ECA Update: nuclear issues on the Hill today
Published: Wed, 09/12/12
Also on the Hill this morning, another Senate panel met to consider nuclear reactor safety and a House panel met to consider safety and security in the nuclear weapons complex.
In this update:
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ECA testimony to Senate Committee regarding the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2012
September 12, 2012
September 12, 2012
Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Murkowski and Members of the Committee, we thank you for accepting our written testimony on S.3469, a bill to establish a new organization to manage nuclear waste, provide a consensual process for siting nuclear waste facilities, ensure adequate funding for managing nuclear waste, and for other purposes. We would also like to thank the sponsor of this bill: Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). The Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) is the association of local governments that are adjacent to or impacted by Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear activities. Our members are either neighbors or hosts of DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites that currently produce or formerly produced defense nuclear waste, sites that store and process defense nuclear waste, and the sites that may potentially host a future interim storage facility, reprocessing facility or geologic repository.
Founded in 1992, ECA is the only association to bring together and provide a central voice for local elected and appointed officials on DOE issues. Our sites are the sender and receiver sites for nuclear waste, and potential hosts for nuclear waste interim storage, recycling and disposal facilities. We believe that local governments have a critical role to play in any waste discussion, and we have stated this position many times in our testimony before the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC). We applaud the efforts of this legislation to ensure that local governments are involved in waste decisions from the beginning.
Our communities are most interested in the disposal of defense waste currently stored at many of our sites. As you consider this legislation, we ask you to take into account the impact these decisions will have on our communities. We would like to offer the following recommendations and comments on S.3469:
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Congress and the Administration Need to Re-Engage Communities on HLW Issues
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ECA Supports the Inclusion of Local Governments in the Decision-Making Process
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The Siting Process Must Allow Affected Communities to Decide Whether, and on What Terms, the Affected Communities Will Host a Nuclear Waste Facility
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Use a Phased, Adaptive Approach to the Sequence of Waste Disposition - Move Defense Waste First.
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The Impacts of Transportation on Local Governments and Communities Need to Be Addressed
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ECA Can Support a New Organization to Manage Nuclear Waste
The full testimony is available at the link above.
House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, "DOE's Nuclear Weapons Complex: Challenges to Safety, Security, and Taxpayer Stewardship"
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation held a hearing this morning entitled, "DOE's Nuclear Weapons Complex: Challenges to Safety, Security, and Taxpayer Stewardship."
The hearing reviewed "what is necessary to maintain the highest standards for safe and secure operations at Department of Energy nuclear weapons laboratories and production sites, as the agency addresses the persistent challenges it confronts when executing its mission requirements." The hearing also included review of the July 28, 2012 security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
The hearing was originally scheduled for July 20, 2012.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on nuclear reactor safety
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing this morning entitled, "NRC's Implementation of Recommendations for Enhancing Nuclear Reactor Safety in the 21st Century."
This was NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane's first appearance before the Senate since her confirmation to the NRC in June 2012.
Historic message regarding 1962 bill to authorize sale of the community of Los Alamos
The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 12, 1962
A bill to authorize sale of the community of Los Alamos was passed by the House today and sent to President Kennedy. The town was built by the government during WWII to house nuclear scientists who helped father the atomic bomb. The Atomic Energy Commission will continue to operate its plant there. Two similar communities, Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Richland, Wash., have been disposed of by the government under legislation similar to that passed today. The government hopes eventually to net $38 million from the sale of homes, apartments and stores in Los Alamos to private owners.
Obama says he's willing to compromise on debt deal
Matt Vasilogambros, National Journal
September 10, 2012
President Obama said he is willing to compromise with congressional Republicans over the budget if he were to get a second term, but said they must be willing to meet him half way.
"There are still programs that don't work, there are still ways we can make (government) leaner and more efficient," Obama said on CBS' Face the Nation. "So I'm more than happy to work with the Republicans."
The president, however, went after his opponent for what he said was an unwillingness to agree to a compromise that would involve a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases.
"The problem is the math, or the arithmetic as President Clinton said, doesn't add up," Obama said. "You can't reduce the deficit unless you take a balanced approach that says we have to make government leaner and more efficient but we also have to ask people like me or Gov. Romney, who have done better than anybody else over the course of the last decade, and whose taxes are just about lower than they've been in the last 50 years, to do a little bit more."
Obama continued, saying he was willing to "make some adjustments" on Medicare and Medicaid that would aim to strengthen the programs. But he also criticized plans to "voucherize" the program.
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan refuted the president's claims that Republicans in Congress have been unwilling to work with him on the budget.
"Well, I have been more than happy to work with him, but he hasn't been acting like that," Ryan said on Face the Nation. "You know, what we learned in this presidency, he says one thing and does another. He gave us four budgets, each of which had trillion-dollar deficits, none of which ever, ever proposed to actually balance the budget."
Ryan also went after Democrats in the Senate for not offering a budget in the last three years, and said that he and Mitt Romney offered "a better choice" for the American people.
Boehner 'Not Confident' Of Getting Fiscal Cliff Deal
Elahe Izadi, National Journal
September 11, 2012
In light of Tuesday's news that Moody's warned it will downgrade America's credit rating if a deal isn't reached on the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner said he's "not confident at all" that negotiations will be successful.
"Listen, the House has done its job on both the sequestration and the looming tax hike that will cost our economy 700,000 jobs. The Senate at some point has to act," Boehner told reporters on Tuesday.
If Congress doesn't act by the beginning of next year, a volatile cocktail of tax increases and spending cuts are forecast to throw the country into "significant recession" and lead to the loss of 2 million jobs.
With Bob Woodward's book chronicling the collapse over last summer's debt ceiling negotiations in the news, Boehner said, "I still look at my failure to come to an agreement with the president as the biggest disappointment of my speakership."
But Boehner's not getting too introspective. He still laid the blame for the failed negotiations on President Obama, saying "the president didn't want to have a second round of a fight over increasing the debt limit."
Levin: Defense Authorization Bill Not Coming Soon
Sara Sorcher, National Journal
September 11, 2012
Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., is "very hopeful" the chamber will bring up the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill--but not before the next Senate recess in two weeks.
"It's not going to happen, obviously, this week or next week," Levin told reporters on Tuesday. "We're not going to be able to do it." Levin said congressional aides are working with their House counterparts so the chamber can be in a position to pass a bill in the lame duck session.
The Senate panel in May moved a defense authorization bill in line with the Obama administration's budget request for next year, providing $525.8 billion in base funding and $88.5 billion for the "overseas contingency operations" account that funds the war in Afghanistan. The House, for its part, the same month passed a $554 billion defense-authorization bill with $88 billion in the OCO, giving the Pentagon more money, troops, and weaponry than President Obama or senior military leaders requested.
Levin acknowledged that trying to deal with members' potential amendments and trying to address concerns before they can be voiced on the floor is "not the right way to legislate--but if that's the alternative we have, then we'll do the best we can."
"It's not desirable," Levin said, "but it's a lot better than no bill."
What to do with mounting nuclear waste?
Julie Maxson, Minneapolis Star Tribune
September 11, 2012
Minnesota has a nuclear waste storage problem. The problem is simply stated: We generate radioactive wastes at our nuclear power plants at Monticello and Prairie Island, but we have no viable plan for long-term storage of that waste. In other words, every time Minnesotans flip on the light switch, more nuclear waste is produced. And in the near-term future, there is nowhere for that nuclear waste to go.
From the 1980s to 2008, the U.S. government had a working plan to move nuclear waste from the plants where it is generated to a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But in 2008, the Yucca Mountain Repository development ended when scientists established high risk for groundwater contamination there. Until another geological repository can be developed, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's plan is to continue to store spent nuclear fuel at the plants where it is generated.
A Sept. 3 Star Tribune article quotes Prairie Island Indian Community secretary Ron Johnson saying that spent fuel "was supposed to have been removed in the 1990s. We translate that to mean [the Prairie Island site] is probably more of a permanent storage facility."
The problem isn't unique to Minnesota: Nuclear power plants all over the United States are now storing nuclear waste on site. But, and this is a big one, Minnesota's plants weren't designed or located in places that make sense for long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Both of Minnesota's nuclear facilities are on the Mississippi River. Siting the plants on the river initially made sense: River water can be used for cooling spent fuel and steam. But by their very nature, rivers are geologically hazard-prone. After the destruction of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant by major tsunami, we need to give careful thought to where and how we store nuclear waste. In a post-Fukushima world, it is difficult to believe that Minnesota's nuclear facilities are disaster-proof.
For the time being, we may be stuck with on-site storage, but we can take important steps to minimize the risks. Currently, we manage nuclear wastes in two stages. Waste is initially cooled and stored in spent fuel pools. This waste is eventually transferred and sealed in steel and concrete containers called dry casks. The Prairie Island and Monticello plants use both storage methods.
Each method has a key advantage: Spent fuel pools are less expensive, while dry cask storage is far safer, but more costly.
Importantly, the casks are less vulnerable to hazards such as fire, flooding, or even earthquakes and tsunamis. Dry casks at the Fukushima plant were knocked over, but no radiation leaked from them; the release of radiation at Fukushima was entirely from the spent fuel pools.
According to the Sept. 3 article, the Prairie Island Indian Community has concerns about the longevity of the dry casks.
But the casks represent a far better alternative than storage in pools, and moving waste to cask storage is a necessary step before the waste can be moved offsite. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonpartisan scientific organization, sees dry cask storage as one of the most obvious sources of nuclear risk reduction.
This week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on a bill to implement recommendations of President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Unfortunately, neither the commission's report nor the bill conveys the importance of transferring spent fuel waste to dry cask storage.
This is where Minnesota can make a difference.
U.S. Sen. Al Franken sits on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and has the opportunity to make important policy recommendations that would accelerate the process of moving spent fuel to safer storage systems.
Ideally, Franken will also urge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reduce the risks to the Prairie Island Indian Community by moving waste quickly from the Mississippi River floodplain.
Dry cask storage is the essential first step.
Addressing a Gap in Nuclear Regulation
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
September 11, 2012
For almost 40 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's mantra has been that public health and safety are adequately protected by the agency's regulatory standards. But the triple meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant 18 months ago suggests that the commission needs to go beyond direct health impacts in adopting safeguards, commission staff members and outside experts argued at a three-hour hearing on Tuesday.
The question of a gap in regulations was first raised early this year by Gregory B. Jaczko, the commission's previous chairman, who advanced the idea that the commission's goals were so flawed that what transpired at Fukushima could have been judged to meet the agency's safety standards. Tests so far have suggested that no member of the general public received a radiation dose high enough to cause immediate health effects.
But land contamination forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and has prevented most of them from returning, some noted at the commission hearing. "The Fukushima disaster has cast a brighter light on the true aspects of post-accident conditions, such as land contamination,'' said Allison M. Macfarlane, who took over as the commission's chairwoman in July.
Referring to the contamination, Ralph Anderson, an expert testifying on behalf of the nuclear industry, said that "by any measure, this condition is unacceptable.'' Still, Mr. Anderson and commission staff members made the point that steps meant to reduce the chances of public exposure to radiation would also make the kinds of accidents that make big areas of land uninhabitable less likely.
Edwin S. Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that is generally critical of the nuclear industry and the commission's regulations, said that many of the agency's judgments were based on the possibility of a quick release of radioactive material, which could cause exposures before people in the area could be be moved away.
The Fukushima plant did not have large, quick releases, he said. But slower releases caused tremendous damage, he said.
Commission staff members said that although protection of real estate is often not explicitly mentioned in its regulations, it is taken into consideration at various stages.
Dr. Macfarlane raised the question of how far afield the commission might have to go in assessing potential economic damage. One effect of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was the closing of other reactors around Japan and the loss of generating capacity, she pointed out.
An expert from the Environmental Protection Agency, Al McGartland, director of the National Center for Environmental Economics, pointed out that a study of Superfund designations by his agency showed that a finding of toxic contamination changed the values of nearby property that was not contaminated.
Some commission procedures are mandatory regardless of their costs because they are needed to provide "adequate protection'' for the public. Others are subject to a cost/benefit analysis. If benefits are calculated to include the goal of protecting real estate as well as averting radiation doses, the commission could impose more expensive rules.
The agency has not established a timetable for making a decision on whether to revise its regulations. But Dr. Macfarlane has established the issue as a priority, so a vote is possible before the end of the year.
The commission is considering rewriting its rules with varying levels of thoroughness. If it changed its method of evaluating safety, one question is whether this would apply to new reactors only or to existing reactors as well.
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