[NukeNet] Deadly nuke rods piling up in state

[MJ]

And a whole bunch of them are sitting at Diablo Canyon!!  Molly  (if you
would like me to attach to you the illustrations that came with this
article just let me know and I'll do that)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/24/MNGIHK4CSM1.DTL
Deadly nuke rods piling up in state 
Burial site project in Nevada in limbo 

- Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, July 24, 2006 

 

Thousands of tons of deadly radioactive rods of spent nuclear fuel and
waste have accumulated at three California nuclear power plants because
the federal government has failed to open a permanent nuclear burial site
in Nevada that was supposed to be ready eight years ago. 

And the delay is only getting worse: Last week, the U.S. Department of
Energy announced that the nuclear dump site won't open until 2017 --
almost two decades past the original 1998 inauguration target and five
years beyond the most recent scheduled opening date. 

The latest delay climaxes a yearlong debacle at the Yucca Mountain Project
in Nevada -- a debacle during which staff scientists were suspected of
fraud, federal investigators blasted the project's management, and project
officials announced plans to revamp the operation and redesign the burial
site. On July 14, according to news reports, officials said they'd lay off
up to 500 employees as part of the planned reorganization. 

The Energy Department estimated in 2001 that the facility would cost $60
billion. But in February, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman admitted at a
conference of nuclear power industrialists that there's no trustworthy
cost estimate. 

Energy Department officials say the facility will offer a permanent
solution to the nation's deadliest waste, protecting the environment from
the radiation of spent nuclear fuel for 10,000 years or longer. Critics
say the computer models the Energy Department used to make such
predictions are unreliable. 

To its harshest critics, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository looks
dead in the water. 

"The Yucca Mountain nuke dump has been riddled with scientific, health and
safety problems from the beginning," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a
statement last month. "I don't believe the dump will ever open." 

But project defenders are confident they'll get their act together and
overcome long-standing technical objections to the site -- especially
fears that the super-hot nuclear fuel and wastes could leak into
groundwater and spread for miles far faster than anyone dreamed when the
project was proposed in the 1970s. 

Someday "Yucca Mountain will open," Paul Golan, deputy director of the
Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told
The Chronicle. "We're going to demonstrate that we have good science, good
process, good engineering. We have good quality standards in place. This
(repository) is certainly a challenge that this country can solve -- and
can solve credibly." 

Utility officials in California and across the nation are not pleased to
be stuck with growing mountains of spent fuel and waste that the Energy
Department had promised to take off their hands long ago. Nationwide, more
than 50,000 tons of poisonous, super-hot rods of spent nuclear fuel are
sitting in cooling ponds and dry casks at atomic power plants awaiting the
day when they will be shipped to Yucca Mountain. 

Several utilities have sued the department to recover costs of on-site
storage and won; more suits are planned. 

PG&E officials, who run the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and the
now-defunct Humboldt Bay reactor, are among the litigants. They have
demanded $100 million in damages and say they expect a court decision in
September. So far, the Diablo Canyon plant has accumulated more than 1,000
tons of spent fuel and waste; the much smaller Humboldt Bay plant, which
closed in the 1970s, has almost 30 tons. 

Southern California Edison spokesman Ray Golden told The Chronicle that
the utility is reviving legal action against the Energy Department, which
had been temporarily delayed, for its failure to take spent fuel and waste
now accumulating at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San
Diego. A pool at that plant stores 3,000 tons of spent fuel; an additional
300 tons is stored in dry casks. 

Utility officials insist that it's safe to store the fuel and nuclear
waste on site. But anti-nuclear activists fear the spent fuel and waste
storage facilities could become juicy targets for terrorists -- say, a
pilot flying a plane filled with explosives. 

On June 2, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, responding
to a lawsuit by the anti-nuclear activist group San Luis Obispo Mothers
for Peace, ordered the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to study the
possibility of a terrorist attack at Diablo Canyon. 

Nearly a half-century has passed since the National Academy of Sciences
recommended burying spent fuel from nuclear power plants at an underground
site, and it's been two decades since Congress designated Yucca Mountain
as that site. 

Nothing else like the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, which would be
operated by the Energy Department, has been built. The facility some 70
miles northwest of Las Vegas would consist of a series of tunnels 1,000
feet underground, where spent fuel rods from the nation's nuclear plants
would be permanently buried. 

Four years ago, President Bush, seeking to make nuclear power a
cornerstone of his energy policies, unveiled a plan to complete the
project by authorizing the Energy Department to file for a U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission license to open the site. The Energy Department
still hasn't filed the application, in part because it's still struggling
to come up with a workable repository design that will withstand the
commission's scrutiny. 

That scrutiny could be particularly intensive given the recent highly
publicized scandal over suspicions of data fraud inside the Yucca Mountain
project. Additionally, if Congress isn't convinced that the project can
pass examination by the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, it can
refuse to bankroll construction or to fund the expensive transport, by
truck and rail, of the nation's spent fuel to Nevada. 

The review board, one of the proposed repository's most dogged and
distinguished critics, is an independent agency chartered by Congress in
1987 to provide independent scientific monitoring of the project. The
board consists of presidential appointees and a technical staff. 

On May 16, board chairman R. John Garrick testified before the Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that the Energy Department's
computer model for the repository "may not give a realistic picture of how
a proposed repository would perform" over the centuries. Garrick noted
that the repository must be able to withstand unprecedentedly severe
conditions, namely, "above-boiling repository temperatures that will last
for about 1,000 years," which, he added, are difficult to model in
computers. 

The most potentially fateful recent development involving the planned dump
site was the revelation last year of several private e-mails among U.S.
Geological Survey scientists working for the project. Some e-mails hinted
that researchers were faking data used in developing computer models for
simulating one of the most important scientific puzzles at hand: How
quickly water flows through Yucca Mountain. 

The e-mails have been made public. 

"I don't have a clue when these (computer) programs were installed. So
I've made up the dates and names," one unidentified e-mailer said. "If
they (officials) need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff,
as long as it's not a video recording of the software being installed." 

In testimony to a House committee in July 2005, one of the scientists
admitted he was "somewhat horrified" by his remarks in the e-mails but
insisted that such comments were "water-cooler talk" and that there was no
scientific fraud. 

The U.S. attorney for Nevada decided, without explanation, not to
prosecute any of the scientists. But in an April report, the Energy
Department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, told Congress that the
e-mails still "had the effect of undermining public confidence in the
quality of the science associated with the Yucca Mountain Project" and
that repairing it will be "a costly, time-consuming process." 

Energy Department officials are so shaken by the e-mails and other
problems that they've assigned scientists at Sandia National Laboratories
in Nevada to repeat the computer research conducted by the Yucca Mountain
Project scientists. The purpose is to ensure that the models are credible.


Outside observers suggest it might be for naught. 

At this point "there's probably an even chance either way that (Yucca
Mountain) opens or doesn't open," said geologist and MIT Professor Alison
McFarlane, co-editor of "Uncertainty Underground," a 431-page anthology of
scientific reports on Yucca Mountain published by MIT Press in May. 

"It has suffered some severe blows in the past couple of years. There are
a number of people in the (scientific) community who are talking about
whether we need a 'Plan B,' " she said. 

McFarlane believes that some kind of underground repository in the United
States is "absolutely necessary." But she thinks it might be wiser to
build the repository elsewhere, perhaps in a state closer to the East
Coast, where there are far more nuclear power plants and, therefore, less
need to transport nuclear fuel to Nevada. 

Officials in Nevada, where a majority of residents vehemently oppose the
project, couldn't agree more. 

The project "is really a hopeless morass," said Robert Loux, director of
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, who leads the state's fight against
the Yucca Mountain Project. 

A growing number of members of Congress are upset, too. 

In a report in June on the Bush administration's proposed Energy
Department budget, the Senate Energy and Water Committee said it is
"frustrated by challenges facing the Yucca Mountain Project," including,
in an allusion to the e-mail scandal, the quality of research by USGS
scientists. The committee also said it is "greatly concerned" that, at
this late date, the Energy Department "is redesigning the repository with
significant changes." 

The committee adopted the report by unanimous vote. 

Despite his otherwise optimistic air, the Energy Department's Golan
humorously deflected a question about when he thought Yucca Mountain will
open. 

"I'm not a betting man," he said. "I go to Vegas all the time -- and I
never put a quarter in the slot." 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson at sfchronicle.com. 

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URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/24/MNGIHK4CSM1.DTL




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
Bush, June 18, 2002 

"War is Peace"
Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984

Molly Johnson 
6290 Hawk Ridge Place
San Miguel, CA  93451
Cell: 805 296-0524

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