ECA Update: May 24, 2013
Published: Fri, 05/24/13
ECA Submits Comments on Draft Nuclear Waste Bill
ECA May 24, 2013 Today the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) filed comments with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the "Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013," a discussion draft of comprehensive nuclear waste management legislation released late last month.
The proposal was prepared by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) - the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development - and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) - leaders of the Senate Natural Resources Committee -and would implement recommendations by the Blue Ribbon Commission on American's Nuclear Future (BRC).
In the comments, ECA states that we strongly supports the role for local governments outlined in the draft legislation, specifically in a consensual decision-making process that will make "local, state and federal governments equal partners." We applaud the efforts of this Legislation to ensure that local governments are involved in waste decisions from the beginning. However, ECA believes the local government role can and should be expanded beyond what is included in the draft.
ECA offered the following recommendations:
A copy of ECA's complete comments and recommendations is attached to this message.
Nuclear Waste Bill Feedback Due by 5:00pm (EST) Today
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee On May 1, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee launched a webpage where the public and interested parties can submit comments on a discussion draft of comprehensive nuclear waste management legislation released by a bipartisan group of senators in late April.
The webpage and instructions on how to submit comments on the draft bill can be found on the committee's website.
Submissions are due by Friday, May 24, 2013 at 5:00pm (EST).
New Energy Secretary: Nuclear Waste Cleanup Among Top Priorities
Northwest News Network May 21, 2013 The Obama administration's new secretary of energy says his top priorities are responding to climate change, safely managing the nation's nuclear stockpile and fostering scientific research. Ernest Moniz made the comments at his swearing-in ceremony Tuesday.
He also mentioned the need to clean up the nation's Cold War legacy waste. That would include work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington, "Including attention to the communities and workforce as we go into a somewhat uncertain future again, especially in terms of the budget environment."
Moniz is the 13th United States Secretary of Energy. He's a scientist with high-level government experience. From 1997 until early in 2001, Moniz served as under secretary of the energy department. States to NRC: Better nuclear waste rules needed Associated Press May 24, 2013 MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Attorneys general in Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut announced Thursday they are petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a more thorough environmental review of storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste at plant sites.
It was another effort by states to turn up the pressure on federal agencies to keep a promise Washington made 30 years ago but has yet to fulfill: that it would take possession of and find a permanent disposal site for what's now more than 70,000 tons of waste piling up at the nation's 104 commercial reactors.
"Federal law requires that the NRC analyze the environmental dangers of storing spent nuclear fuel at reactors that were not designed for long-term storage," said Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell.
In a landmark ruling last year, a federal appeals court in Washington said the NRC needed to do a full environmental review of the risks of storing the waste -- spent nuclear fuel -- in storage pools and casks made of steel and concrete on the grounds of nuclear plants while the search continues for a disposal solution.
The NRC has been working on new rules for safe waste storage since that decision. On Thursday, the attorneys general petitioned the five-member commission to reject the recommendations of its staff, arguing that those recommendations did not adequately address the risks of spent fuel storage.
"NRC staff is continuing to ignore serious public health, safety and environmental risks related to long-term, on-site storage," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a news release. "The communities that serve as de facto long-term radioactive waste repositories deserve a full and detailed accounting of the risks."
Exposure to high-level radioactive waste can be lethal, and the material needs to be isolated for at least thousands of years while its radioactivity dissipates. One court decision related to the decades-long controversy over Nevada's Yucca Mountain specified an isolation period of 1 million years.
The questions have become all the more urgent since the Obama administration decided in 2010 to scrap plans for a waste dump at Yucca Mountain in the face of stiff opposition, including from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
With no alternative plan on the horizon, "NRC must consider the environmental implications of existing waste storage at reactor sites based on the reasonable assumption that such wastes will remain at the sites forever," the states said in their petition.
Flaws in the NRC's review to date, the attorneys general said, include that it has not given adequate consideration to two alternatives: -- A rule saying that after five years cooling in specially constructed pools, the waste would have to be moved to hardened concrete and steel casks on plant grounds. That would leave much less radioactive material in spent fuel pools that have been described as more vulnerable to earthquakes or terrorist attacks.
-- "The alternative of not allowing further production of spent fuel until the NRC determines that there is a safe and environmentally acceptable permanent waste repository to receive the additional spent fuel." Not allowing further production of spent fuel would mean shutting down the entire U.S. nuclear industry.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the agency was not contemplating any step that drastic but would apply its normal petition review process to the states' filing.
"Since we consider both spent fuel pools and dry cask storage to be safe means of storing this material, there is no need to halt plant operations while efforts to move forward with an interim and/or permanent national repository continue," Sheehan said in an email.
Steven Kerekes, a spokesman with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, said he would leave it to the NRC to "speak to how and whether this petition fits into its well-established National Environmental Policy Act and rulemaking processes."
"The larger issue is used fuel management; nuclear energy facilities are storing used nuclear fuel safely and securely. They will continue to do so throughout this process and beyond," Kerekes added.
Republicans press NRC chair for answers on Yucca Mountain Karoun Demirjian, Las Vegas Sun May 23, 2013
The crisis that engulfed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and threatened to tip the scales on the Yucca Mountain project last year is in the past, if the bipartisan nods of reserved approval that new chairwoman Allison MacFarlane received at her reconfirmation Thursday are any indicator.
But that doesn't mean Republicans and Democrats are ready to bury the hatchet on whether to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
"Your tenure has brought significant change to the NRC. I believe collegiality has returned to the NRC," Republican Sen. John Barrasso said this morning at MacFarlane's hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday.
But, he said, "I've long been a supporter of Yucca Mountain, and I continue to believe the project should move forward."
Despite the lack of funding for Yucca, the opposition of both President Barack Obama and Sen. Harry Reid and a process to reconfigure nuclear waste management in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Yucca Mountain will not be a dead issue until a federal appeals court issues a final ruling.
Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee tried to pin MacFarlane -- a former member of the president's blue ribbon commission on nuclear waste who falls firmly into the anti-Yucca camp -- on how she would handle the NRC's response to Yucca if the courts ordered the government to keep pressing ahead with the project.
"We will follow the law," MacFarlane said. "We are very aware of the importance of this court decision not only to the NRC but to the public, the nation as a whole."
"But the court decision would represent the law and you would follow it?" Sen. David Vitter asked, pressing MacFarlane to clarify.
"We would follow the law," MacFarlane said.
"If there's nothing in the court decision that prohibits that, I would specifically request that," Vitter retorted.
MacFarlane took over leadership of the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission in July in the wake of a management crisis centered on commissioners' frustrations with then-Chair Gregory Jaczko's leadership -- specifically his handling of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in Japan and the commission's review of Yucca Mountain's waste repository license.
Jaczko, a former advisor to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid with a well-documented disdain for disposing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, had delayed a vote on whether the license should proceed and then shelved the project in a way Republicans charged flew in the face of federal law.
More troubling to Democrats and Republicans, however, was that his fellow commissioners told the Inspector General that Jaczko used "intimidating and bullying tactics" to bend them and commission staffers to siding with him and cut commission members out of key decision-making processes.
While Jaczko denied any wrongdoing, he eventually resigned and MacFarlane took over.
Since then, the NRC has continued to file paperwork in the court case, arguing the same line as Jaczko did -- that the NRC does not have adequate funds left over from previous appropriations cycles to put toward pursuing the Yucca license in any meaningful way.
During court proceedings last summer, the NRC said it had about $10 million left in unspent funds earmarked for the Yucca project.
Vitter also pressed MacFarlane to release an unredacted version of its internal report on the safety of Yucca Mountain, something Republicans in the House have been calling for as well.
MacFarlane said she would await the court's directive and pledged to "conduct the agency's process in an open and transparent manner."
GOP lawmakers question nuclear commission's cost calculus Julian Hattem, The Hill May 23, 2013 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should be investigated for the way it estimates new costs stemming from regulations and requirements, according to two prominent Republicans.
In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the lawmakers express suspicion of the cost analysis measures used by the federal nuclear watchdog.
The legislators worry that "the NRC has a track record of producing cost estimates for its requirements on nuclear power reactors that can be egregiously off target from the actual costs of implementing the requirements." The letter was sent by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
They point to concerns about cost estimates of the agency's November requirements for venting systems for some reactors, issued in response to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan.
Accurate cost-benefit analyses are "particularly important when rules or requirements add marginal enhancements to existing nuclear power reactor safety -- cases in which safety benefits may not be significant enough to warrant the additional costs," the lawmakers write.
"As always, nuclear safety is of the utmost importance to us and the future success of the industry. However, the costs of regulatory burden are ultimately paid by consumers and businesses."
Vitter and Upton ask the GAO to review the NRC's process of estimating cost, including how it interacts with reactor owners seeking information.
Board holds off recommendation for future of SRS Michael Ulmer, Aiken Standard May 21, 2013 The possible storage of spent nuclear fuel at Savannah River Site was left on the table Monday by the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, a group designed to offer advice to the Department of Energy, which owns SRS.
Board members presented a draft recommendation advising DOE not to accept the nuclear material, but decided to wait until a later date to formally consider approving the proposal.
The choice to defer to a later meeting was met with controversy by board members and those in attendance at Monday's session.
Rose Hayes offered the recommendation to the board, explaining that she believed Waste Management Committee Chairman Ed Burke requested a decision take place during Monday's meeting or another session set for today.
Burke was not in attendance on Monday, but was scheduled to present a draft recommendation during the board's meeting.
However, fellow board member Don Bridges indicated that Burke wanted to delay consideration of the proposal in order to examine every angle.
Terry Spears, a DOE representative, agreed with Bridges, noting it was best to bring the proposal forward at a future meeting.
He said it was his understanding that the proposal was brought forward Monday only for discussion and not for a vote.
After discussion, the board decided it will likely take up the issue during a meeting in September or October.
More than a dozen community residents and representatives from nonprofit organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Conservation Voters of South Carolina offered support for the board's recommendation to DOE.
Hayes said she hoped the board would eventually decide to recommend that DOE not consider using SRS as a storage site for spent nuclear waste.
She noted that SRS has been viewed by policy makers as a potential replacement for Yucca Mountain, an idea she believes should be scrapped.
Yucca Mountain, located in Nevada, was to be a repository for spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste until President Barack Obama stopped funding in 2010.
According to Patrick McGuire, a representative of DOE, spent nuclear fuel is fuel that has been removed from a reactor. Currently, SRS has a large inventory of research reactor spent nuclear fuel, McGuire said, but no commercial material such as that discussed during Monday's meeting.
In light of the decision to cease funding for Yucca Mountain, Obama created the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which recommended the nation find a suitable storage facility for multi-decade use.
The commission's proposed date to open a repository is 2048, according to the draft recommendation presented during Monday's meeting.
Plan for leaking Hanford tank promised by June 14 KING 5 News May 23, 2013 KING 5 has learned that the U.S. Dept. of Energy committed itself to a June 14 deadline to deliver a plan explaining how it will pump out a leaking double-shell tank at the Hanford Site containing highly radioactive waste. That plan, DOE said, is likely to be limited to increased monitoring for the time being while additional studies of the tank's condition are completed.
The leaking tank has been the subject of a series of reports by the KING 5 Investigators showing how the Energy Department and the private company managing the Hanford tank farms ignored evidence of the leak for a year, even hiding definitive proof from a citizen advisory panel. In a May 6 letter to the Washington State Dept. of Ecology, DOE and the private contractor managing the tank said they want to revise the emergency pumping requirement, citing a number of safety concerns. The DOE's Office of River Protection "will provide a 241-AY-102 primary tank pumping plan to Ecology by June 14, 2013, which will include the steps necessary to remove the entire contents of the tank including sludge," the letter says.
But the authors request a meeting with Ecology "to discuss potential revisions" to the pumping guide.
In an attachment to the letter, DOE and the contractor say that the emergency pumping guide did not account for a situation like the one that occurred with 241-AY-102.
New planning, budget director named at DOE's Oak Ridge Office John Huotari, Oak Ridge Today May 19, 2013 The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office has named Jamie Standridge as director of the Planning and Budget Division within the Office of the Chief Financial Officer at ORO.
In this role, Standridge is responsible for coordinating all phases of the DOE-ORO budget planning, formulation, and execution activities for the multi-appropriation, $3.9 billion dollar funding structure of ORO and all major DOE contractors in Oak Ridge. Other responsibilities include knowledge of overall DOE budget policies and procedures involving nationwide programs within overall DOE budget policies and procedures.
The ORO Planning and Budget Division provides services through the Oak Ridge Integrated Support Center to the Oak Ridge Offices of Environmental Management and Nuclear Energy, as well as four Office of Science laboratory federal site offices in Tennessee, California, Virginia, and Washington. Standridge joined ORO in 2002 as a budget analyst, and in 2008 was named ORO team lead in the Science and Research Branch of the Planning and Budget Division. During his tenure at ORO, he has served on temporary job details to the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Deputy Director of Field Operations at the DOE Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
A native of Sweetwater, Tenn., Standridge earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Tennessee Technological University and an MBA from the University of Tennessee. Standridge and his wife, Charity, live in Madisonville, Tenn., and have a daughter, Lila, age 2.
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