[ RadSafe ] Yucca Mountain chief says DOE underestimated document job

[Sandy Perle]

Yucca Mountain chief says DOE underestimated document job
Yucca Mountain setbacks sparking debate about privatization
FirstEnergy seeks nuclear plant license extension
Protesters delay Italian nuclear waste exports
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Yucca Mountain chief says DOE underestimated document job

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department underestimated how hard it 
would be to plug 20 years of documents into a database to support its 
application for a license for a national nuclear waste repository in 
Nevada, the departing project director said.

"People had left behind tons, millions of e-mails, and we had to sort 
them out, figure out criteria of what was relevant and what was not," 
Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste 
Management, told reporters at a utility regulators conference Monday 
in Washington, D.C. "The magnitude was just horrendous."

Chu announced last week she will resign Feb. 25. The inability to 
post all relevant documents on an Internet database called the 
Licensing Support Network for review by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission contributed to missed deadlines for the Nevada nuclear 
waste repository the Energy Department plans 90 miles northwest of 
Las Vegas.

Department officials have pushed back a target date for opening the 
$58 billion project by at least two years. Chu said last week it may 
not open until after 2012.

Chu said Monday she had expected to head the Yucca Mountain program 
for one presidential term. She was appointed to the job in March 
2002.

Chu told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners 
that progress at Yucca Mountain depends on funding from Congress.

"I am confident we will eventually get there," she said.

Don Keskey, a former Michigan assistant attorney general, said 
utility ratepayers contributing to a Yucca Mountain construction fund 
were at financial risk because of delays with the program.

Electricity consumers served by nuclear utilities pay one-tenth-of-
one-cent-per-kilowatt-hour into the fund, which has accumulated $24 
billion since 1983. The current balance is $16.3 billion.

Keskey urged utility commissioners to consider withholding the fees, 
or placing them in escrow to show "that states are not ignoring this 
issue and are concerned."

However, Jay Silberg, an attorney representing utilities, said power 
companies would be caught in the middle if the commissioners acted to 
withhold fees.

He said licenses and governmental nuclear waste contracts could be 
jeopardized.

"If you disallow (fees), you are pressuring the wrong guys," Silberg 
said. "It is not the utilities' fault we are in this situation."
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Yucca Mountain setbacks sparking debate about privatization

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Frustrated by setbacks in development of a national 
nuclear waste repository in Nevada, states and utilities are reviving 
a proposal to privatize management of the Yucca Mountain project.

The idea, discussed Sunday during a conference of the National 
Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Washington, D.C., 
would create a government-chartered corporation with more 
independence than the Energy Department to manage construction of the 
$58 billion repository.

Proponents say that would give managers more freedom to raise and 
manage fees for the project and spend money from a nuclear waste fund 
now controlled by Congress.

A 1994 report touted the advantages of having the project run by a 
private business that could hire and fire managers, set salaries and 
promote accountability.

"It went nowhere," said Ronald Callen, an author of the 1994 report 
when he was a staff member for the Michigan Public Service 
Commission.

The idea still might not be attractive to Congress, where lawmakers 
oversee Yucca Mountain and a construction fund with a $16.3 billion 
balance.

But state officials and utility lobbyists taking a new look at the 
idea argue a corporate approach might be better than a government 
bureaucracy to oversee complex repository construction.

"DOE is not a building contractor," said Greg White, legislative 
liaison for the Michigan Public Service Commission and chairman of a 
nuclear issues staff subcommittee for the National Association of 
Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

The proposal reflects frustration among states and utility interests 
that have supported a government repository for nuclear spent fuel.

Customers of nuclear utilities have contributed about $24 billion 
into a fund to build a Nevada repository.

The Energy Department had pledged to take ownership of nuclear waste 
by 1998, but a repository has yet to be finished.

Last week, the department acknowledged it will miss a 2010 target for 
opening the Yucca repository, with officials saying it could be 2012 
or later.

The Yucca plan calls for entombing 77,000 tons of the nation's 
highest-level nuclear waste and spent fuel from commercial nuclear 
power plants in 155 miles of underground tunnels beneath the 
mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
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FirstEnergy seeks nuclear plant license extension

LOS ANGELES, Feb 14 (Reuters) - FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Group 
(FENOC) said on Monday it is seeking a 20-year operating license 
extension for its Beaver Valley nuclear plant in Shippingport, 
Pennsylvania.

The company, a unit of FirstEnergy Corp. , said it submitted its 
license renewal application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) on Monday.

The Beaver Valley station, located about 35 miles northwest of 
Pittsburgh, has two units, the first with a capacity of 869 megawatts 
and the second 873 MW.

One megawatt powers about 1,000 homes, according to the North 
American average.

The license for Unit 1 would be extended to 2036 from 2016 while for 
Unit 2, the company is seeking an expiration of 2047 rather than 
2027.

The application is expected to take about 28 months to review, with a 
decision from the NRC expected in summer 2007.
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Protesters delay Italian nuclear waste exports

ROME, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Anti-nuclear campaigners chained themselves 
to railway tracks in the early hours of Monday to try to prevent two 
trainloads of radioactive waste leaving Italy for Britain's 
Sellafield reprocessing plant, police said.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace organised the protest near 
Turin to publicise that the waste -- the last of 13 convoys -- would 
eventually return to Italy. They say the government has no policy on 
what to do with it.

"The attempt to export spent nuclear fuel abroad is a way of playing 
for time, a subterfuge to leave for the next generation the burden of 
taking decisions which are morally and politically beyond the wit of 
the current governing class," a Greenpeace statement said.

Officers removed protesters from the tracks after cutting them free 
with bolt cutters. The protest delayed a train -- carrying 53 tonnes 
of spent nuclear fuel -- from departing northern Italy for several 
hours.

Environmentalists want countries to stop sending spent fuel to 
reprocessing plants in Britain and France.

Eventually, the waste must return to the country of origin, which has 
the legal duty to store it safely. But environmentalists say no 
European country has yet decided how to deal with it effectively.

Italy closed its nuclear power stations in the 1980s after Italians 
voted to go nuclear-free, but the country is still dealing with waste 
from old plants.

Italian environmentalists fear they could face another battle if the 
country's politicians are successful at restarting Italy's mothballed 
nuclear programme.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said Italy should rethink its no-
nuclear policy because it has no significant reserves of conventional 
energy and is a net importer of nuclear-generated electricity from 
neighbouring countries.

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Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1902 

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at earthlink.net 

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Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/