Reporting on the BRC Report

The NEI coverage of the Blue Ribbon Commission final report is below this post and gives a good summary of industry response. We’d thought we’d take a look at some of the coverage in the press and see how it is playing around the country. These are news stories, so we’re not gauging reaction, as we would with editorials, just the accuracy and usefulness of the reporting.

And some are better than others. The TriCity [Wash.] Herald, using the AP story as a base, sort of misses the boat with this lede:

The United States should immediately start looking for an alternative to replace the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, which cost an estimated $15 billion but was never completed, a presidential commission said Thursday.

It’s not wrong exactly, but the stress on Yucca Mountain suggests the commission had something to say about it. In fact, it had nothing specific to say about it and, if Yucca Mountain were determined to still be the best locale for a central used fuel repository, that would be consistent with the report.

Yucca Mountain was picked by a process established by law, but "now the Blue Ribbon Commission suggests we just ignore the law and start all over?" said Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, who is running for governor as a Republican, in a statement. "That recommendation could set our country back at least 25 years."

Well, he said it, but it isn’t really the case that Yucca has been eliminated from consideration. The report didn’t eliminate any location from consideration. President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, yes, blue ribbon commission, no.

Here’s what the report says. It’s pretty direct:

The Blue Ribbon Commission was not chartered as a siting commission. Accordingly we have not evaluated Yucca Mountain or any other location as a potential site for the storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, nor have we taken a position on the Administration’s request to withdraw the license application.

The New York Time’s Matt Wald gets closer to the gist and introduced in the lede the second element that picked up a lot of attention, the consent-based approach to siting a repository:

A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert declared on Thursday that the United States would have to develop a "consent-based approach" for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed.

By securing local consent, the panel said, the government might avoid the kind of conflicts that led to the cancellation of plans to create a repository at Yucca Mountain, a site 100 miles from Las Vegas, in 2010. It noted that local willingness had been crucial to decision-making on sites for nuclear waste depots in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden.

This is true, though it ignores that Yucca Mountain might well be open today if President Obama had not closed it – and neither Obama nor Secretary Chu have offered a definitive reason for closing it, so we not sure if “conflicts” led to its shuttering. One can infer a lot of things, but not really know them.

Here’s what the commission says about the consent-based approach:

By contrast [to a top-down, federal-led approach], the approach we recommend is explicitly adaptive, staged, and consent-based. Based on a review of successful siting processes in the United States and abroad—including most notably the siting of a disposal facility for transuranic radioactive waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, and recent positive outcomes in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden—we believe this type of approach can provide the flexibility and sustain the public trust and confidence needed to see controversial  facilities through to completion.

And it’s right. This has worked to tamp down public opposition in those place – WIPP is almost a case study on how to do it - though it takes more time and effort to engage with local communities and any attempted process may come to nothing. That’s the risk.

Back to Wald:

The panel … also suggested that the government, which assumed responsibility for high-level waste 30 years ago, take the job of managing the waste out of the hands of the Energy Department and give it to a federally chartered corporation created for that purpose.

Such an agency would be more effective than the Department of Energy, which "must balance multiple agendas or policy priorities," it said.

The idea of the chartered corporation appears further down  in a number of stories, so a fair number of writers may have decided it’s a little more arcane a subject for general interest readers but still important.

Here’s the commission on the corporation:

[T]he Commission concludes that a new, single-purpose organization is needed to provide the stability, focus, and credibility that are essential to get the waste program back on track. We believe a congressionally chartered federal corporation offers the best model, but whatever the specific form of the new organization it must possess the attributes, independence, and resources to effectively carry out its mission.

The central task of the new organization would be to site, license, build, and operate facilities for the safe consolidated storage and final disposal of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste at a reasonable cost and within a reasonable timeframe. In most stories I’ve read, Yucca Mountain and consent based siting have been the biggest subjects.

Even as the third most covered aspect of the report in most stories I’ve read, it’s often buried. CNN has it at paragraph 11:

It [the report] said this congressionally chartered federal corporation should have substantial authority and access to funds to accomplish its mission. A board, nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress, would oversee the organization.

I missed much coverage of interim storage sites, another of the report’s recommendations – that seems germane to various communities – but maybe that will be thought most important to communities where they will be sited.

---

The story in the Las Vegas Sun, opposition central for Yucca Mountain in Nevada media, runs through the same subjects as the other stories we reviewed. What I liked was the headline:

Commission: Store nuclear waste where it’s wanted

Yeah, wise guys, where it’s wanted.

It’s a newsboy. I was a bicycle based suburban newsboy back when rather than a wuxtry-wuxtry urban type of newsboy. The former still have some currency – the latter, our boy in the picture, none at all. Count him as among the culturally lost.

Jumping Fences

Don’t try this at home:

An emergency was declared at the McGuire nuclear plant in Huntersville early Sunday morning after a security breach, according to a report from Duke Energy.

The report states that security saw someone climb over a fence into an unauthorized area around 3:30 a.m. on January 1.

Uh-oh.

According to police, 18-year-old David Hamilton Drake Jr. was arrested for first degree Trespassing.

Oh. Well, I can remember annoying some trainmen while crossing the switchyard as a shortcut to school and getting chased now and then. The most that would have happened to me was likely a severe beating – those were pretty tough guys.

The bottom line is: this is something not to do. Security forces don’t treat this kind of thing more lightly than those trainmen did.

---

Interesting article from the Yorkshire (U.K.) Post:

One third of all households in the UK will be in fuel poverty by 2030 unless the coalition Government rapidly moves to encourage and enable building of new nuclear plants, says a report released today.

The new report published by the Centre for Policy Studies, claims the number of homes in fuel poverty – defined as the need to spend more than 10 per cent of household income on fuel to maintain adequate warmth – could rise to nearly 8.5 million over the next 18 years, if nuclear energy generating capacity continues to fall as the Government delays approving new nuclear plants.

Fuel poverty. I don’t think I’ve heard that term before – if I had heard it, I’m not sure I’d have applied it to the British. The reason this would happen already implies how it will not happen – and unfortunately, that has nothing to do with nuclear energy:

Last winter, coal plants shouldered nearly 50 per cent of electricity demand and the report claims the coalition does not currently have the suitable plans in place to replace old coal and oil power supplies which will close by 2016 due to European Union rules.

Rules that don’t work don’t get implemented, so if the U.K. is threatened with “fuel poverty,” those coal plants will stay open.

Here’s the report, called The Atomic Clock. It’s very inside British energy. What I read sounds a bit like an industry wish list, or more generally a free trade screed like those produced by the Heritage Foundation here. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it leads to a somewhat blinkered view.

---

Politico posted its 2012 Top 10 Energy Questions. Here’s the one about nuclear energy:

8) Is there a future for Yucca Mountain? A federal court in D.C. will hear arguments in a lawsuit led by Yucca supporters against the NRC over whether the agency can be compelled to complete its now-boxed review of the nuclear waste project without funding from Congress and with a president looking to nix it. If the court sides with Yucca supporters, the NRC might be forced — given the information already produced — into approving the project. But should the court side with the NRC, Yucca Mountain may actually stay dead.

“The NRC might be forced into approving the project.” The NRC would not be forced to do anything other than to finish reviewing the license application. It could choose then to approve or not approve it based on the application’s merits.

Though it’s not exactly unfair to call the lawsuit’s backers “Yucca supporters,” (they include the states of Washington and South Carolina, Aiken County, S.C., and several individuals), it’s not a fan club. The idea here is simply to enforce the law, specifically the Waste Policy Act of 1985, which names Yucca Mountain as the country’s used fuel repository. To change that legitimately, you need to change the law.

So you know, NEI filed a friend-of-the-court brief on this issue in December.

Dreaming About a Repository–Take 2

Monday, I wrote that that several Republican Presidential candidates did not support reactivating the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository on states rights grounds. But the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, for one, held used nuclear fuel that clearly fell outside the purview of its state – because it derived from defense uses.

Here’s another:

Taxpayers have already spent billions to develop the [Yucca Mountain] site as a safe depository for nuclear waste.

We all have an interest because the worst of the nuclear waste cleanup at Hanford, Wash., is or was scheduled to be stored there. The storage is needed by about 2015, when a new plant will begin producing glass pucks of nuclear waste as a way to drain 177 storage tanks of highly toxic material.

This is from the Daily Astorian in Washington state. The Hanford Site was created by the federal government in the early 40s as part of the Manhattan Project. Its reactors (used to generate materials for defense) were decommissioned after the end of the cold war. Hanford also houses the Columbia Generating Station and the Pacific Northwest National Labs. You can read more about Hanford here.

The high-level used fuel being held at Hanford was intended for Yucca Mountain and, as with the Savannah River Site, the federal government is unambiguously responsible for it, not the state that hosts the site.

Yucca needs to be opened. One can only hope politics will move on after the general election and this nuclear waste site will become operational. It is currently the country’s best and only option for long-term nuclear waste storage.

As always, a few swallows on the window ledge don’t equal springtime, but there is a surprising lot of interest lately in reviving Yucca Mountain and concomitant annoyance at the present administration and some of the Republican candidates for keeping it closed. The Blue Ribbon Commission’s final report may set a course that satisfies a large contingent or at least refocuses the conversation – it really couldn’t come soon enough (it’s due at the end of January.)

An aerial view of Hanford.

Dreaming About a Repository

Last week, I sat in on a House hearing about the Blue Ribbon Commission’s draft report. The hearing rapidly departed from the subject and veered to Yucca Mountain, which the commission was asked not to consider. None of the commission members were at the hearing – they want to wait until the release of the final report in January to talk about it.

But here’s the thing. The commission’s draft report suggests final disposition of used fuel in a deep geologic repository – just like it-that-will-not-be-named.

And interestingly, a kind of mirror image of the hearing occurred a few days later – again intended to be about the commission’s draft report but really about Yucca Mountain.

Many who spoke Friday urged the commission to fight for Yucca Mountain, a proposed long-term nuclear waste storage site in Nevada that is on the verge of being rejected by the federal government.

[State] Sen. John Howe said the commission – which took a neutral stance on Yucca Mountain in its report – should support the project. And Egan said he is concerned about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission studying longer-term on-site storage.

“Yucca Mountain should not be off the table,” he said.

Where is this? Minnesota.

Gathered in Minneapolis, legislators, city and tribal leaders, corporate representatives and others shared their reactions to a draft report from the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future outlining suggestions for nuclear waste management.

The story doesn’t say who called this meeting, but it had very broad representation among stakeholders near the Prairie Island facility (except perhaps Prairie Island’s owner Xcel, which is quoted separately in the story.) And most wanted a permanent fuel repository.

Surprisingly, very little of this (as reported) seemed to have to do with the used fuel casks at Prairie Island, but the issue of what was promised and not delivered.

On-site storage was supposed to be a temporary measure, but dry-cask storage has been in place at Prairie Island since the 1990s, he said. Johnson urged the commission to push for results this time.

“We are tired of hearing more promises that will just be broken,” he said.

The House members I listened to did not take this angle quite so directly, but it is a different matter when it comes to the states. Now, keeping used fuel on-site for an extended period of time is not dangerous – but it is also not what was promised – and it seems quite reasonable to discuss the implications of not keeping that promise.

---

And what about Yucca Mountain?

Well, there’s this:

Three Republican presidential candidates pleased the hometown crowd in Las Vegas earlier this month with their answer to a question about whether the federal government should open the long-planned nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry agreed it was a states’ rights issue and argued Nevada shouldn’t be compelled to accept nuclear waste from other states.

Which would seem to argue for on-site storage as an ongoing solution, which would require changing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and abrogating the directives of the blue ribbon commission (as we understand them from the draft report).

Here’s  Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.):

“I’d remind all the presidential candidates of the federal government’s promise to construct a long-term storage facility for the legacy weapons materials temporarily being stored in South Carolina,” Duncan said. “I suspect many South Carolina voters, including myself, will expect to hear the presidential candidates solution to this problem during their next visit to the Palmetto State.”

Duncan is referring to the Savannah River Site and he makes a salient point. If the candidates consider domestic nuclear fuel to be a state issue, what do they consider military used fuel? Yucca Mountain was meant to house both.

In other words, it’s a complex issue. Plenty of people will be happy to remind you of that if you underestimate it.

---

From the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star:

The bodies of the final three victims were recovered Monday morning from a grain elevator that exploded Saturday, killing six people and injuring two others.

What happened?

The explosion was a harrowing reminder of the dangers inside elevators brimming with highly combustible grain dust at the end of harvest season. The blast fired an orange fireball into the night sky, shot off a chunk of the grain distribution building directly above the elevator and blew a large hole in the side of a concrete silo.

I would not dare compare this to Fukushima, though the picture at the link brings back memories. What struck me about this is how much risk is involved even in activities that one wouldn’t necessarily call industrial or consider particularly risky (well, from the outside – the silo workers were certainly aware of it.)

I’m sure risk assessment and mitigation are important topics among silo operators – but still, a fireball flew into the Kansas sky – and five workers (all in their early 20s) and a Kansas state grain inspector (father of three young children) are dead. It will be interesting to see how silo operators tighten their safety standards and perhaps install equipment to tamp down the dust.

It’s a blue ribbon, as in commission.

Incentivizing Energy

The American Security Project has put up an interesting podcast that asks whether recent events mark the end of the nuclear renaissance. Andrew Holland and Veronique Lee of ASP host Scott Peterson, NEI’s senior vice-president. Now, before you say, “Well, what’s he going to say?"  ASP aims to create rational debates about the issues it chooses to cover, so Peterson’s side of the discussion brings out a lot of useful datum that you may not know or have considered. You can’t really call it pro-nuclear per se because he sticks very close to facts and doesn’t editorialize much. For example, he points out that American facilities have faced a complete menu of natural disasters this year and came through them all without issue. That’s objectively true and worth hearing. Then the discussion moves on to Germany, Fukushima and issues of risk and risk management in the energy sphere. Well worth a listen.

---

The problem with nuclear energy is that it is so heavily subsidized by the federal government. Why, surely a privately held industry could afford to – oops, new information from the control room.

An updated study on federal energy incentives confirms that the main beneficiaries of more than $800 billion of federal energy incentives over the past six decades have been the oil and natural gas industries. The oil and natural gas industries together garnered 60 percent of federal incentives between 1950 and 2010, with 44 percent of the roughly $837 billion in federal support going to the oil sector, according to the report by the consulting firm Management Information Services Inc. (MISI).

I guess we should allow that the domestic nuclear energy business has existed for all but a few years of that time – Dresden 1 went online in 1960, with construction and planning going back several years. Renewable energy sources are much younger, though, except for hydro, so clearly nuclear will far outstrip them in terms of government incentives – excuse me – what? – control room again.

The MISI study also shows that, contrary to some claims, federal energy incentives have not gone to nuclear energy technologies at the expense of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. In fact, they're roughly equal. Of the total incentives provided since 1950, nuclear energy has received nine percent ($73 billion), while renewable energy also has received nine percent ($74 billion).

As you may have guessed, energy and electricity production – in all its forms – are items the federal government is keenly interested in promoting. They are key to the progress of any civilization in the modern world. And the government has a means to direct such production - through subsidies, incentives, loan guarantees, land distribution and other instruments. This can go overboard when an industry comes to expect it without demonstrated cause; it can also choke promising advances if new technologies are not encouraged.

The nuclear energy industry takes on occasional criticism that it is too dependent on the federal government – but this report shows that it just isn’t true. I’m not sure there’s a truly fair metric to use here, but the level of public investment in nuclear energy is really quite low compared to its energy relatives and especially low when one considers what the industry has provided in return.

---

Care to relive the experience of the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository? Some folks who lived through those halcyon days have decided to make an oral history of it.

"We chose not to do a top-down approach," she [Abby Johnson, Eureka County's nuclear waste consultant] said. "Other people can interview the senators and the governors, but nobody else is going to interview people in Crescent Valley."

To be honest, anyone working on, say, a book about Yucca Mountain probably would give attention to federal and state officials and the people in the valley, but that’s okay. Johnson doesn’t need to justify herself – her project is fine as is.

Johnson said a surprising thread emerged from the inter­views she conducted. In the view of rural Nevadans, the Yucca project was haunted from the start by memories of the atomic bomb detonations at the Nevada Test Site that poisoned thousands of down­winders, soldiers and site workers, and government cover-ups of the tragic impacts.

I’d never heard this before. That it’s an association that has nothing really to do with Yucca Mountain doesn’t make it any less legitimate for the people who feel it. Many of the folks pictured on the site are quite elderly, so they may well remember the days of atomic bomb testing. Even if they were children then and grew to old age there in Eureka County, they have the surest sense of the history and its impact. (About 10,500 downwinders, so called, were compensated by the government through an act of Congress beginning in 1990.)

Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t a plethora of bad information, conspiracy mongering and falsehood among the statements. Yucca Mountain was not a subject about which the truth was very welcome in Nevada. But oral histories are not after the truth, they’re after the truth as it is believed by the people speaking it – and their memories and their feelings. If Johnson can organize it all in a meaningful way, it will be a valuable record for writers and researchers and students and whoever else might come across it.

I haven’t read through all the material yet, so I may be wrong about this, but Johnson doesn’t seem to have spoken to Yucca Mountain’s workers. That’s a big gap and raises the suspicion that the project is meant to reinforce bad feelings about the repository.

Most of the workers did not come from Eureka County (or neighboring Nye County, where Yucca Mountain was sited), and many lived around Las Vegas while doing their jobs. Still, I assume some settled in Eureka for awhile. Leaving them out creates an incomplete history even within the terms Johnson has set. (Maybe she could put up a Linked-in or Facebook page or some such to capture some of those workers who scattered after the project went quiet.)

The population of Eureka County is 1650, by the way – Nye County has more people, about 46,000. There really is a reason why they, and Yucca Mountain, can be said to be in the middle of nowhere.

Any future repository siting process, any future process for siting a centralized storage facility for spent fuel must be voluntary, and it has to be a real meaningfully voluntary program.

That’s Joe Strolin, who was the acting director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and its planning director for more than 25 years. Based on some of the conclusions in the draft of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s report on the back end of the fuel cycle, Strolin has the right idea.

Visit the project here.

Joe Strolin

No Place for Nuclear Energy in Jeremy Rifkin’s “Third Industrial Revolution”

Last week, Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and advisor to the European Union on climate change and energy security, was a guest on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR. He was on to discuss his new book “The Third Industrial Revolution.”

If Rifkin’s name sounds familiar, it ought to, as he has more or less been in the business of bashing science and technology since he came on the scene in 1977. It was that year that Rifkin’s book, “Who Should Play God?” was published. A broadside against biotechnology, the book more or less set the tone for the rest of his career, one where Rifkin can charitably be described as one of the nation’s leading luddites.

In the interview, Rifkin outlined five key pillars focused on the merger between renewable energy and Internet technologies that he believes will help the world wean itself from fossil fuels and become less susceptible to the pendulum swing of economic downturns.

It sounds like it could be a promising plan. However, where does he see nuclear energy fitting into the equation? I’m guessing you won’t be surprised that he doesn’t think that the nation’s leading source of carbon-free energy has any place at all in his revolution.

I think nuclear’s—it’s really over. I think Fukushima was just the last point of the departure.

A startling statement—but coming from a guy who is convinced that Germany is leading the way in this new revolution—not surprising. (I guess he didn’t read our blog post from July that discusses the extra cost to Germany’s electricity consumers if the country phases out nuclear energy.)

He goes on to give us other “business reasons” why it’s over.

The problem is this. There’s about 400 nuclear power plants in the world. They’re very old. They only make up 6 percent of our energy mix, that’s all.

Fact check: In 2010, nuclear plants worldwide provided 13.5 percent of the world’s electricity production.

He continued:

But our scientific community says to have a minimum impact on climate change, you’d have to have 20 percent nuclear in the mix of energy. That means you’d have to have 4,000 nuclear power plants. That means you have to replace the existing 400 and build three nuclear power plants every 30 days for the next 60 years. That’s not going to happen.

So, we need to tear down all operating nuclear plants to build new ones? That would be an unnecessary overhaul of reliable energy infrastructure.

“Old” nuclear plants are still held to the same strict regulatory standards as newly constructed ones, and, with continued improvements in technology and operations, these nuclear plants have proven to become even safer and more efficient. For example, more than 6,000 megawatts of power uprates have been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 1977, which is the equivalent of adding another five to six nuclear reactors to the nation’s power grid.

Rifkin added yet another “business reason” to abandon nuclear:

We spent $8 billion to build that fail-safe vault at Yucca Mountain to put the nuclear material in. We can’t open it up because it’s already leaking.

Because it’s already leaking?! Correction: Because politics trumped science.

The Yucca Mountain repository is one of the most studied places on earth with more than 20 years of scientific research and analysis. Although the Bush administration in 2008 submitted to the NRC a license application to develop the site, a year later, the Obama administration withdrew the application and set up a blue ribbon commission to provide other recommendations.

It seems to me that some things just don’t add up in Rifkin’s plan.

You can read the full transcript here and also comment.

Jeremy Rifkin

Ways Forward – Japan, Yucca Mountain, The Industry

The Japanese government has released its report on the Fukushima accident, with the start of a timeline of events, a categorization and presentation of lessons learned, and, I thought, a proposed transformation of its regulatory structure to something far more rigorous (and a lot more like that in this country.) But there’s a lot to absorb here. Take a read and we’ll return to it in the days ahead.

The report will be presented at IAEA’s Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety on June 20.

---

The US House Science Committee in a report on Wednesday blasted the Obama administration for terminating the long-planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear-waste repository with no scientific or technical justification.

The criticism is the latest to come from the Republican-led House, and is largely a reiteration of complaints heard from a House energy oversight committee last week.

That’s from Platts and they’re right – Congress has had a lot to say about Yucca Mountain lately. Here’s a bit from the executive summary to give you a sense of it:

The results of this review are striking. Despite numerous suggestions by political officials—including President Obama—that Yucca Mountain is unsafe for storing nuclear waste, the
Committee could not identify a single document to support such a claim. To the contrary, the Committee found great agreement among the scientific and technical experts responsible for
reviewing the suitability of Yucca Mountain—considered by many to be ―the most studied piece of land on Earth‖—that nuclear waste can be safely stored at the site for tens of thousands of years in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements.

You can find the whole report here.

---

And the industry has unveiled its own response to events at Fukushima:

Three U.S. power-industry groups will set up a panel to run their own nuclear-nuclear-safety review as federal regulators probe Japan’s reactor crisis.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Electric Power Research Institute and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations will unveil their plan today in Washington. About a dozen officials from the groups will serve on the “Fukushima steering committee,” said Tony Pietrangelo, the energy institute’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer.

That happened a little earlier today. Here is a document, called The Way Forward, explaining this in more detail here. The plan outlines seven strategic goals and six guiding principles. Here are the first two of the goals:

1. The nuclear workforce remains focused on safety and operational excellence at all plants, particularly in light of the increased work that the response to the Fukushima event will represent.
2. Timelines for emergency response capability to ensure continued core cooling, containment integrity and spent fuel storage pool cooling are synchronized to preclude fuel damage following station blackout.

And the principles:

1. Ensure equipment and guidance, enhanced as appropriate, result in improvements in response effectiveness.
2. Address guidance, equipment and training to ensure long-term viability of safety improvements.
3. Develop response strategies that are performance-based, risk-informed and account for unique site characteristics.
4. Maintain a strong interface with federal regulators to ensure regulatory actions are consistent with safety significance and that compliance can be achieved in an efficient manner.
5. Coordinate with federal, state and local government and their emergency response organizations on industry actions to improve overall emergency response effectiveness.
6. Communicate aggressively the forthright approach the U.S. industry is taking to implement the lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

Read the whole thing. We’ll have more on this later.

The Return of Yucca Mountain

Color us surprised. The House Appropriations Committee unveiled yesterday its version of the Fiscal Year 2012 budget for the Energy Department with an unexpected line item. We’ll have more on the nuclear energy-specific aspects of the House budget tomorrow or Monday – there’s a markup of the bill later today that might shift some of the numbers around. It’s worth waiting to see how that turns out.

Anyway, here’s the surprising part:

The subcommittee's bill would increase funding in one area that DOE did not request. The Obama administration has sought to kill the long-planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, and proposed no funding for the project. But that move has been attacked by Republicans in Congress, and the subcommittee proposed $35 million to continue work on the project, and would forbid DOE from using funds to close the project.

$10 million of this would be used to continue the NRC review of the license for Yucca Mountain submitted to it by DOE – the committee did not explain what the other $25 million covered – that might be up to DOE.

---

But the decision to revive the used fuel repository might explain, at least in part, what occurred at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing yesterday :

Chu didn’t testify, but one of his top aides did -- Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons -- and he got an earful from virtually every member who questioned him.

“Regardless of who the administration is, the abject failure to follow federal law here is most disturbing, and it’s unacceptable,” Representative Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) bellowed at an Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing. “It’s unacceptable by any administration of any party.”

“Bellowed” is rather colorful for a news story, but it’s certainly true that Inslee was far from pleased. Inslee’s view is that stopping work on Yucca Mountain broke a provision in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that specifically charges DOE with developing the Nevada mound as a national used fuel repository. Most of the other committee numbers who quizzed Lyons on Yucca Mountain agreed with Inslee.

Are they right? Decide for yourself. You can read the entire Act here. The provisions about Yucca Mountain begin on page 13 (20 on your pdf page counter).

So, at least for now, Yucca Mountain is back. This is literally the first step in the budget process following the President’s presentation of his Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal, so there’s much more to come.

---

We’ve had way too much fun scoring Germany for its ill-considered decision to shutter all its nuclear plants by 2022. Of course, that’s pretty much what you’d expect from any nuclear energy advocate – even if the case against closing the plants is very strong however you look at it. See, for example, the Washington Post:

The international Energy Agency reported on Monday that global energy-related carbon emissions last year were the highest ever, and that the world is far off track if it wants to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, after which the results could be very dangerous.

So what does Germany’s government decide to do? Shut down terawatts of low-carbon electric capacity in the middle of Europe. Bowing to misguided political pressure from Germany’s Green Party, Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed a plan to close all of the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022.

The Post makes a list of why this is an awful outcome (I’ve adapted these – see the editorial for the full context):

• Renewables would have to generate an incredible 42.4 percent of the country’s electricity in 2020 to displace nuclear
• Germany’s move will result in about 400 million tons of extra carbon emissions by 2020, as the country relies more on fossil fuels
• Germany will likely import more power from its neighbors
• Germans will end up buying electricity generated in nuclear plants in nations such as France. [I guess we could call that the hypocrisy line item, but it would actually be helpful rather than hurtful.]

The conclusion:

Instead of providing a model for greening a post-industrial economy, Germany’s overreaching greens are showing the rest of the world just how difficult it is to contemplate big cuts in carbon emissions without keeping nuclear power on the table.

Indeed. The happiest face one can put on Germany’s decision is that cooler heads will prevail and keep at least some of the plants open – and that could happen - Germany has gone back and forth on this issue several times already. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a few more hairpin turns in this story.

Ah, Yucca Mountain. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? You look great!

GAO Cites Missteps in DOE's Hasty Termination of Yucca Mountain Project

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Energy’s expedited termination of the Yucca Mountain repository project “did not consistently follow federal policy and guidance for planning or assessing the risks of the shutdown” and showed lax attention to government procedures for disposing of federal property.

The report was requested by Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Joe Barton (R-Texas), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who asked GAO to determine, among other things, the basis of DOE’s action. Here’s what GAO found:

DOE’s decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain repository program was made for policy reasons, not technical or safety reasons.

The acting principal deputy director of the [Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management] explained Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s thinking this way:

[He said] that the secretary’s decision was based on a proposed change of department policy. … He did not, however, cite any technical concerns or safety issues related to the Yucca Mountain repository. [He] explained that the secretary believes there are better solutions that can achieve a broader national consensus to the nation’s spent fuel and nuclear waste storage needs than Yucca Mountain, although he did not cite any.

The National Academy of Sciences and international science experts continue to believe geologic disposal is the best solution for long-term disposal of nuclear waste, GAO said.

Meanwhile, DOE has spent nearly $15 billion since 1983 to evaluate potential nuclear waste repository sites, mostly to evaluate the Yucca Mountain site in more depth and prepare a license application for it. About 65 percent of this expenditure, or about $9.5 billion, came from the Nuclear Waste Fund. In return for that investment, U.S. taxpayers got a very large, empty hole under a remote mountain. But the funds invested directly in creating and studying the cavernous hole do not give a full picture of the cost to taxpayers, GAO said:

This does not include an estimated $956 million already paid by taxpayers from the U.S. Treasury’s judgment fund, resulting from 74 industry lawsuits, in which courts have ordered the government to compensate utilities for not accepting spent nuclear fuel starting in 1998, as required under the [Nuclear Waste Policy Act]. The government also has incurred $168 million in costs to defend DOE in litigation.

Now DOE apparently wants to start over, from square one.

GAO recommended that Congress consider establishing a more predictable funding mechanism to develop and implement a disposal solution for used nuclear fuel and defense waste and creating an independent organization, outside DOE, to lead the siting and development of a permanent repository.

For another GAO report on the Yucca Mountain project, see this post.

The Hidden Cost of Yucca, The States of Nuclear

In the Congressional hearing report a few posts down, several House members turned the heat up on four NRC commissioners (including Chairman Gregory Jaczko) over the commission’s decision – or action, as it hasn’t technically made a decision yet - to not review the license for the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository.

So a report from the Government Accounting Office acts only to pour both salt and lemon on the wound:

The U.S. government could face fines of $75,000 a day if it fails to find a way to store or handle stockpiles of defense-related nuclear waste by 2035, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Because Yucca Mountain was meant to harbor this material, too. 

In government terms, $75,000 may sound paltry. It adds up:

If the Energy Department does not find a way to remove the waste by then, it could face "significant penalties," GAO says: $60,000 a day for the remains in Idaho and $15,000 a day for remains in Colorado - or $27.4 million annually.

That’s not so paltry.

The decision to halt work on the repository does seem to have required more thought than it received, but who knows? Maybe the Blue Ribbon Commission will come up with some better ideas.

See the story for more on all this – the account from Dow Jones is quite interesting. You can find the whole GAO report here.

---

We can’t say that two swallows make a spring – but neither do they bring on winter.

Here’s one:

Missouri House members have endorsed a proposal to let utilities charge electric customers for some costs of developing a nuclear power plant before it's built.

The House voted 121-21 Thursday to add the nuclear plant issue to a separate bill, which wasn't put to a final vote. The legislative session ends May 13.

Not bad – let’s see how this works out.

And two:

The top Senate Republican says the Minnesota Legislature likely won't vote this year on a bill to lift a ban on new nuclear power plants.

Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch told reporters Thursday that the bill is "on pause" after passing both chambers in February.

The tell:

The nuclear crisis in Japan also didn't help its prospects.

Says the reporter. This bit wasn’t sourced. In any event, passing this bill wouldn’t have guaranteed a new plant, just allowed the state to consider nuclear among its energy options. Whether or not Fukushima weighed in, seems silly to exclude nuclear from the mix.

Motto: Can’t win ‘em all. Though you can keep trying – I wager this bill will be back in the next session of Minnesota’s legislature.

---

Iowa voted a couple of weeks ago to allow MidAmerican to charge ratepayers the cost of studying a new reactor in that state. The value of doing this is that it saves the utility from borrowing money – with the (considerable) finance charges paid by ratepayers. This way, none of that.

At least, that’s what I thought the charges were for. Instead, MidAmerican apparently wants to move right ahead with two small reactors:

If approved, it would clear the way for MidAmerican Energy, the state's largest utility, to begin billing customers in advance for the estimated $1 billion cost of developing one or more small modular nuclear reactors that could be on line as early as 2020.

This is a bit of a puzzle, as no design for a small reactor has been licensed by the NRC yet. It might happen in time to get the Iowa reactors up and running by 2020, but it seems a big “might.” I wonder if Forbes has this right. We’ll check into this and report back.

We sometimes show a picture of an African or Asian city at night to show why the country that houses it is considering nuclear energy. Doesn’t seem fair to ignore the North American continent. So - here’s Minneapolis – not enjoying the possibility of a new nuclear plant.