SUN EDITORIAL:

Keeping up the fight

Despite progress against nuke dump proposal, Nevada should remain vigilant

Sunday, March 15, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

Now that the Obama administration has followed through with a promise to strip federal funding from a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, many of the project’s ardent supporters have begun throwing in the towel.

The Washington Post, which has supported burying nuclear waste in Nevada, wrote in an editorial last Sunday that “the Yucca Mountain project is dead.” At a Senate Budget Committee hearing Wednesday, ranking Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said: “I don’t want to save Yucca. I accept the fact that may not be viable.”

The most stunning comment, though, came from Alex Flint, senior vice president for governmental affairs of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Referring to the nuclear waste now stored at reactors, Flint was quoted on National Public Radio Wednesday as saying: “In many ways, we’ve reduced the urgency of a need to find some other solution for this material. We can definitely deal with this material for decades or hundreds of years. It would be ideal to come up with some eventual disposition proposal in this regard, but we have a lot of time to figure that out.”

That makes it sound as though the nuclear power industry admits it has no valid reason to shove the dump down Nevada’s throat, just as we have been saying all along.

There is no denying that the course has shifted in Nevada’s favor ever since President Barack Obama took office. The Obama administration has said it is time to look for alternatives to Yucca Mountain, a point reiterated Wednesday by Energy Secretary Steven Chu in an appearance before the Senate Budget Committee.

On Thursday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced a bill that would establish a nine-member blue ribbon commission of experts appointed by Congress who would have two years to make recommendations on alternatives to Yucca Mountain for storage and disposal of nuclear waste.

The commission, which would be made up of five Democratic and four Republican appointees, would explore everything from dry cask storage at reactors to reprocessing of the waste and report its findings to Congress. Security issues surrounding temporary storage of the radioactive waste would also be discussed.

As Reid told his colleagues on the Senate floor, the commission “will create a process that will help our nation take a critical step away from the failed Yucca Mountain policy.” The bill also represents a good faith effort to show that Congress will not turn its back on the operators of nuclear power plants and their ratepayers.

“The government’s decades-long focus on Yucca Mountain has left us barren, with very few good proposals for dealing with nuclear waste,” Reid said. “Now that President Obama and Secretary Chu have taken Yucca Mountain off the table, we need to begin looking closely at new ideas. We should even dust off some older ones that have been ignored for far too long.”

It has been an incredibly tumultuous journey for Nevada since 1987, when Congress designated Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only place the federal government would study as a potential dump for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. That designation set up a classic David versus Goliath confrontation, with Nevada and its small congressional delegation playing the underdog against the powerful nuclear energy industry and its supporters in Congress.

From the beginning, though, Nevada has been on the correct side of the argument. The state has effectively made the case that the earthquake-prone mountain is geologically unsafe for the storage of deadly radioactive waste and would place Nevadans in grave danger of catastrophic exposure. The problem of how to safely transport the waste from reactors throughout the nation to Yucca Mountain has never been solved.

By refusing to give up the fight, Nevada persevered and now stands on the brink of victory.

Despite such extraordinary developments, which could made possible only by Reid’s influence as Senate majority leader and Obama’s unwavering commitment to protect Nevadans, it is still premature for the state to celebrate and pronounce Yucca Mountain dead.

Until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denies the pending Energy Department licensing request to build a permanent dump at Yucca Mountain and until the nuclear power industry abandons its pro-Yucca campaign, Nevada has an obligation to its residents to continue its fight in opposition.

That means the Nevada Legislature should continue to provide the maximum funding necessary to fully operate the state’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which leads the opposition effort. The Legislature also should provide the attorney general’s office with the funding necessary to cover all legal costs associated with that effort.

Now is not the time for Nevada to let its guard down.

Discussion: 15 comments so far…

By rmaltese

3/15/09 at 6:19 a.m.

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Just ask James Hansen or Kirk Sorenson or Charles Barton or Robert Hargraves. Hansen you should know but the others are just a few of the academics who already know what Reid is talking about when he says

"Now that President Obama and Secretary Chu have taken Yucca Mountain off the table, we need to begin looking closely at new ideas. We should even dust off some older ones that have been ignored for far too long."

You owe it to yourself to learn about Molten Salt Reactors, specifically Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
because the idea was abandoned simply because the out put could not be used for nuclear weapons.

That's what's been neglected for far too long. The MSR was successfully tested and abandoned back in the seventies.

LFTR's use Thorium which the earth has plenty of but LFTR's CAN ALSO USE UP NUCLEAR WASTE TO PRODUCE ELECTRICTY among other things that benefit from the high temperature the reactors sustain. They are safe, and so efficient that they leave behind only 1% of the waste that traditional reactors do.

I don't get it. What are they waiting for? Could it be the investments already put in the old style nuclear plants would lose some of their credibility?

The money wasted on Yucca could easily have funded two or three prototypes. It's not too late.
By Future2012

3/15/09 at 7:51 a.m.

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Wow where to start

First this is about Zombie Reid politics and not sound science.

The LV Sun says "The state has effectively made the case that the earthquake-prone mountain is geologically unsafe for the storage of deadly radioactive waste and would place Nevadans in grave danger of catastrophic exposure. The problem of how to safely transport the waste from reactors throughout the nation to Yucca Mountain has never been solved."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact Obama's administration is continuing to support the Yucca Mountain LA.

Of course the current path is to permit adjudication of the YMP License Application and allow sound science to make the case on the merits.

Opponents, if they permit their positions on technical facts 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 run by Obama and Chu.

The directors of 10 national laboratories including Steven Chu as head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California prepared an eight-page position paper on nuclear power calling for the "licensing of the Yucca repository as a long-term measure."

The point was made in the R-J on 1-17-2008, that Bill Clinton and Bill Richardson held 21 formal draft EIS hearings (9 in Nevada) in 1999 and 2000, to establish that danger from transportation of nuclear waste is less then such hazardous materials as chorine and propane.

This has been a long closed issue, but still raised by Nevada even though they will not do anything about chlorine tankers running by the Vegas Strip. Bill Richardson was engaged in preparing a positive the Site Recommendation right before he left office.

Harry Reid and the LV Sun must know that to reprocess you must ship nuclear waste.

Reprocessing could be done at Yucca mountain.

Transportation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is not a problem. If Nevada representatives would demand similar protection for Chlorine tankers as will be in place for SNF such as dedicate trains, exclusion zones, evacuation plans, GPS locators, armed guards (to protect from terrorist with TOW missiles), track and signal inspects, alerts to local officials of the location of hazardous materials, trained emergency responders then we could be less concerned about the potential Bhopal like deaths
from a toxic laden tankers.
By Future2012

3/15/09 at 8:05 a.m.

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The Reid-Ensign bill calls for "exploring" a range of issues that have grown around the nuclear waste program

- basically nothing specific like reprocessing or storing nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site, and would require that completion be in after two years - or after Reid's 2010 election.

- There would be no safety standard to meet, so the answer can be to leave the waste in dry cask storage at multiple plant sites for 1 million years.

The blue ribbon commission members would be picked by Reid --so you can expect to see confessed crook lobbyist Bob Loux and former Sparks mayor, television sports broadcaster, and baseball card trading business mogul Bruce Breslow.

Reid's primarily study objective is he wants a way to keep the accumulated $20 billion from the utility ratepayers and not return the $10 billion that Reid has already spent.
By davelv

3/15/09 at 8:15 a.m.

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Do the other 49 states recognize yet that Reid excludes Nevada from any waste solution, even though Las Vegas gets 16% of its electricity from nuclear power plants and is defended like the rest of the country by nuclear ships and bombs that produced massive amounts of waste?

Eliminating Yucca Mountain does nothing about having to eventually transport all of the wastes to one or more sites. Perhaps California, Illinois and Deleware should be sited for interim storage since they would minimize the amount of travel. Oh, but these are where Pelosi, Obama and Biden are from and whatcha want to bet these states are exlcuded too?

By defunding Yucca Mountain, Obama has made a mockery of his stated policy that science will decide in his administration. What else should citizens suspect as empty political promises?
By Future2012

3/15/09 at 8:21 a.m.

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Don't miss read what Alex Flint said.

Alex Flint, senior vice president for governmental affairs of the Nuclear Energy Institute said "In many ways, we've reduced the urgency of a need to find some other solution for this material. We can definitely deal with this material for decades or hundreds of years. It would be ideal to come up with some eventual disposition proposal in this regard, but we have a lot of time to figure that out."

This has long been the position of the industry where the Federal and State government have been the one pushing for a repository.

One of the main drivers by the Feds is the need to store the weapons program Defense High level Waste and Naval Spent Nuclear Fuel.

IF the FEDS and the States take the pressure off to local storage option this will benefit the Ulitities.

Utilities have alway wanted the reprocessing or breeder reactor option as a lower cost fuel cycle.

Yucca Mountain has always been a very high cost option to ratepayers. You are throwing away fuel that could be used.

Since Jimmy Carter these option have been stopped.

So this is not Alex Flint and the NEI changing course.
By Future2012

3/15/09 at 8:34 a.m.

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For those in the nuclear industry Yucca Mountain has been the Federal government forced solution.

Lacking other federal government allowed solutions Yucca Mountain is a acceptable sound science solution.

At the embryonic stem cell EO meeting 3-9-2009 Steven Chu was present. Obama said "Our government has forced WHAT I [Obama] BELIEVE is a false choice between sound science and moral values"

Obama further said "it is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make facts, not ideology."

What is Obama doing about the sound science of Yucca Mountain or alternative nuclear waste storage?

He is allowing the LA to be reviewed by the NRC.

The current path is to permit adjudication of the YMP License Application docketed September 8, 2008 and allow sound science to make the case on the merits. Opponents, if they permit their positions on technical facts 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.

A new path would be for Steven Chu to convene a study commission to evaluate ways to take advantage of advances in nuclear waste management.

The study would establish that nuclear waste can be shipped and whether Yucca could be a location for reprocessing, and what to do with DOE HLW and classified Naval Spent Fuel.

The acceptance criteria must be the EPA 1 million year radiation safety standard.

Given the wealth of information available the effort can be completed in 6 month

If the Federal government wants to give back the ratepayer their $30 billion and sign up to another viaible solution then have it.

But please don't allow the Reid commission.
By rmaltese

3/15/09 at 1:12 p.m.

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When you study a little about the Molten Salt and Pebble Bed Reactors you learn that they are portable nuclear sites able to be built near or within existing nuclear plants. So the idea of using the Yucca money for such an idea makes sense. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) and Pebble Bed Reactors are ultimate solutions. Somehow we steered away from them back in the 70's. LFTR's can run on Thorium or existing Nuclear waste so if transportation is a problem then build them onsite or neighbouring sites.
To learn more goto http://energyfromthorium.com
or
http://okfrank.blogspot.com/2009/02/nucl...
By clydeperkins

3/15/09 at 2:10 p.m.

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Thats right we need to keep good jobs out of nevada. Next we need to get rid of Nellis, that way only low paid workers and criminal invaders get jobs.

The Yucca mountain Project would have meant Permanent high paying jobs for several thousand people. Unlike the the terrorist HYPE from the local media the site and methods are safe.
By davelv

3/15/09 at 9:12 p.m.

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If Reid et al were really worried about Nevada residents, why do they allow nuclear bombs to probably be stationed at Nellis? An accident with one of these puppies would not be good for tourism either and would certainly cause "catastrophic exposure". Or are these weapons not an accident waiting to happen just as is postulated for waste shipments to Yucca? If not a concern, what safety features make it impossible and why can't Yucca shipments have the same features? Additionally, while musing about shipments, no one said the waste shipments have to be traveling more than 5 mph, and I find it hard to imagine that a container could be damaged at this speed. Besides, wherever the new storage places are, the shipping problem will still be there.
By RodAdams

3/16/09 at 1:04 a.m.

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Though I have some sympathy for the good people of Nevada who will not have access to the lifetime employment opportunities that would have been offered by completion and operation of the Yucca Mountain project, I am pleased that the administration has recognized that it was the right answer to the wrong question. If the question was "where do you put used fuel to make it as costly as possible to move, as difficult as possible to access, and as remote as possible to do anything like recycling," Yucca Mountain would be the answer. There is no doubt that it would have been a "safe" place to put material that is safe where it is already, but it really was a silly, shortsighted plan from the very beginning.

Used nuclear fuel contains far too much heat value to think of it as a waste product. In our primitive once through cycle we only use about 3-5% of the potential energy and as Maltese has pointed out, there are developmental systems that can make use of the rest of the 95%.

As the NEI has stated, there is no urgent need to take immediate action. In nearly 100% of the cases, all of the used fuel is safely and securely stored on some of the most carefully guarded and monitored sites in the country - operating nuclear reactors. Those reactor sites will continue in operation for at least the next 20-60 years, and probably longer. Electrical power is not a fad; places where there are large nuclear generators today will probably remain places with large nuclear generators in the future.

With the stroke of a pen, the pressure to move defense material could be eliminated merely through executive order in the current host states. Again, the material is safely and securely stored today with no reason to move quickly.

The only used fuel that really should be moved sometime in the next few decades is the material that is sitting on decommissioned reactor sites and preventing those from being restored completely to green fields. The easy solution is to consolidate that material on the site of currently operating reactors near the decommissioned site. Safety of transportation is not an issue, but we have made it a very costly evolution. At least the money spent stays in America and goes into the pockets of hardworking security, transportation, and technical people.

I just wish we would go the whole way and write off all of the money spent in the past on Yucca and stop the licensing review activity. The NRC and DOE have plenty of other higher priority items on which to focus their attention. Even though the budget has been cut significantly, it is still about $250 million. That might seem small these days, but it is real money that could find a better use.
By Ardent

3/17/09 at 3:39 p.m.

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RodAdams:

I respect your opinion, but I would point out the following:

(1) The "stroke of a pen" will probably not resolve the issue entirely. Sure, you could legislatively reverse decisions concerning disposition of waste. But this would not stop the legal fallout. Simply overturning the NWPA, for example, would not shield the government from further lawsuits. The NWPA is both a law and a contract mechanism, and the nuclear utilities would retain the right to sue on behalf of their ratepayers. So ultimately the government is still on the hook for the entire $27 billion dollars collected by the Nuclear Waste Fund, plus any damages awarded to utilities for breach of contract (awards equal to unanticipated on-site storage costs). You wouldn't even be able to offset the billions already spent on the Project, because that money was contractually obligated for the construction of a repository, and no "alternative strategy" can alter that fact. It would be like signing a contract to have someone build a deck in your backyard, but instead they build a solarium on the side of your house. Although they may be equivalent in value or even equivalent in function, the terms of the contract have still been violated.

(2) The proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is designed so that the spent nuclear fuel is retrievable up until the time of permanent closure, so it is misleading to suggest that the repository is an obstacle to potential reprocessing. At the same time, it is also misleading to present reprocessing as some worry-free "new frontier." The European experience has proven that current reprocessing technology is a mixed bag, and the fact remains that the commercial-scale breeder reactors needed to make reprocessing worthwhile are a long way off indeed (though certainly closer than baseload-supplying solar or wind).

(3) There is virtually no dispute in the scientific community that geologic disposal is the only responsible solution for nuclear waste. Dry cask storage, moreover, is clearly not a permanent solution. NRC is only now getting to the point of approving on-site interim storage for periods of 100 years (and you'll notice that the term "interim" remains). Ethically speaking, over 160 million Americans live within 60 miles of a facility where nuclear waste is stored, and virtually every major waterway in our nation has nuclear waste stored in close proximity to it. Nevadans, who are fond of claiming that we bear no responsibility for storing waste simply because we have no nuclear utilities, nonetheless benefit from nuclear power (we get a reported 16% of our power from nuclear utilities, probably most of it coming from the Palo Verde nuclear plant 40 miles outside Phoenix). I suppose you could argue that we Nevadans "did our part" in hosting the Nevada Test Site, but there are many other states that could make similar claims (WA, GA, TN, ID).
By leenaree

3/18/09 at 1:58 p.m.

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Yucca Mountain is a failure. So why throw any more money at it? The Obama Administration is showing political courage in finally starting to put an end to it.

Spent fuel can be stored on-site at the plants. Even the Nuclear Energy Institute agrees that such storage is safe, and has a long track record. It is already a given that spent fuel must remain on-site for at least 5 years in cooling pools before cooling enough to enable movement to another form of storage. Assemblies are moved to the pools only every 18 months or so. Those nuclear operators who are running out of space in the pools have already chosen to build Hardened On-Site Storage. A benefit to this storage is it allows them to keep possession of the spent fuel, in case it becomes a "valuable resource" for reprocessing, to use the words of the Heritage Foundation. The reality of cooling pools flies in the face of the argument that spent fuel must be removed because its presence represents a terrorist threat.

There is no scientific consensus on the suitability of Yucca Mountain. In the past, within the window of time when radioactivity levels will still be dangerous, Yucca Mountain was volcanically active. There are many fault lines in the area, and there have been numerous small quakes, including one in the past few years that seriously damaged a building that is part of the project complex. Water filtration data was falsified (see email scandal of 2 years ago), and the NRC has not yet even finalized the model they will use. As recently as a year ago, comment was still being sought on the study model to use. The technology (titanium drip shields) that would protect the waste packages from water filtration has not been invented, and neither have the robots that are hypothesized to be necessary to install them. This is immature, incomplete technology being cobbled together to address deadly poisons.

Nevada is not the only state opposing Yucca Mountain. I live in Utah, and have no desire to see my community endangered by the shipments over rail lines and I-80 through downtown Salt Lake City of spent fuel assemblies in containers that have failed multiple QA tests. (see testimony of whistle-blower Oscar Shirani) If these containers were to be breached, they would release Cesium-137, the radionuclide that caused widespread cancers in the Ukraine-Belarus area after Chernobyl, and that still appears in sheep in the UK and Scandinavia in dangerous quantities more than 20 years later.
By leenaree

3/18/09 at 1:59 p.m.

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While Europe and Japan are reprocessing spent fuel, this process creates a higher volume of waste in liquid form. There have been numerous leaks of this waste which are contaminating fishing stocks in Scandinavia. There are pockets of unexplained cancers in the vicinities of the plants. Mayak in Russia had been the site of some of the most egregious pollution of river systems, and in Rokkasho there have been deaths.

Repeal the NWPA, reimburse the nuclear power companies for their outlay into the Nuclear Waste Fund, accept on-site storage as the workable medium-term solution, change NRC rules to allow communities to veto relicensing and new licensing based on local opposition to on-site storage, and focus funding on technology that will neutralize the radioactivity without creating equally toxic waste streams.
By Ardent

3/18/09 at 3:26 p.m.

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lenaree:

A nice try. You even managed to get through most of the anti-Yucca talking points ("falsified" data, seismic and volcanic threats, etc.), all of it leading to the real upshot of your message and your philosophy: abolish all things nuclear (or energy and weapons, at least).

Fair enough. But here are the obvious holes in your logic, such as it is:

Nuclear utilities are not "choosing" to build on-site storage as if it were their preference. They have been forced to build that storage because the federal government has not lived up to its obligation (as established in the NWPA) to take the fuel off of their hands. Hence the many settled and ongoing lawsuits lodged by nuclear utilities against the government for breach of contract (hundreds of millions paid out since 1998, and lots more to come). So don't try to suggest that the nuclear industry (as represented, for example, by NEI) actually PREFERS to store the waste on-site. They don't, and it is also true that state governments are stakeholders in this matter, and have an interest in seeing the NWPA enforced AS WRITTEN (i.e., deep geologic burial at Yucca Mountain).

Moreover, you mention the 5-year cooling pool requirement as a pro-Yucca "canard." This is probably a fair accusation against some Yucca supporters; the proposed repository will indeed never eliminate the need for some on-site storage (unless, of course, you were to get your wish about ending nuclear power entirely, in which case all fuel could be moved from utilities after 5 or 6 years). It is also true, however, that Harry Reid has resorted to this same flawed logic in trying to pass a bill that mandates on-site dry-cask storage (i.e., he invoked the terrorist threat against cooling pools as the basis).

That said, you seem to be under the impression that the Yucca Mountain repository isn't designed to retrieve spent fuel when in fact it is, so there goes that part of your argument.

Finally, if you define scientific consensus as complete agreement, you are completely misguided. Consensus in science means a preponderance of agreement in the scientific community. If total agreement were required, science would contribute little more than academic papers, for one can always find a few outliers who are willing to disagree (which is what the State of Nevada has done, just barely).
By nkls3713

3/18/09 at 10:26 p.m.

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Lying McCain's own words,

But in a talk on nuclear security at the University of Denver, McCain offered another approach as part of global efforts to watchdog civilian nuclear power:

"I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials. It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada."

Nice try John.