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Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Topics
By all accounts, the plan to put a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is all but dead.
The new president has said it is not safe to bury radioactive material 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has chipped away its funding for years, has vowed to zero out its budget this year. And the state has filed more than 200 legal objections to the long-overdue application to license the repository.
“But this is no time to unfurl the banner saying ‘Mission Accomplished,’ ” says former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission, which oversees the state’s fight against Yucca.
That’s exactly what many — including Democratic lawmakers at budget hearings in Carson City on Thursday — say Gov. Jim Gibbons is doing with his proposed state budget, which guts the office tasked with fighting the project and denies the attorney general funding for a suit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Some, including Bryan, said it makes them question Gibbons’ commitment to fighting Yucca.
“I don’t know where the governor is coming from,” Bryan said this week, adding that Nevada’s entire congressional delegation has come out firmly against the project. He thinks Gibbons never really has.
And if the budget crisis is the only reason for spending less on the fight, it’s still a bad idea, he said.
“This is not the time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” he said. “This is at a very critical stage and Nevada has to be fully prepared.”
A spokesman for Gibbons said the governor’s commitment to the fight is beyond reproach.
Gibbons’ budget cuts are in response to a $2 billion revenue shortfall for the next two years.
His proposed budget would eliminate five of seven jobs in the Nuclear Projects Agency. The two remaining employees would lose their office space and move into the governor’s offices.
The budget also allocates $13.8 million to the agency over two years, mostly for outside contracts with legal firms. Bob Loux, former director of the agency, said it will take at least $20 million over the next two years to keep up the fight.
The governor’s budget also allocated $93,000 each year to attorney general’s office, which requested $2.5 million each year for outside legal counsel.
Marta Adams, deputy attorney general, said the state can’t abandon its lawsuit against the EPA, and plans to file another lawsuit, against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, this year. There is no way $186,000 will cover that bill, she said.
If Congress does repeal the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which created the Yucca project — the only way opponents say the project would ever be truly dead — the attorney general’s office could return unused money to the state, Adams said.
“This beast isn’t dead yet, unfortunately,” she said. “When it is, we would be in a position to return any funding the Legislature has given us, but in the meantime we can’t really stop.”
The funding for the attorney general’s office is the same as in 2008, countered Andrew Clinger, Gibbons’ budget chief.
But Adams says the Energy Department’s license application to build the repository was filed in 2008 and the EPA released its standard for how much radiation could be released from the mountain over time. Those events kicked off a slew of new potential legal challenges.
Still, Clinger said, there’s no reason the attorney general’s office can’t share the $13.8 million allocated to the Nuclear Projects Agency.
Actually, there is a reason. About three-quarters of the $13.8 million in funding for the agency is federal. Federal dollars can’t be spent on outside litigation, only on fighting the Energy Department’s license application. That funding is useless to the attorney general in her battles with the EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Still, Clinger says the money should be enough to get the job done.
“I don’t know how you can say (the agency) is being shut down when they have $13.8 million in there,” he said. “I think it was an overreaction.”
But Loux, who resigned from his position at the agency after he gave himself and his staff unauthorized pay raises, said Clinger “wouldn’t have any clue as to what it would take to prosecute a case before the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). He’s a bean counter and knows nothing about the process,” Loux said. “The new director doesn’t either, and the governor doesn’t. I don’t think they’re in a position to be making judgments in the place of the attorney general. They simply don’t have a clue.”
Loux also said that cutting all but two positions at the agency would be a serious mistake, especially because Gibbons recently appointed a new director with no experience in energy issues, environmental law or the history of the Yucca Mountain project.
In an interview with the Sun this month, Bruce Breslow, the former television reporter and Sparks mayor who took over the agency last week, said he would rely on staff to help get him up to speed on Yucca. But Loux and others said that with no staff left to rely on, Breslow, no matter how enthusiastic, would be hamstrung.
Breslow declined to comment on the budget this week. He referred a reporter to Bryan for comment.
“Without those positions I just don’t know how the office can function, particularly when we are so close to a turning point that could mean the ultimate collapse of the Yucca Mountain project,” Bryan said.
Legislative Democrats have vowed that funding for the agency and litigation to fight the project will be restored.
“His budget is not the answer,” state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford said. “The significant reduction of this office is an example of how it is not the answer.”
Horsford said legislators’ bipartisan effort to craft a better budget began with Thursday’s hearings in Carson City.
Loux said he hopes the message that Nevadans will not accept the nation’s nuclear waste comes across more clearly in that budget than in the governor’s.
“We should be sending the message to the federal government that we are still serious,” Loux said. The governor’s budget “advertises to the (Energy Department) and the nuclear industry that the resolve to continue this fight is just not there anymore, at least not on his part.”
For the last 8 years, we heard often that Bush ignored the law.
It is funny now that Reid and Obama want to ignored Federal law that deals with Yucca mtn.
I doubt that we will hear those whiners complain about this law breaking.
"Bush ignored the law"
Whatever nance. It seems to me that Bush ignored Ne"VAH"da completely, let alone the laws of the land.
What is clear, and relevant to this story, is that Gibbons is not on board with keeping Yucky Mountain closed. It would appear that he is the solo in that sense as well.
Maybe we should Waterboard him until he gets with the knack? Certainly if it's good enough to get some information from someone, it's good enough to keep Nuclear refuse out of our desert.
Thank goodness, I am now so relived that spent nuclear waste will NOT be stored in a secure and guarded facility deep underground. I feel much more safe in this modern world of 'terrorism' that the waste will be stored in it's current place like in open lots behind rusting chain link fences or in some big tin shed guarded by 'joe six pack', or maybe we can dump it back in the oceans...hey, we did that before. Right?
Whether the laws were broken or not, we need to build Yucca for our nuclear power needs and for America's good. Nevada citizens will not even realize it exists while in operation. Harry Reid needs to quit whining about not builing it. He only does whats good for Harry anyway, and is a crook. Harry will go for whatever lines his pockets. If America is to be strong again we need projects that will help with being the back bone of Americas independance from foreign take over.
Any person that supports Yucca needs to go to Hanford, WA and see what is left of the Feds to keep waste contained and do a clean up of the area. You would change your minds supporting Yucca as a storage facility. Hanford leaks. Yucca leaks. 95% of the waste would come thru Vegas. If that does not bother you, then you have no clue.
Hanford leaks because it has not been cared for the way it needed to be. It was the determination of congress to make the cold war a priority and the storage not a priority. Unfortunaetly, with bedget cuts on control and storage and spending on others of top priority the "crapping" up of Hanford has now become of great concern. Yucca falls outside of this with storage safety a priority, the spending of storing will be of the utmost concern, actually you have no clue as to the shift of congressional spending and the priority of concern with storage at Yucca...by the way I have been to Hanford, SRS and Fernald..How can Yucca leak now? get a clue yourself!
fccfirstclass, you realize Yucca is next to the nuclear test site don't you.
This is an amazing bunch of nonsense, only in america can a bunch of idiots get together and whine about perceived fears with no actual facts and clowns like Reid and his political hack cronies make money on the deal.
Quick news flash...... Yucca is not the third rail (unless you are a spineless politician)
I am really curious how anybody can say "yucca leaks". Are you ingesting recreational drugs before writing or are you just that slow.
I'd rather sleep next to Yucca than a wind farm.
The noise from Yucca wouldn't keep me up at night. Plus we could use some good-paying jobs to tax.
Having declared the dump GONE
With Obama and Reid calling the shots
Now we should be afraid of the dump. Go figure.
The Nevada was embarrassed on 12-19-2008 with the unprofessional quality of the 200 plus questions submitted by confessed crook Lobbyist Bob Loux and State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.
Bruce Breslow as a former Sparks mayor and television sports broadcaster claims he can effectively be the new lobbyist against Yucca Mountain. Why do we need a large staff?
Could it be that the LA process continues to establish the safety and suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, and is based on the science of the five supporting national labs and the USGS.
Hanford leaks are the byproduct waste from the chemical process to separate plutonium, for nuclear weapons. This high level waste has been stored in million gallon 60 year old storage tanks that leaked.
Hanford is building facilities for the Vitrification (glass matrixes) of the liquid waste.
Hanford is converting a liquid to a solid impermeable form.
Spent nuclear fuel is already in a solid impermeable form
Spent nuclear fuel is ceramic pellets in a zirconium alloy clad rod. There is no liquid.
Wait a second... 75% of the funding for the agency that is fighting the federal government on Yucca Mountain comes from the federal government? That's about the dumbest part of this entire article. You have got to be kidding me.
kathka:
Sad but true. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act obligates DOE to provide affected parties (e.g., the State of Nevada) with annual funding, primarily for "independent oversight" and "public information" activities.
In other words, because the State is basically having a repository thrust upon it by the federal government, DOE must cough up some dough for the State's oversight and public information programs.
The problem, of course, is that the State has profoundly distorted the definition of "oversight" and "public information," eliminating any trace of objectivity from either. Rather than using the money to conduct credible scientific studies (i.e., oversight), the State and its thoroughly discredited nuclear watch-dog Bob Loux instead funded biased socio-economic studies by dubious "think tanks" like Mountain West. Rather than provide objective, journalistic information on Yucca Mountain to the public, the State developed a sophisticated propaganda machine that through the years has consistently distorted the facts and evidence.
Examples of these things are easy to find:
(1) In the many reprimands Loux's agency received through the years for budget irregularities, illegal lobbying activities, and the like.
(2) In the anti-Yucca cottage industry fostered by the State and Bob Loux, who, among other things, awarded no-compete contracts to well-known anti-nuke activists like Judy Treichel, and has even been called out by the RJ on several occasions for obvious conflicts of interest and shady practices.
(3) In the roundly discredited "scientific" material it has sponsored (see Szymanski's absurd treatise on rising groundwater at Yucca Mountain, which was unanimously rejected by the National Academy of Sciences); or in the glaringly substandard legal arguments it has submitted to the NRC or the appellate courts.
These are the kinds of things the State spends DOE's money on. But wait, where does that money come from? Oh, yes: It comes from taxpayers, i.e., from us!
Not that I'm defending anyone, but the Governor has only been in office for a couple of years and you all make it sound like this Yucca Mountain fight has been his responsiblity from the beginning. The same comments are coming from Chancilor Rogers. When you all mis-manage funds all you can do is complain and blame the guy above you and try to sway opinion away from yourselfs. Its kind of a grade school game for adults that some adults use as a hobbie. Here is the facts. The State is running out of money. The Federal government is running out of money. The Governor can cut the cost of the high paid lawyers that have been hired to fight against the Yucca Mountain Project, or cut the State School Budget or cut State Jobs or some other part of the budget that will really hurt Nevada. Or he can sit back with his hand out to the Federal Government, take that money and then spend it to fight the Federal Government with their (you and our kids tax money) own handouts. Kind of goes in a circle. So just relax, Yucca Mountain will never happen, but it won't be because the State of Nevada stopped it. It will be because the Federal Government ran out of money. I hope our grandkids are a smarter bunch. This generation will never come to agreement on how to get rid of nuclear waste. Unless it will all fit up all the lawyers rears.
With Obama in power and Harry (zero out Yucca) at the helm, why should Nevada even spend a nickel to stop Yucca. These two powerful men are going to kill it single handedly.
Oh, I forgot some powerful shyster lawyers wouldn't get the big bucks if that happened.