ECA Update: November 19, 2012
Published: Mon, 11/19/12
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Appropriations panels quietly work on omnibus
David Rogers, Politico
November 18, 2012
David Rogers, Politico
November 18, 2012
Defying expectations, House and Senate appropriations committees are making steady progress in writing an omnibus spending bill for the coming year, hammering away like shipbuilders in the desert, hoping for a winter flood to carry them out to sea.
Defense clerks spent Friday reading out a final agreement of the Pentagon's budget, estimated near $518 billion. The homeland security title could be finished early this week. Agriculture, transportation, housing, justice and science are not far behind. And the push is on to work through the holiday and have most of the legislative text in place soon after Congress returns from Thanksgiving on Nov. 27.
It's still a fool's errand in the eyes of many. And for sure, there are outliers.
Talks on the giant labor, education and health chapter are lagging because the chief House Republican negotiator, Rep. Denny Rehberg, was preoccupied so long with his Senate campaign in Montana. But enough progress has been made overall that even a reluctant White House is beginning to take notice of the committees' persistence.
Indeed, if the fiscal cliff debt talks end up requiring more cuts from discretionary spending, an updated omnibus would be a far better vehicle for implementing new savings than the six-month stopgap bill that is keeping the government funded.
A second factor is Hurricane Sandy. Few expect a huge supplemental this winter in the midst of debt talks, but given the devastation in the Northeast, many believe Congress has to act before New Year's Eve to at least release the remaining $5.4 billion in disaster aid reserve funds.
This could be done by including language in the omnibus package. Or as some suggest, the disaster aid bill could become a vehicle to which the larger spending package is attached.
The appropriations leadership was never happy with the deal struck last summer by President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), which put the whole government under a six-month continuing resolution pegged at $1.047 trillion in annual spending.
From the committees' standpoint, it was a complete betrayal, tossing out months of work for political convenience before the elections. But rather than go off and sulk, the reaction has been to plunge back into writing a massive bill detailing how the $1.047 trillion might be better distributed -- with more care than the CR allows.
No one seems discouraged that the same three men -- Obama, Boehner and Reid -- ultimately will decide whether the end product gets to the floor. Giving up is judged far worse.
"We're riding herd on it," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said of the drafting process under way. "I don't have an absolute deadline drop-dead date, but obviously, I'd like to get it done as soon as we can."
"We're making good progress, but we're not there yet, and I don't want to start selling something when I don't have a product yet," Rogers told POLITICO. "But I'm very anxious. No, I'm very interested in passing an omnibus bill to replace the CR."
"The agencies are really having difficulty budgeting, and we're wasting a lot of money in the process, particularly on defense," he added. "My ambition is to get an omnibus passed. I recognize it is not an emergency like the fiscal cliff is, and that's attracting all the attention. But if we can get a bill that is passable in both bodies, then we ought to do it."
With all eyes on the White House talks, the little-noticed negotiations illustrate an important dynamic in this lame-duck session. If and when the legislative trains move on a debt deal, there will be no time to dawdle.
"We're trying to get it done," said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who must handle the often difficult negotiations over funding the Environmental Protection Agency and Western lands programs under the Interior Department. "We want to be in a position where if they give us time on the floor, we are ready to go."
That lesson isn't lost on farm bill negotiators. And Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a former Agriculture Committee chairman and now the ranking Democrat, is pressing his colleagues to learn from the Appropriations example.
He is trying to educate his fellow Democrats on the need to restructure the food stamp program. And more than ever this year, Peterson is signaling openness to reducing taxpayers' share of subsidies for crop insurance.
"They need to get this off their plate," Peterson said of the pressure on Boehner and others in House GOP leadership. "The problem is there are no discussions going on."
"If they get a deal, they are telling me, 'You guys have to be ready because you are going to get about one hour to put this in,'" Peterson added. "We're running out of time we need to be working this out. We should sit down, so we're ready to go whatever happens."
Senate Moves to Defense Bill, Sort Of
Sara Sorcher, National Journal
November 14, 2012
The Senate took a babystep towards considering the defense authorization bill on Wednesday, but key lawmakers are aiming for the real work on the bill to begin after Thanksgiving.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., made the motion to proceed--asking for members to consent to bring up the legislation-- on Wednesday afternoon. Members have so far given speeches on topics largely unrelated to the legislation. The bill provides $525.8 billion to fund the Pentagon's general operations and $88.5 billion for the "overseas contingency operations" account that funds the war in Afghanistan.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., is hopeful that Republicans will allow the sweeping legislation that authorizes funding for the Defense Department next year to be called up.
"I hope--maybe I'm too optimistic--that at least on the defense bill we wouldn't see the threat of the filibuster defeating the motion to proceed to Defense," Levin told reporters.
Levin said he is aiming to reach agreement this week on a limited number of amendments for members to debate after Thanksgiving. "I'm hopeful that before this week ends, that we'll be able to get an agreement on proceeding, and that we could make our opening statements and be around maybe Friday morning to receive amendments that we could clear," Levin said. "There couldn't be a vote, probably, but we could deal with cleared amendments."
The House has already passed its version of the defense bill. If the Senate bill is delayed until December, Levin said the senators would probably be forced to work with the House on a bill that could pass both chambers. That course would be undesirable, he added, because the truncated process would not give every senator a chance to weigh in.
Sen. Paul filibusters defense bill
Ramsey Cox, The Hill
November 15, 2012
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is holding up a vote on the Defense Authorization Act until he gets a vote on his amendment affirming the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution and the indefinite detention of Americans.
Paul is seeking an agreement in principle to get a vote on his amendment when the Senate takes up the defense authorization bill that funds and sets the agenda for the U.S. military.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had said at the beginning of the week that he wished to move onto consideration of the Defense Authorization Act, S. 3254, before leaving for Thanksgiving break Thursday night.
"[Republicans] say they want to move to the defense authorization bill, so I said yesterday, fine, let's move to it," Reid said on the floor Thursday. "But my friends can't take 'yes' for an answer.
"[Democrats are] not the cause for why the defense authorization bill is not being brought to the floor."
Reid agreed to allow an open amendment process on the defense bill because he said Senate Armed Service Committee leaders, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), agreed to wade through and table all the non-germane amendments offered.
Paul's amendment would give American citizens being held by the military rights to a fair trial with a jury of peers and the right to confront the witnesses against him or her.
"A citizen of the United States who is captured or arrested in the United States and detained by the Armed Forces of the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense," the amendment states.
Reid said he hoped Republicans resolve the issue so the Senate can proceed to the Defense Authorization Act when it resumes work on Monday, Nov. 26.
Obama, Boehner launch second effort to reach grand fiscal deal
Alexander Bolton, The Hill
November 16, 2012
President Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and their staffs will be the principal negotiators in talks to avoid the "fiscal cliff."
As the talks begin formally at the White House Friday, lawmakers and special interest groups are scrambling to figure out who else will be in the room and how to influence the outcome.
Obama will host Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) at 10:15 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room. Senior congressional aides, however, describe it as more of a photo op than a substantive bargaining session.
Informal talks are already under way, behind the scenes, between White House officials and congressional staff, according to a senior Senate aide. Obama has also called the Democratic leaders of the Senate and House to organize strategy.
A senior House Democratic aide said Obama and Pelosi have spoken three times since the election.
A senior House Republican aide, however, said Obama's staff has not begun any informal talks with Boehner's staff.
Congressional leadership aides say Obama and Boehner will pick up where they left off in the summer of 2011, when they almost sealed a deal to cut hundreds of billions from Medicare and Medicaid and raise nearly $800 billion in new tax revenues.
Obama and Boehner will lead the talks, but there will be more input from other congressional leaders this time compared to last year, when reports of the concessions Obama made to Boehner in private caught Democrats by surprise.
Reid confronted Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, in July of 2011 about why he had been kept in the dark about hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed cuts.
"I'm the Senate majority leader -- why don't I know about this deal," Reid demanded as soon as Lew walked into a meeting with Senate Democrats.
Congressional Democrats are pressing for more access to the talks.
"I think everybody operates under the assumption that Speaker Boehner will need Democratic help on any proposal to get it out of the House," said a Democratic aide. " I would think House Republicans would very much want House Democratic leadership at the table when any deal gets cut."
Senior congressional aides say there is no fixed negotiating group, such as a Gang of Six or a Committee of 12, as in past negotiations. The cast of participants will fluctuate as various players bid for their priorities. Yet the ultimate deciders will be Obama and Boehner.
Republicans think Obama will be able to bring his party along to support any deal he signs off on while Democrats say the House GOP conference, dominated by conservatives, will prove the biggest obstacle to passing a grand bargain through Congress.
"The only way we're going to solve this present crisis and get past the political stalemate is for the president himself to lead," McConnell said Thursday. "He's the only one who can lead the members of his own party to do something they wouldn't ordinarily do."
"I think Pelosi and Reid will go along with whatever the White House delivers. It's what Boehner can deliver" that will determine what gets through Congress, said a Republican senator.
Republican senators predict members of their conference will sign off on any deal Boehner can move through the House.
"We're going to have to get something that the president will sign and that the House will pass. And I think that [if] you get that, it will then ultimately have enough votes to pass in the Senate," Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said in an MSNBC interview.
Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) said McConnell would be Boehner's "wingman" in the talks.
Some Democrats worry about the prospect of letting Obama and his senior advisors hash out a deal with Boehner on their own. They remember the steep cuts he reportedly agreed to in 2011 and the deal he struck with McConnell in December of 2010 to extend virtually all the Bush-era tax rates.
House Democrats are demanding that Pelosi not be shut out of the talks, as she was in December of 2010, the last time the Bush tax cuts were due to expire.
"She's the Democratic leader of the House and I think she has to be at the table. Absolutely," said Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and a Pelosi ally. "I'd expect she'd want to be at the table. She better be."
Rep. Sander Levin (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means panel, said Pelosi's participation is "vital."
He said Democratic members of the Ways and Means panel would work closely with Pelosi.
Pelosi said in a statement Thursday that "House Democrats will act as partners in an effort to reach an agreement."
Senate sources see the active involvement of Pelosi and Reid as intended to keep Obama from drifting too far toward accepting Republican demands on cutting Medicare and other safety-net programs.
During the last round of talks with Boehner, Obama's representatives agreed to cut $250 billion from Medicare over the next decade and use a new formula to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security benefits, according to The New York Times.
Reid has insisted Social Security stay off the bargaining table.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Reid's deputy, told reporters Wednesday any deal to avoid the fiscal cliff must increase tax rates on families earning more than $250,000 annually.
Obama will press congressional leaders Friday not to let disagreements over taxing the wealthy or reforming safety-net programs imperil a deal to extend current tax rates for middle-income families.
"The president will also reiterate that he wants to work with leaders in both parties to achieve a significant, balanced deficit-reduction plan that puts our nation on a sustainable fiscal path," said a White House official.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, thinks Obama will drive a harder bargain with Republicans this December.
"I'm absolutely convinced that this time there will be a different end to this movie because the president has been absolutely clear that if we want to be serious about reducing the deficit, we've got to ask very wealthy people to contribute," he said during a recent C-SPAN "Newsmakers" interview.
Ex-Sen. Dorgan doesn't rule out Obama Energy secretary post
Ben Geman, The Hill
November 11, 2012
Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) is calling talk that he might be President Obama's second Energy secretary mere "speculation," but isn't denying the possibility either.
The three-term senator, who didn't seek reelection in 2010, is often mentioned as a potential nominee if current Secretary Steven Chu steps down, a departure that would surprise few.
"Speculation is a big business in Washington, D.C. If we could find a way to price it, somebody would get rich," Dorgan said in an interview broadcast Sunday on Platts Energy Week TV. "I am very interested in energy issues, but I have served in public service for a long, long time."
Asked if he's had discussions with the White House, Dorgan replied: "I just don't comment at all about the speculation even, because that just adds to the speculation."
Dorgan was deeply involved in energy while on Capitol Hill, serving on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and as chairman of the Appropriations Committee's Energy and Water panel. He served six House terms before arriving in the Senate.
His Senate relationships could help prevent a messy confirmation fight. But Dorgan has also taken positions that rankle parts of Obama's liberal base.
In Congress he pushed to pare back drilling limits in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and supports the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline; neither oil-and-gas leasing nor the pipeline decision are under Energy Department jurisdiction.
Dorgan remains active on energy policy. He's a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he helps lead the think tank's energy program, and is also a senior adviser with the firm Arent Fox LLP.
Elsewhere in the Platts interview, Dorgan predicts Obama will approve Keystone; touts support for fossil fuels and alternative energy; and expresses hope for bipartisan cooperation on energy, an area that has seen more conflict than collaboration in recent years.
Check out the whole interview here.
Will a Lame Duck Congress Confront Nuclear Waste?
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
November 12, 2012
When Congress returns to Washington on Tuesday, it has a very long "to do" list. One item, probably not near the top, is figuring out what to do with nuclear waste, given that President Obama killed a proposed repository in Nevada in March 2010. This summer, a blue-ribbon commission advised that the process of seeking a storage site be restarted.
There has been little action so far, but Congress may soon get a push from the courts: a federal appeals panel indicated in August that it might order the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart a licensing hearing to rule on whether the Nevada site, Yucca Mountain is suitable, even though President Obama has declared the site "off the table." The court gave the executive and legislative branches a few months to provide funding for the licensing hearing as part of the budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Still, Congress has not acted yet, and it is far from clear that it will. (There is no final budget either, speaking of "to do" items.)
The judges ruled in a suit brought by Aiken County, S.C., where the government's Savannah River Site stores bomb wastes; the state of South Carolina; and the state of Washington, home to the Hanford nuclear reservation, another bomb plant with waste that needs a permanent home. Also among the plaintiffs were three veteran Energy Department executives, including Robert L. Ferguson, a former deputy assistant secretary for nuclear programs.
A new book by Mr.. Ferguson, "The Cost of Deceit and Delay," takes a deep dive into some of the politics surrounding the repository, which is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. It focuses on a problem that the court may deal with next month: If Congress instructed the Energy Department to prepare an application for a license to build and operate a repository at Yucca, and told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to evaluate that application and decide whether to issue a license, can those two agencies simply decide not to?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it does not have nearly enough money on hand to conduct the licensing hearings, although it acknowledges that it hasn't spent quite all of what was appropriated. The Energy Department clearly lacks the money to pursue the license and in fact tried to withdraw its license application.
One reason there is no money is that Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is the Senate majority leader, has blocked new appropriations. And a former Reid aide, Gregory B. Jackzo, maneuvered to stop the licensing process while serving as the commission's chairman.
Complicating matters, a panel of three administrative law judges at the commission said the Energy Department could not withdraw its application, but the five-member commission itself deadlocked on the issue in the period when the commission was still led by Dr. Jaczko.
Mr. Ferguson calls the maneuvering to kill Yucca unethical, unlawful and "nonscientific." He accuses President Obama of having made a private promise to Senator Reid during the 2008 campaign to kill the project. This latter seems an odd point, because Mr. Obama made very public promises to shut down the project on his way to carrying the state of Nevada in 2008. There was nothing secret about it.
The book captures at least some aspects of the conflict between science and policy "Many of us who work in the field of nuclear energy had great hope that President Obama was a man of his word when he issued his "Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity,'' he writes. That memo was in reaction to decisions made by the Bush administration, many of them related to global warming and air pollution, that Mr. Obama argued were not scientifically justifiable.
Mr. Ferguson does not give Mr. Obama credit for being a man of his word for following through on his campaign promise to kill Yucca.
The scientific merit of the decision to kill Yucca is in fact an open question. Dr. Jaczko's replacement at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Alison Macfarlane, a geologist, has stated flatly that the Energy Department's analysis of the site's suitability is unconvincing. But she could be outvoted by the commission.
But the flip side, never quite addressed by Mr. Ferguson, is that there may have been no scientific basis for choosing the site in the first place; it was one of several under consideration by the Energy Department until Congress picked it as the front runner. Then President Obama unpicked it and Congress went along de facto by not funding Yucca.
Whatever the politics, the bills are mounting. The Energy Department required the utilities to sign contracts in the early 1980's committing themselves to pay one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour made in reactors into a nuclear waste fund; in return, the department promised to begin accepting waste in 1998, a date that is now of course long passed.
According to Mr. Ferguson, the utilities have filed damage claims of $6.4 billion, an amount that rises by $500 million a year. Initially the waste sat in steel casks adjacent to operating reactors, but as those reactors are retired, a trend that may accelerate soon, the spent fuel is orphaned and the companies must maintain a security force just to protect it.
Mr. Furguson argues that the Obama administration's decision to cancel the repository means that $15 billion has been wasted at the site. But in fact, given the technical and other challenges raised, it is not clear whether Yucca Mountain ever could have received final approval anyway.
A Rough Road from Swords to Ploughshares
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
November 19, 2012
For nearly 20 years, the Energy Department has been seeking to destroy plutonium recovered from surplus nuclear bombs by converting it to fuel for civilian reactors. Most of it would be destroyed by fission, and the remainder would be embedded in highly radioactive fission products.
Anti-proliferation groups are eager to see the plutonium destroyed as part of a Russian-American agreement because as long as it exists, it can be refashioned into nuclear bombs. But some of those groups oppose accomplishing that through use as fuel in civilian reactors because that would involve a form of commerce in which it could go astray, they say.
Now the Energy Department is building a factory to turn the plutonium from bombs, which is in metal form, into fuel for reactors in a ceramic form. Simultaneously, the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking for ways to relax the security rules on plutonium, which were drafted for the material in bomb form, not fuel form. But opponents are gearing up to fight its use as fuel, focusing on the way it will be transported.
Plutonium is a "special nuclear material," a government term for bomb fuel, and under Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules, if the quantity is large enough and it is defined as "category 1," it can be moved only in special trucks and with a variety of security precautions similar to those used for transporting a nuclear weapon. According to a document obtained from the commission by the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act, that is what the commission's staff is considering trying to change.
"The domestic commercial transport capability for Category I S.N.M. is not available," notes the document, dated September 2009.
The commission's staff writes that because the fuel plutonium is a ceramic, it is considerably less attractive to a would-be bomb maker than plutonium metal would be. (Assembling a critical mass, the minimum amount needed for a bomb, means squeezing a lot of plutonium into a small space. Its density is higher as a nearly-pure metal than when it is combined with oxygen and low-grade uranium in a ceramic.)
So the staff proposed taking a "material attractiveness approach.''
Fabricated into fuel assemblies for power reactors, the plutonium would be part of an assembly that weighs 500 to 600 kilograms (1,100 to 1,320 pounds), too much to pick up and run with, the staff said.
At present, if a shipment contains five kilograms (11 pounds) or more of highly enriched uranium, another bomb fuel, the rules do not differentiate between whether it is in a pure form or dispersed in a rail car filled with contaminated soil. So the staff has been issuing exemptions to certain rules. That makes the regulatory system less transparent and also more difficult to administer.
But Edwin Lyman, a physicist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that in contrast to making plutonium, which usually requires a reactor and then complicated chemical processing plants that can handle such highly radioactive material, purifying the plutonium from the form used in fuel requires only "relatively simple chemistry" -- namely mixed oxide, or MOx. An adversary could blow up a fuel assembly and cart off the pieces, he said.
"The managers of the U.S. MOx program, which was initiated as part of a bilateral effort with Russia to reduce the threat of unsecured plutonium in both countries, are once again undermining nuclear security by lobbying for a weakening of security measures because of their cost and inconvenience,'' Dr. Lyman wrote in a paper presented last year at a meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management.
It makes little sense to relax rules involving a potential bomb fuel at a time when concern about terrorism remains high, he said.
The commission voted to let the staff proceed with a rewrite of the rules. But it did not sound enthusiastic. One commissioner, William Magwood IV, said, "This subject has not yet matured to the stage where the commission should consider a change in current policy."
In any case, the Energy Department is having trouble recruiting a civilian reactor to use the fuel. Duke accepted some test assemblies for its Catawba nuclear plant in York County, S.C. It used them for about three yeas. But according to Rita Sipe, a spokeswoman, the company decided not to renew its contract with the Department of Energy, primarily because it could not be assured of a fuel supply.
The Energy Department often misses deadlines, and Duke wanted such assurances.
At the commission, David McIntyre, a spokesman, said the regulatory work on that front was a low priority. "The industry has given us no indication that they expect to begin using MOx in commercial reactors in the next year or two, so there is no urgency on this issue,'' he said.
'Bridge to Nowhere' lawmaker drops push against earmark ban
Molly K. Hooper, The Hill
November 15, 2012
An Alaskan Republican lawmaker famed for backing the "Bridge to Nowhere" withdrew a proposal Thursday to weaken the House GOP's earmark ban.
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) withdrew an amendment to House GOP rules under pressure from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who had made his opposition to the measure clear. The measure would have allowed an exception to the earmark ban if the recipient of the earmark was a unit of local government.
A source close to the Speaker told The Hill the Young amendment would have created "a gaping loophole" to the earmark ban.
"At the end of the day, he declined to offer it because of the clear opposition in the room," the source said. "Prior to Young pulling the amendment, the Speaker had let it be known that he opposed the amendment and would ask for its defeat if offered."
Boehner has been a longtime proponent of the earmark ban, having never requested any so-called "pork barrel" spending during his tenure in the House.
When the Republicans adopted the no-earmark moratorium two years ago, Boehner told his disgruntled colleagues, "earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington."
In 2005, Young directed $223 million in an earmark to fund a bridge in Alaska connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to Gravina Island. The bridge was dubbed the "Bridge to Nowhere" by critics of government spending who said few people would use the bridge.
Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Penn.), who is in line to become the next House Transportation Committee Chairman, said members stood up in Thursday's meeting to discuss the constitutional role that earmarks play in the government.
"We just have to figure out ... Is there a way to do it that's transparent and that falls in the Constitution, and we're not spending money on every small local project that, in the past, shouldn't have been spent on," Shuster said.
Earlier this year, a handful of GOP lawmakers began to make the case for the reinstatement of "directed spending" by Congress.
Rep. John Culberson (Texas) joined the critics of the earmark ban in May. The conservative lawmaker, who is chairman of a military construction Appropriations panel, complained that he wasn't able to expedite the expansion of a governmental military facility in Ohio due to the earmark moratorium. The expansion of the lab is now slated for 2016.
"In light of new security threats to our country and our allies, expansion of [the Foreign Materials Exploitation Lab] is desperately needed now. And because of the earmark ban, I can't move it ... it's just nuts," Culberson told The Hill at the time.
Culberson's comments came on the heels of a separate conference-wide discussion on lifting the earmark ban. Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers (R) garnered a round of applause at that meeting when he told GOP leaders that the rank-and-file wanted a reinstatement of earmarks.
But the GOP has struggled to come up with a transparent system for earmarks that would prevent corruption.
Earmark scandals played a role in the Republican Party's loss of the House in 2006, when then-Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) was accused of accepting bribes in exchange for securing millions of dollars in earmarks for defense contractors.
Cunningham pleaded gulity to bribery charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
SRS nuclear waste processing sets record in 2012
Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle
November 14, 2012
A Savannah River Site facility that turns high-level nuclear waste into glass logs sealed in steel canisters set a production record this year.
The 275 canisters produced in fiscal 2012 at the Defense Waste Processing Facility represent the highest yearly number since the facility opened in March 1996, according to Savannah River Remediation, the site's liquid waste contractor.
The material, left over from Cold War nuclear weapons programs, is stored in 49 underground tanks at the site, two of which were closed in the past year.
The tanks contain sludge with a consistency similar to peanut butter and a caustic material that turns to salt. Although the salt material accounts for much of the volume, the peanut-butter-like sludge is the most radioactive and more dangerous.
That high-level material is "vitrified" in glass and sealed inside steel canisters. At the beginning of 2012, about 3,339 canisters were in storage at SRS, with an eventual goal of producing 7,557 canisters as the remaining waste is processed.
The completed canisters remain stored at SRS. The government's Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada was long considered a destination for that material, but the Obama administration canceled that project.
The salt solution from the waste tanks is sent to the site's saltstone production and disposal facility, which processed nearly 1.3 million gallons of decontaminated salt solution during 2012 and disposed of the waste on-site in concrete vaults.
Two more underground tanks are scheduled to close in 2013.
Inner-shell leak on Hanford tank may be up to 520 gallons
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
November 14, 2012
Up to 520 gallons of radioactive waste might have leaked from the inner shell of Hanford's Tank AY-102 sometime after January 2007, according to the first comprehensive report on the newly discovered leak.
The 444-page report released Tuesday by the Department of Energy details the myriad construction problems with the 42-year-old tank, which the report concluded likely led to corrosion of the tank at high temperatures.
"Tank AY-102 construction records detail a tank plagued by first-of-a-kind construction difficulties and trial-and-error repairs," the report said. The result was a tank that was not as robust as designed, it said.
However, because of construction and design improvements in the double-shell tanks built after Tank AY-102, other double-shell tanks likely don't have the same risk for leaks, the report concluded.
Tank AY-102 was the first of 28 double-shell tanks built at Hanford and the first discovered to have a leak from its inner shell. The waste is contained in the space between the inner and outer shells of the tank and has not escaped into the environment.
Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste left from past production of weapons plutonium and held in underground tanks. Waste is being pumped from 149 single-shell tanks, many of which have leaked waste into the soil in the past, into the newer double-shell tanks.
DOE's current tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, began working on the new leak assessment report after suspicious material was found in August between the shells of Tank AY-102.The report estimated that 190 to 520 gallons of waste leaked from the inner tank. However, a significant portion of the liquid evaporated, leaving about 20 to 50 gallons of drying waste, according to the report.
The tank has a capacity of more than 1 million gallons and holds about 850,000 gallons of waste, and the volume in the tank is monitored.
However, the tank is so large that 2,750 gallons would have to be lost for the level of the waste to drop 1 inch, said John Britton, Washington River Protection Solutions spokesman. In addition, atmospheric pressure changes the level of the waste, and about 75 gallons of water are added to the tank each day because the heat generated by the waste in the tank causes evaporation.
The leak is believed to have started sometime after January 2007, the report said. An inspection of the space between the shells in December 2006 and an ultrasonic inspection of the inner-shell walls in January 2007 found no evidence of leakage, the report said.
But in January 2007, liquid waste containing a significant concentration of potassium, which is found in only a few of Hanford's tanks, was pumped into the double-shell tank. One of the samples collected from leaked waste found on opposite sides of the tank had an unusually large concentration of potassium, the report said.
The construction problems started when the base of the outer shell was built with thin steel plates. Bulges were created when they were welded and when welds were redone, but the work was "eventually accepted so construction could proceed," the report said.
A layer of hard, insulating material was poured as a refractory over the steel bottom of the outer shell, but the 8-inch thick refractory cracked as the bulges moved, it said.
Welding the inner shell, which was on top of the refractory, also proved difficult, and 36 percent of welds were rejected upon inspection.
"Weld maps show welds being reworked as many as four times before passing radiography examination," the report said.
After welding was completed, the inner shell was heated up to relieve stresses and prevent welds from cracking. However, rainwater saturated the refractory and the tank bottom temperature could not be raised above 210 degrees Fahrenheit for two days while steam escaped from the water-soaked refractory, the report said.
After stress relief was completed, part of the refractory was found to be too damaged to be used. The outside 21 inches were excavated from beneath the inner shell and replaced with structural concrete. Pieces of Styrofoam were used to fill gaps in between the top of the refractory and the inner shell of the tank, the report said.
The tank began accepting waste in 1971 and likely began building up a thin layer of mildly corrosive sludge on its bottom when liquid waste was added between 1977 and 1984, the report said.
Then in 1998 and 1999, high-temperature sludge emptied from single-shell Tank C-106 was transferred into the double-shell tank.
"The sludge formed a blanket over the existing sludge and increased its temperature dramatically," the report said. "It is likely that the corrosion rate accelerated after the temperature increase.
"DOE had planned to stage high-level radioactive waste at 15 of the double-shell tanks that would serve as feeder tanks to the vitrification plant under construction to treat the waste for disposal. Tank AY-102 had been planned to be the initial tank used to feed waste to the plant during commissioning, but that will not happen now.
Construction proceeded more smoothly on the second double-shell tank built, Tank AY-101, which had a 10 percent rejection rate of bottom welds, compared to the 34 percent of Tank AY-102. In addition, design changes were implemented for future generations of the tanks, with the newest one built in 1986.Although the report speculated that Tank AY-102's problems may not be found in other tanks, DOE now is having Washington River Protection Solutions inspect six other of the earliest double-shell tanks to check for leaks.
The Hanford Advisory Board, concerned that double-shell tanks will need to hold waste for decades to come until all the tank waste can be treated, recommended earlier this month that DOE start work immediately to build new waste storage tanks.
DOE has said building one double-shell tank could cost about $100 million and building a group of six tanks could take five to seven years.
DOE takes the smart route regarding HAB's structure
The Bellingham Herald Editorial
November 14, 2012
Federal bureaucracies don't have a reputation for nimbleness. They're better known for correcting course with all the speed and agility of a glacier.
That's all the more reason to be impressed with the Department of Energy's decision not to impose term limits for the Hanford Advisory Board.
Just a few short weeks ago, DOE appeared to be locked onto another path despite serious flaws in its plan for the board.
DOE officials in Washington, D.C., were pushing for changes to the board structure, including term limits for some seats.
For HAB, it must have felt like dj vu. The Energy Department has tried to impose changes on the board on at least two other occasions.
The suspicion of some members -- which we shared -- was that some DOE officials were attempting to create a more compliant board.
The official reasoning was that the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which covers all DOE environmental management advisory boards, requires term limits.
But the Hanford Advisory Board has been around longer than the act, and its bylaws are exempt from the legislation.
The reference to a regulation that doesn't apply was hardly convincing. "No one can beat a Washington bureaucrat for putting policy above substance," we wrote when this latest attempt to muck around with HAB's makeup first surfaced.
We're happy to eat our words.
David Huizenga, senior adviser for DOE's Office of Environmental Management, recently wrote to HAB, explaining that instead of forcing changes, DOE will work with the Hanford Advisory Board's Executive Issues Committee to find mutually acceptable ways of addressing DOE's concerns.
That's clearly the best way to proceed. HAB was designed to provide an independent voice representing a diverse cross section of Northwest interests. Dictating significant procedural changes would have only weakened HAB's independence. Its 32 members include Native American tribes, civic groups, local governments, unions, universities, Hanford workers and the public-at-large -- a combination that guarantees that progress comes in fits and starts.
But the board also has proved to be remarkably effective in fulfilling its mandate to provide advice on Hanford cleanup from the public's perspective.
The Hanford Advisory Board "is very unique and DOE values HAB," Dana Bryson, the deputy designated federal officer for the board, told Herald reporter Annette Cary. "We need to assure HAB is maintained as a productive, functioning organization," he said.
That can't happen without HAB's active participation in defining any changes in the way it's structured. The heavy-handed route DOE started on would have ensured the opposite.
DOE's move to a cooperative course is commendable. Copyright 2012 . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ECA Board
Election Notice
ECA Executive Committee elections will be held on December 12, 2012.
If you would like to nominate someone or if you are interested in running for a position, please contact Bob Thompson (BThompson@ci.richland.wa.us), Amy Fitzgerald (AFitzgerald@cortn.org), or Pam Brown-Larsen (PBrown@ci.richland.wa.us).
Current ECA Board Nominations
Chair: Mayor Tom Beehan, Oak Ridge, TN
Vice Chair: Council Member Chuck Smith, Aiken County, SC
Secretary: Mayor Steve Young, Kennewick, WA
Treasurer: County Councilor Fran Berting, Los Alamos, NM |