Will Yucca licensing still continue if dump dies?

WASHINGTON — The paper of record weighs in today on the Yucca Mountain debate, insisting the licensing process must go forward even if the dump is to be killed.

In an editorial in today’s editions, the New York Times worries that President Barack Obama’s proposed steep budget cuts to the nuclear waste repository project may leave the Energy Department unable to fully defend its application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the facility.

Even with Obama’s stated intention to terminate the Yucca Mountain endeavor and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying the dump is dead, the paper reasons licensing should continue — and Congress should make sure adequate funding is there to do so.

Follow the Science on Yucca

The administration’s budget for the Energy Department raises a disturbing question. Is President Obama, who has pledged to restore science to its rightful place in decision making, now prepared to curtail the scientific analyses needed to determine whether a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be safe to build?
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Times Topics: Yucca Mountain

It is no secret that the president and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, who hails from Nevada, want to close down the Yucca Mountain project, which excites intense opposition in the state. The administration has proposed a budget for fiscal year 2010 that would eliminate all money for further development of the site, and Mr. Reid has pronounced the project dead.

But the administration at least claimed that it would supply enough money for the Energy Department to complete the process of seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if only to gain useful knowledge about nuclear waste disposal. Unfortunately, the budget released this month looks as if it will fall well short of the amount needed.

Dead or alive? Yucca Mountain still gets funding

LAS VEGAS (AP) — These days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prefers nothing so much as a one-word description for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository long planned for his state: dead.

And President Barack Obama has made clear he is looking elsewhere to solve the nation’s nuclear waste problem.

But that doesn’t mean people aren’t still paying for it. Sometimes not even a president with the Senate majority leader at his back can easily kill a project 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. Not quickly or cheaply, anyway.

NRC Agrees to Hear Yucca Challenges

In another blow to the Yucca Mountain project, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today decided to allow 299 of the 318 challenges to the repository license to be heard. The Department of Energy submitted its license application for Yucca Mountain last year, but since President Obama took office, the federal government has changed its stance on the project. Already this year, the Obama Administration has slashed funding for Yucca Mountain and commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to explore alternatives to the repository

NRC panels admit 8 parties in Yucca Mountain case

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says eight petitioners and 299 challenges will be heard during upcoming hearings on the Energy Department’s application to open and operate a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards issued an order Monday designating Nevada and California, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Nevada’s Clark, Nye and White Pine counties individually, California’s Inyo County, and Churchill, Esmeralda, Lander and Mineral counties as a group as parties in the hearings.
Eureka and Lincoln counties in Nevada were named interested governmental participants

Yucca Mountain ‘terminated’

t has already been dumped, but the the long-running Yucca Mountain waste disposal plan has now been officially ‘terminated’ in the US Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) 2010 budget request.

Although energy secretary Steven Chu requested $197 million for the USA’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the money is only enough to keep the office ticking over and liaise with regulators who are examining the licence application for the project.

The DoE said that under its budget proposal: “All funding for the development of the Yucca Mountain facility would be eliminated, such as further land acquisition, transportation access, and additional engineering.”

Yucca on death row, nearing if not already ascending the scaffold

WASHINGTON — The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is going more rapidly nowhere at all, as Sen. Harry Reid is seeing to it that it receives the smallest budget in its decades-long history.

The Obama administration’s budget plans for the upcoming fiscal year released yesterday “follow through on its commitment to end the failed Yucca Mountain proposal and instead pursue other alternatives for storage of the nation’s nuclear waste,” according to a release from Reid’s office.

The proposed budget figure of $197 million marks a reduction of more than $90 million from last year’s.

State of Nevada Comments on The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management’s Draft National Transportation Plan (DOE/RW-0603)–April 21, 2009

In response to the Notice of Availability published in the Federal Register on January 16, 2009, enclosed are the State of Nevada comments on the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management’s (OCRWM) National Transportation Plan, Revision 0 (NTP).
Nevada joins the Western Interstate Energy Board’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Committee and the other states regional groups in expressing concern over the paucity of meaningful planning reflected in the NTP. The current draft lacks specificity, continues the fragmentation and “stove-piping” of transportation system components, and hinders rather than promotes a systems approach to planning for and managing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) shipments. It is neither ‘national’ in its orientation and concept nor is it in any sense a useful or meaningful ‘plan’.
Nevada is also concerned that DOE is not prepared to review or otherwise act on comments received from states, regional groups, local governments and other stakeholders in response to the Federal Register notice. Speaking to attendees at the March 25, 2009 meeting of the Western Interstate Energy Board’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Committee in Denver, OCRWM representatives indicated that no funds or staff remain in the Office of Logistics Management to review, let alone respond to, comments on the NTP. All comments, apparently, will be placed on the shelf to be dealt with at some future time, if ever at all.

Senator’s bill seeks Yucca Mountain refunds–’No one should … pay for an empty hole in the Nevada desert’

WASHINGTON — A bill introduced in the Senate would begin refunding billions of dollars to electricity consumers if President Barack Obama follows through on his vow to end the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste program.

The bill by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would dismantle the special fund dedicated to building a repository in Nevada for 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel and waste generated by utilities and

If the Yucca project is scrapped, the money should be returned, Graham said in a statement with his bill, which was introduced Wednesday.

A new Yucca Mountain in New Mexico?

WASHINGTON — Is a salt formation in New Mexico the new Yucca Mountain?

A trade industry publication reports today that discussions are underway to promote an existing facility in New Mexico as an alternative to storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel in the desert north of Las Vegas.

The Obama administration has promised to “scale back” funds for the Yucca Mountain project, and the president has vowed it will not open as a waste dump. A report last week indicated the fiscal 2010 funding cut would be severe.

The existing Waste Isolation Pilot Project, which handles lower-level waste in salt formation in New Mexico, has been mentioned as a possible replacement.