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Panel appointed to seek Yucca Mountain alternatives
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STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Updated: Jan. 29, 2010 | 7:22 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration continued its march away from Yucca Mountain today with the naming of a 15-member panel of experts to chart new paths to manage highly radioactive nuclear waste.
The commission will be led by two Washington policy veterans, former Rep. Lee Hamilton and longtime presidential adviser Brent Scowcroft, the Energy Department announced.
Other members are well known, including former Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., former high-ranking government energy officials, and representatives of the nuclear industry, organized labor, environmental groups and academia.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future will be given two years to do its work. A draft report will be due in 18 months.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the commission will have a free hand to examine a “full range of scientific and technical options” on waste storage, reprocessing and disposal, with one exception: the once-favored Yucca Mountain underground repository.
Talking with reporters, Chu and chief White House energy adviser Carol Browner made it clear that the Nevada site, which had been the government’s sole focus for more than 20 years, is off the table.
“The debate over Yucca Mountain is over, as the president has made clear many times,” said Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.
“It is time to move forward with a new strategy based on the best science and the advice of a broad range of experts,” Browner said.
Hamilton said Chu made it “quite clear that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, and that the blue ribbon commission will be looking at better alternatives.”
The idea of storing, and ultimately burying, nuclear spent fuel underground is outdated, Hamilton said, adding, “It has been made clear to me that science has advanced dramatically since the Yucca site was chosen 20 years ago or so. We are going to pull together the current information and research to develop a plan.”
The naming of a commission appears to be another step in the dismantlement of the Yucca Mountain Project, which long has been a lightning rod among environmentalists and many people in Nevada, including virtually all the state’s elected leaders.
The project was envisioned as a warren of tunnels deep inside Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where at least 77,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial plants, and government-generated nuclear waste, would be stored and ultimately buried.
The cost had grown to almost $100 billion and fell more than a decade beyond schedule due to a series of management missteps, legal challenges and budget cuts engineered by opponents in Congress.
The next step down could come on Monday when the Obama administration releases its proposed 2011 federal budget. The budget is expected to contain only token funding for the program.
Its downfall traces to an alliance between Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and President Barack Obama, who pledged early in his White House campaign to end the repository and has kept his promises so far.
Reid said Chu assembled “some of the smartest people in the country” for the commission.
“President Obama and I have worked closely to stop dumping taxpayer money into Yucca, and I have fought hard to ensure Yucca Mountain is dead,” Reid said. “This panel of experts proposing other options for nuclear waste is the logical next step in that process.”
Other Nevadans in Congress echoed the sentiment.
Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said Obama was fulfilling his promise to end the repository project. Democratic Rep. Dina Titus said the commission means “we are closer than ever to ensuring Yucca Mountain never becomes a reality.”
In Carson City, the announcement was met with tempered enthusiasm.
Bruce Breslow, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said formation of the panel was encouraging, but the state’s fight against the project would end only when the Department of Energy withdraws a repository license application under review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In the meantime, Breslow said once the panel is up and running the state will volunteer to testify or brief commissioners, as will others who have been challenging the Yucca project in NRC legal hearings.
“We can tell them and point out everything they did wrong so they don’t ever do that again,” Breslow said, referring not only to the Nevada site itself but to the process that selected Yucca Mountain and the often difficult relationship between the state and the Energy Department.
“The state of Nevada and probably every party to the lawsuit are all going to be making overtures to the blue ribbon commission offering help, expertise, information, studies,” Breslow said.
Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, said today it is time to look ahead. Solving the nuclear waste problem is important to the goal adopted by the administration to promote nuclear power as a response to climate change.
He said the commission will take a broad look at managing nuclear waste, a topic that policymakers have wrestled with since the birth of the nuclear era. The radioactive spent fuel that emerges through the production of nuclear power is among the deadliest substances.
“As a scientist, I have said many times these issues are solvable in a manner that can gain the confidence of the American people,” Chu said. “This panel of experts will help find those solutions and build consensus around a responsible path forward.”
Chu said the panel’s work will focus on “solutions rather than ideology, and the best available science will inform their work at every step.”
Steve Frishman, a nuclear waste consultant to the state of Nevada, said it was for the best that Yucca Mountain will not be in the mix. A generation of scientists and policymakers have formed strong opinions pro and con, and it would lead the panel into a morass rather than a new start.
Hamilton and Scowcroft have backgrounds in international relations and national security and not necessarily energy, Frishman observed.
“It probably is good the co-chairs don’t have any background in this,” he said. “That will be useful because they won’t be bringing 20 years of problems with them. They can take a fresh look.”
Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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No contact with any towns in central Nevada.
Government Senator refuses to comment.
Please Help signs spotted by choppers over Goldfield.
Las Vegs Mobile Home dwelers are advised to move to large casinos for their safety.
Yucca Mountain spending has othing to do with budget. The money for the project comes from fees paid by users of nuclear energy. While this administration is in office Yucca Mountain will not go forward. But this administration will not be here all that long. And Senator Reid is history. Yucca Mountain is the long term solution and it will be used.
Look at what slid under news wire today:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aC7VY11v6aMw#
Obama has came around to fact that we need clean energy and we know that nuclear energy is best course to take.
With White House supporting this with more than $50B to encourage more nuclear plants to be built, issue will continue to be where to store it!
Since we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the project and with that project will come billions of dollars to the southern Nevada economy. Not to mention thousands of new jobs for professionals, such as scientist, engineers, etc. It will be a God send for us here in the Clark County Community.
When I visited France a year ago, I never realized till then that France supplies approximately 70% of its energy needs via a few nuclear plants.
They power all of Paris with electricity powered by nuclear plants. Now think, how much we can do with this nuclear energy versus hydro sources, and coal/oil burning.
I am in 100% support of opening up Yucca Mountain for its intended purposes! I will support this project till jobs and people come back to Clark County.
Look at potential for our children. Instead of looking forward to working for a casino and living on tips and a small stipend, they can actually go to college and become an engineer and find professional employment here in Clark County.
This is a good omen for Southern Nevada. Dirty Harry has had 30 years to stop this and he hasn't! The DOE wants it and now the White House is also pushing for new energy via nuclear! We must take the step forward
and be progressive versus backward. Embrace future don't fear it!
Yucca contractors will not be applying for unemployhment. They have been eaten by the Giant Mutated Ants.
Las Vegas residents are advised to remain calm. Residents on the North side of the valley are advised to stay inside and and keep pets inside.
Those sighting the mutated creatures should call elected officials in Washington DC.
The Truth:
Giant mutant ants have taken over Yucca Mt. They are using the vast tunnel as a hive and are reproducing.
They are directing policy at Groom Lake.
They have threatened any politico who reveals the truth.
Well known investigative reporters are terrified of them.
The round up of wild horses is not for the range land it is for THEM.
Global warming may have no effect on them.
The high clesetrol in the red horse meat may clog their systems. Horses are fed hay with large quanties of salt before they are eaten by the Giant Ants.
Do Not Blame REID.