be able to handle it.
Perhaps..
Or maybe the modern pantheists will win the day and like a bad Star Trek episode turn the clock forward to a time when all live peacefully off the bounty of windmills and solar fields in the utopia that Obama will usher in, but I suspect mankind will behave as it always has and we will find competition, scarcity, avarice and plenty of cynical opinions to dilute any serious attempt to actually solve the problem.
For those who take "davidcurtis's" view, perhaps you should plan on staying in Nevada, for the rest of your life.
Because you can't want to go out among "them". We must not be a part of the greater them. Because they would do to us "Nevadans" the disservice of using a lone mountain ridge in the desert that no one cared about before this project came along.
The question remain though, what do we do with this material?
Not to produce any more of it would be a good start
The question has been: What do we do with the waste? A new method of ELIMINATING, not just storing, nuclear waste exists and has been validadted by nuclear scientists, including Dr. James Warf, one of the original Manhatten Project scientists. The patent has just been granted (the patent atty holds the receipt from the USPTO), although the number has not yet been assigned and other paperwork completed. Check out www.permanentradwastesolutions.com for the concept - the hardware design is completed but is not on this website. This process is safe, secure, economical, and, best of all, permanent!
This concept allows us to accept nuclear waste from other countries without it ever touching U.S, shores. Only those of our reactors that are not adjacent to navigable water will need to ship waste by rail or road - new reactors located on navigable water replacing those that are not will finally eliminate the last of that problem.
To quote Dr. Warf, "Your project is the only one I've seen that can eliminate nuclear waste from our environment."