ECA Update: March 1, 2013
Published: Fri, 03/01/13
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Congress gives up on averting sequester -- for now
John T. Bennett, Federal Times
March 1, 2013
John T. Bennett, Federal Times
March 1, 2013
Today marks the start of an $85 billion cut to the remainder of this fiscal year's discretionary spending.
The widely feared and maligned cuts to defense and domestic spending, known as sequestration, were essentially triggered Thursday when the Senate killed two bills aimed at relieving their blunt force, and the House adjourned for the week.
As cable news networks showed House members leaving the Capitol, senators milled near the upper chamber before voting down separate Republican- and Democratic-crafted bills.
"How can a member of Congress go on a military base and look a soldier in the eye after what we did today," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Armed Services Committee member, told reporters after the votes.
Several Republican and Democratic senators told reporters they hope to pass something either voiding some of the cuts or providing the Pentagon more flexibility to enact the cuts as part of a measure to extend government spending beyond March 27, when a stop-gap continuing resolution expires.
Asked Thursday what comes next, Senate Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, "There's going to be a meeting at the White House tomorrow," referring to a planned Friday meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders.
Asked if Congress can find a solution to the sequester cuts by March 27, Durbin said, "We can fix anything -- if we have the will."
Another grand bargain?
The sequester cuts will continue for a full decade -- totaling more than a trillion dollars split between domestic and defense programs -- if Congress fails to strike a long-term $1.2 trillion budget-cutting deal.
Durbin's GOP counterpart, Senate Minority Whip Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters he wants lawmakers to return to the idea of a "big deal," which would include other federal cuts, entitlement program reforms and other items.
But Cornyn and other GOP fiscal hawks remain opposed to raising any new federal revenues, which Democrats still insist be part of either a sequester-avoiding or big fiscal deal.
Asked about Cornyn's desired big deal, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, said, "Well, if we have some revenues in it, it's a great idea."
The Cornyn-Schumer split reflects months of gridlock between the two parties over revenues and major domestic entitlement program reforms.
With renewed talk of tying the scheduled sequestration cuts to a big fiscal deal that has been elusive for two years --- and with the federal debt ceiling expiring -- the Pentagon and U.S. defense sector are in many ways right back where they were in late December.
Shy of a small package that deals only with the sequestration cuts, the two parties must, to permanently void them, do what they have been unable to do since Obama took office and the GOP captured control of the House in 2010: broker a major deal on everything from defense spending to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security reform to closing corporate tax loopholes and other tax-code changes.
Republicans and Democrats said Thursday they have talked with members of the other party about cobbling together pieces of some package to undo the defense cuts.
"I've had a lot of other senators calling me today" since publicly stating he is open to raising revenue as part of a bigger deal, so long as it includes major entitlement reform, Graham said. Their message: "Let's rethink the big deal."
"We're not going to do revenue to fix sequestration," Graham said. "I'm willing to do $600 billion more in revenue if they're willing to do entitlement reform. ... The off ramp should be Republicans put revenue on the table to get the president close to the $1.2 trillion" in deficit-reduction measures mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act to void all the sequester cuts.
In return, Graham suggests Democrats agree to "structurally change Medicare," raising the Medicare-eligibility age, and provide other changes to domestic programs.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in an interview the lone way out of the sequestration dilemma is legislation crafted and supported by Democrats and Republicans.
"We're going to continue working for a bipartisan coalition that avoids the harmful effects of the possible cuts," the Senate Armed Services Committee member said. "We have to pull back the effects of sequestration, so we protect job creation, the economic recovery and our national security.
"But let me just say: It has to be a bipartisan solution," Blumenthal added.
But several GOP senators signaled Thursday that they would be open to discussing new revenue if that would help avoid more cuts to planned military spending. That list includes Senate Armed Services Committee members Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Graham.
"I think we should look at the big deal," Graham said as he headed in to vote. "And I'm willing to do some revenues."
"I'll do anything I can to see the sequester, as far as defense is concerned, is nullified," McCain said. "We're always glad to do a big deal. But the big thing right now is -- big deal or small deal or medium bill, whatever it is --- to stop what's happening to our military. So I have no preference."
First up on the floor was a GOP measure, which was defeated 62-38.
The GOP bill would have allowed the sequestration cuts to be triggered on Friday. But Obama would have been required, by March 15, to submit a plan on how the executive branch would have enacted the twin $500 billion cuts to planned defense and domestic spending over the next decade.
The GOP bill would have allowed Congress to place that plan on a fast track if neither chamber objects by March 22. That would have averted the March 27 deadline.
Any defense cuts in the president's plan would have had to mesh with the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which already has been signed into law by Obama.
Minutes later, a Democratic-crafted measure went down 51-49.
The Democratic measure, unveiled Feb. 14, would have mandated $55 billion in additional spending cuts and $54 billion in new tax revenue. It built on Obama's and congressional Democrats' preferred kind of package: a so-called "balanced approach" of cuts and revenues.
The Democratic bill would have split its mandated cuts between national defense accounts and non-defense accounts. It called on the Pentagon's annual budget to be slashed by $27.5 billion in the outyears, with an identical amount coming by terminating some agriculture subsidies. It would not have cut the DoD budget in 2013.
McCain said he believes lawmakers might be prompted to act after spending some time back in the home districts and states. As they hear from constituents, especially ones where the military and industrial base have a major presence, it could spur compromise, he said.
"I think the effects of it are going to be felt fairly soon, and that motivate us to revisit this," McCain said. "But now, I think it has to come from outside sources."
DOE: Budget cuts may slow nuclear waste cleanup
Matthew Daly, Associated Press
February 28, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cleanup of radioactive waste at nuclear sites across the country -- including one in Washington state where waste tanks may be leaking 1,000 gallons per year -- would be delayed under automatic spending cuts set to take effect Friday.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the cuts would delay work at the department's highest-risk sites, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., where six tanks are leaking radioactive waste left over from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
It was not clear Thursday whether cleanup of the leaking tanks would be affected by the spending cuts. Overall cleanup efforts at Hanford -- one of the nation's most contaminated sites -- would be curtailed, Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow said.
A report by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee said more than 1,000 mostly private workers at Hanford could be furloughed. Hanford and other Energy Department defense sites where radioactive waste is stored would be forced to suspend or delay cleanup activities and even shut down some facilities, the report said.
At Hanford, the retrieval of radioactive waste from leak-prone underground tanks would be delayed, the report said.
The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb. The site, along the Columbia River, holds at least 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste -- enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools. Many of the tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid already leaked there.
Other high-risk sites facing work delays are the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Idaho National Laboratory.
The Energy Department is facing an estimated $1.9 billion in spending cuts, including about $400 million for the Office of Environmental Management, which oversees the cleanup at Hanford and other former military sites.
The automatic cuts also would slice $900 million from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for maintaining and securing the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The agency's acting administrator said more than 5,000 private contractors and about 1,800 agency workers could be furloughed under the program cuts, which are scheduled to take effect Friday unless the White House and Congress can come to a budget agreement.
The spending cuts would affect all aspects of the agency's work, acting administrator Neile Miller told Congress this month. That includes "the safety and security of the (nuclear) stockpile, the facilities that maintain that stockpile, and the people and processes that provide the nuclear forces that provide us all with security," she said.
Specifically, the cuts could force furloughs of more than 600 mostly private workers at the Pantex plant in Texas, where excess nuclear weapons are dismantled, and 1,000 mostly contract workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where a break-in last year by three anti-nuclear protesters -- including an 82-year-old nun -- raised questions about the NNSA's oversight of private contractors. The agency announced in January that a new contractor has been hired to manage nuclear weapons facilities at the Tennessee and Texas sites.
Furloughs and 10 percent salary cuts also are likely at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. A memo to employees from lab director Parney Albright called the cuts "unfortunate," but said the furloughs and salary cuts would allow the lab "to maintain continuous business operations and, especially, safe operations in an environment of unpredictable staffing."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he hopes to have a draft nuclear waste management bill ready by the end of the current work period.
"I think we'll have a draft with respect to nuclear waste pretty shortly," the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman told reporters Wednesday.
Wyden said he was "encouraged" by a recent meeting between him and three other senators who are working on the bill.
"I call the nuclear waste issue one of those issues that feels like the longest running battle since the Trojan War, and I think it's time to get on with it," Wyden said.
But Wyden noted what the Senate is fleshing out might not be palatable to the House.
The Senate version is not likely to identify Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's long-term repository for nuclear waste, in part because it would not pass muster with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who opposes the Yucca site.
That would be a sticking point for House Republicans.
Republicans have criticized President Obama's decision to stop Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews of the Energy Department's application to use Yucca as a permanent repository.
House Republicans say Yucca must have a place in any nuclear waste bill. They contend doing otherwise would violate a 1982 law that explicitly names Yucca as the nation's permanent destination for storing nuclear waste.
Wyden said he is well aware of that condition.
"I know how strongly the House feels on this. We've heard that message loud and clear," Wyden said.
Still, the Oregon Democrat thought there might be a way around the Yucca issue.
He noted that a "preponderance of scientific opinion" has said the United States has and will produce enough spent nuclear fuel to need more than one permanent repository.
Wyden was likely referring to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, a panel Obama formed in 2009 to figure out how to handle the nation's stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel.
The ad hoc Senate committee working on nuclear waste legislation is using that commission's recommendations as the framework for its bill.
"No matter how you feel about Yucca Mountain, you're going to need more than one repository. Now maybe that provides an opportunity for some common ground," Wyden said.
OMB Expands Sequestration Guidance, Increasing Scrutiny of Expenses
Charles S. Clark, Government Executive
February 28, 2013
With just a day to go before the onset of sequestration, the Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday evening supplied federal agency heads with expanded guidance on how to begin implementing across-the-board spending cuts.
Unless Congress and the president achieve a new budget deal by Friday, wrote Controller Danny Werfel in a Feb. 27 memorandum, agencies must now execute $85 billion in cuts over seven months, which translates to about 9 percent for nondefense programs and 13 percent for defense programs. "These reductions will result in significant and harmful impacts to national security and domestic priorities," he said.
Detailed instructions addressed processes for planning, communication, adjustments to acquisition, protecting recipients of financial aid and "increased scrutiny of certain activities." That last category directs managers to employ "risk management strategies and internal controls" to scrutinize spending on hiring new personnel; issuing "discretionary monetary awards to employees, which should occur only if legally required until further notice;" and incurring obligations for new training, conferences, and travel (including agency-paid travel for non-agency personnel).
In light of reduced funding, Werfel wrote, managers should be "actively and continuously communicating with affected stakeholders -- including states, localities, tribal governments, federal contractors, federal grant recipients and federal employees."
Similarly, leaders "should identify the number of employees who will be furloughed, the length of expected furloughs, the timing of when furlough notices will be issued, and the manner in which furloughs will be administered. In some cases, agencies may not be able to ascertain all of this information prior to March 1," the memo said.
Agencies must allow employees' "exclusive representatives to have pre-decisional involvement in these matters to the fullest extent practicable and permitted under the law," Werfel said. If furloughs are in the offing, agencies have a duty to notify employees' exclusive representatives and, upon request, "bargain over any negotiable impact and implementation proposals the union may submit, unless the matter of furloughs is already covered by a collective bargaining agreement."
Agencies should "identify any major contracts that they plan to cancel, re-scope or delay as well as any grants that they plan to cancel, delay, or for which they plan to change the payment amount," the memo said.
"Agencies should only enter into new contracts or exercise options when they support high-priority initiatives or where failure to do so would expose the government to significantly greater costs in the future. Agencies may also consider de-scoping or terminating for convenience contracts that are no longer affordable within the funds available."
In light of sequestration, agencies "may also consider delaying awarding of new financial assistance obligations, reducing levels of continued funding, and renegotiating or reducing the current scope of assistance," the guidance said. "Agencies may be forced to reduce the level of assistance provided through formula funds or block grants."
Overall planning under sequestration, Werfel said, "must be guided by the principle of protecting the agency's mission to serve the public to the greatest extent practicable."
Murkowski on Obama's rumored energy nominee: 'That could work'
Ben Geman, The Hill
February 27, 2013
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Republican on the Senate's energy committee, is signaling that a leading contender to run the Energy Department may receive GOP support.
Asked about Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Ernest Moniz, Murkowski cautioned that she would need to look more into his background and credentials, but added that so far the rumored nomination has not prompted pushback.
"What I have heard is that he has not generated a negative reaction from either side," Murkowski said in the Capitol Tuesday afternoon.
"At this point in time I think he is a name that people are saying, 'hmmm, that could work,'" said Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will vet the nominee for Energy secretary.
Murkowski's careful statements, while issued with caveats, signal that Moniz may receive GOP support, or at least avoid the type of attacks absorbed by just-confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Moniz directs MIT's Energy Initiative and is already among the Obama administration's outside advisers. He served as undersecretary of Energy for several years during the Clinton administration.
Moniz, if nominated and confirmed, would replace outgoing Secretary Steven Chu.
Some environmentalists have criticized Moniz over his support for natural gas drilling and nuclear power, and the funding that his MIT energy program receives from major energy companies.
Rumored Energy pick stirring fears on left
Ben Geman, The Hill
February 22, 2013
President Obama's rumored choice for Energy secretary is giving heartburn to some in the environmental movement.
Ernest Moniz, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and familiar presence in Washington, has emerged as the front-runner to replace Steven Chu as Obama's energy chief.
That's not sitting well with green advocates, who say Moniz's support for natural gas is at odds with the risks of "fracking," the controversial drilling process, and the need for tough steps to address climate change.
"Moniz is a status quo pick at a time when we can't afford the status quo," said Tyson Slocum, who heads the energy program at Public Citizen.
Sources tracking the selection process say Obama is leaning strongly toward picking Moniz, who served as undersecretary of Energy in the Clinton administration and currently directs the MIT Energy Initiative.
The Cabinet decision arrives at time when environmentalists are putting intense pressure on the president to confront global warming. They held a major rally last weekend in Washington, D.C., urging Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline and take steps to reduce carbon emissions.
Moniz has argued that natural gas can play a major role in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and serve as a "bridge" to a low-carbon future, riling activists who believe that fracking creates risks to water supplies and other harms.
A major 2011 study the MIT energy program released said that environmental risks of developing gas from shale formations, which is achieved through fracking, are "challenging but manageable."
Bill Snape, the senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity, said he's concerned that Moniz's support for natural gas could bring a shift in focus away from the development of renewable electricity and smart-grid technologies.
"The concern I have with him is, he has the veneer of this MIT PhD scientist, that somehow he is going to be objective, and in reality he could very well be a political hack for the natural gas industry," Snape said.
The group Food & Water Watch has launched a petition urging Obama not to nominate Moniz.
"Moniz is a proponent of using natural gas as a 'bridge fuel' to renewable energy. But in reality, fracking for natural gas only prolongs our dependence on fossil fuels, while contributing to global climate change and polluting our scarce fresh water resources," the group said.
The tensions over Moniz's possible nomination reflect a broader conflict over natural gas and its impact on climate change.
Natural gas emits much less carbon than coal when burned for electricity, but some critics -- including Al Gore -- fear that the methane from production sites will negate that advantage, since it is a potent greenhouse gas.
A 2011 report by outside advisers to the Energy Department (DOE) said that negative view of gas is "not widely accepted," but noted that more data collection and analysis is needed on the fuel's climate footprint.
Moniz is also pro-nuclear, writing in 2011 that it would be a "mistake" to allow Japan's nuclear disaster to "cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits."
"As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, finding ways to generate power cleanly, affordably, and reliably is becoming an even more pressing imperative. Nuclear power is not a silver bullet, but it is a partial solution that has proved workable on a large scale," he wrote.
The U.S. branch of Greenpeace took shots at Moniz over Twitter when his name became prominent in reports about potential replacements for Chu.
On Feb. 8, the group urged Obama to fill his Cabinet with "real leaders" and not "fracking cheerleaders," and, citing Moniz's views on nuclear energy, asked Obama "what are you thinking?"
But the criticism of Moniz is hardly bubbling up from across the environmental movement.
A number of the largest, most politically connected groups, such as the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, have not expressed concerns about his selection.
And environmentalists can also find things to like in Moniz's background.
The 2011 MIT gas study says that for greenhouse gas reductions greater than 50 percent, which advocates say will eventually be needed to avoid the most dangerous climate change, displacing coal with natural gas won't always cut it.
"For more stringent CO2 emissions reductions, further de-carbonization of the energy sector will be required," he told a Senate committee in 2011, citing the need to move to renewables and other non-emitting sources of energy.
His research also supported putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions, which is the goal of many major climate proposals.
And on fracking, the MIT group's study backs mandatory disclosure of chemicals used in the process and minimizing environmental impacts through regulation.
But some environmentalists' views on fracking go well beyond calls for disclosure and oversight.
The Sierra Club, one the nation's biggest groups, offered a warning to the potential DOE nominee.
"Were Mr. Moniz to be appointed secretary of Energy, we would stress to him that an 'all of the above' energy policy only means 'more of the same,' and we urge him to leave dangerous nuclear energy and toxic fracking behind while focusing on safe, clean energy sources like wind and solar," said Melinda Pierce, the Sierra Club's legislative director.
It's unclear how much sway Moniz would exert over Obama's second-term climate and energy agenda.
While he may have Obama's ear, the DOE secrtary lacks formal jurisdiction over a number of major energy and climate topics that will confront the president in his second term.
It's the Interior Department that decides what federal lands and waters to make available for drilling and imposes some of the regulations, while the Environmental Protection Agency handles potential carbon rules for the nation's coal-fired power plants.
While Chu brought high-profile focus to green energy, a huge portion of the Energy Department's budget is devoted to securing and managing the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and cleaning up contamination at sites that produced nuclear materials.
But DOE also has a major role in supporting green technology development. And the department is weighing a series of controversial industry applications that together would greatly expand U.S. natural gas exports.
Greenpeace, in a statement Thursday, declined to again criticize Moniz directly, but fired several shots across the bow on energy exports and other topics.
"The Department of Energy will play a key role in determining if industry is allowed to undercut President Obama's climate commitments by exporting fossil fuels abroad," said Kyle Ash, Greenpeace's senior legislative representative. "Whoever leads DOE should ensure that investments in safe solutions like renewable energy and improved efficiency become central to DOE's mission."
Moniz's MIT Energy Initiative has attracted attention for its support from major energy companies such as BP, Shell, Chevron and others.
A spokeswoman for the MIT group said that as of late 2011, 74 percent of the Initiative's outside-funded research projects were about renewable energy, energy efficiency, carbon management and storage technologies, "innovation and investment," and other areas such nanotechnology, basic energy sciences and biotech.
Moniz would replace another physicist, the Nobel Prize-winning Chu, but if confirmed he would arrive with much more Washington, D.C., experience than his predecessor.
In addition to his work in the Clinton administration, Moniz remains a familiar face in Washington, testifying at a number of Capitol Hill hearings through the years.
Moniz is currently a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and served on the "blue ribbon" commission on nuclear waste policy that Obama created in 2010 and issued a final report a year ago.
Nuclear weapons arm of DOE warns of furloughs
Zack Colman, The Hill
February 28, 2013
Contractors and employees for an arm of the Energy Department (DOE) that manages the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile were informed Thursday that they could be furloughed in the coming days.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said the potential furloughs were a response to automatic, government-wide cuts set to take effect Friday. It said the furloughs would affect thousands of the agency's mostly contract workforce.
"While we are doing everything we can to protect our workforce and our critical mission, there remains the possibility that furloughs of both Federal and contractor personnel may be required as a result of factors beyond our control," NNSA Acting Administrator Neile Miller told employees Thursday in an internal memo.
Congress does not appear near a deal to offset the $85 billion of cuts, known as sequestration.
That means that while NNSA has worked on "cost cutting measures across the enterprise," Miller said it would still likely need to implement the furloughs.
"Be assured that to the extent possible I intend to minimize the impacts that budget cuts of the magnitude expected will have on our activities and employees. I will keep you apprised of the situation as we go forward," Miller said.
NNSA is responsible for safeguarding the nation's nuclear weapons and takes the federal lead for preventing nuclear weapons proliferation. With a requested fiscal 2013 budget of $11.5 billion, it accounts for the largest slice of DOE's requested $27.2 billion budget.
NNSA said it did not have a solid estimate for the number of furloughs, noting decisions made by contractor companies would influence that figure.
Employees would receive a 30-day notice of furloughs, giving Congress a little more time to avoid some of the sequester's more devastating effects.
DOE had already warned employees of possible furloughs. The Interior Department did the same earlier this week.
Republicans disagree with Democrats and President Obama on the solution for averting the cuts.
The GOP wants to rely entirely on spending cuts, while Democrats and the White House prefer using a mix of reductions and tax increases to replace the sequester.
No sequester furloughs for NRC staff
Ben Goad, The Hill
February 28, 2013
The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Congress Thursday that sequester cuts slated to take effect the following day would not take the commission's employees off the job.
Chairman Allison Macfarlane's remarks came during testimony ahead of a hearing before a pair of House Energy and Commerce subcommittees.
"We do not foresee any furloughs or layoffs," Macfarlane said under questioning.
Barring eleventh-hour action by Congress to stop them, government-wide spending cuts totaling $85 billion would hit at midnight Thursday night. Administration officials have warned the sequester cuts could trigger more than a million federal employee furloughs.
LANL Ready to Shelve Costly Facility Plan
Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire
February 22, 2013
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is proposing to shelve plans to build an expensive new plutonium research facility and instead permanently parcel out work to an array of smaller buildings, the institution's director said on Thursday.
"I'm concerned that in the current fiscal crisis, it may no longer be practical to plan and build very large-scale nuclear facilities," Charles McMillan, who heads the New Mexico research site, said at a three-day conference on nuclear deterrence in Arlington, Va. "A new path forward is needed."
A study team at Los Alamos has suggested scrapping plans to construct a $6 billion Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement plant in favor of replacing the nuclear facility's intended functions with a more attainable constellation of structures, he said.
The new approach would involve a combination of new construction -- albeit at a more modest price -- along with "repurposing" some existing sites, McMillan told the conference audience.
The future CMRR facility was to help ensure that new and existing nuclear-weapon cores would function in an atomic blast, if necessary, despite a decades-long moratorium on underground explosive testing.
Early last year, the Obama administration announced that it intended to save $1.8 billion over the next five years by delaying construction of the new CMRR nuclear lab for a half-decade. The site had been expected to be up and operating by 2024, but the budget move delayed those plans indefinitely.
Now it appears that temporary workarounds for meeting near-term plutonium "pit" research needs could be altered slightly to become a permanent alternative to designs for the ambitious complex.
"This means the new nuclear facility, as it was originally designed, is dead," Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Global Security Newswire after hearing the laboratory director's comments. "There may be a new building, but it won't be that big, expensive box."
"I challenged the team at Los Alamos to explore alternatives that would provide the capabilities that CMRR represented, but to do that in ways that would be simpler," McMillan said in prepared remarks. "Based on the work that they've done over the last year, I believe we should look at designing and building small, individual facilities to meet specific tasks for supporting the [nuclear weapons] stockpile."
The Los Alamos chief did not elaborate on timing or say how much his backup plan would cost. The Albuquerque Journal reported last August, though, that the alternative concept might require $800 million over the next 10 years.
The "Plan B" project could include converting a recently constructed CMRR radiological laboratory and office building into a site capable of nuclear research, at a cost of $186 million, according to Greg Mello of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group. That would effectively double the radiation facility's original construction price tag.
The Los Alamos proposal also would include a $120 million tunnel to link the repurposed building to the PF-4 site, where plutonium pits are produced, the New Mexico-based critic said in an August analysis.
In describing the substitute proposal in broad terms this week, McMillan said no final determination had yet been made on how to proceed.
"At some level, it's not for me to say whether CMRR as a design will ever happen. That's going to be a governmental decision," he said in response to an audience question. "What we have been working to do is to provide the government with options, to provide the capabilities that we have planned for CMRR at smaller facilities, as well as reusing existing facilities."
McMillan said the earlier plan for consolidating plutonium work at a single CMRR facility had seemed attractive, but research for the nuclear arsenal could be accomplished more quickly and affordably under the alternative outline.
Last year, hundreds of millions of dollars were cut out of nuclear infrastructure budgets and additional reductions are widely anticipated in the future. More draconian budget cuts could materialize as early as next week in the form of the budget sequester, which experts say would make big federal construction projects almost unthinkable.
Congressional Republicans in 2012 pushed back against the Obama plan to delay building the CMRR nuclear facility. The president early this year signed into law a fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill that demands the laboratory building be constructed and operating by the end of 2026.
Young speculated that political and fiscal realities will ultimately trump last month's law, and the provisions demanding CMRR construction will be reversed.
"Congress will, in the end, support this decision," he said. "The unified position of the administration and the labs, combined with budget pressures, make it almost inevitable."
This alternative became feasible mostly because of changes in policy for the nuclear weapons enterprise over the past year, McMillan said. For example, the existing CMRR radiological laboratory is now permitted to store 26 grams of fissile material, more than quadrupling its prior limitation at 6 grams.
"Those kinds of policy changes lead to different options," he said. "We're proposing a set of similar changes that could then lead to different ways to use space within existing facilities, as well as the smaller [new] facilities, to provide the capability."
The "interim strategy" devised by the nuclear complex for plutonium core analysis uses facilities not only at Los Alamos but "across the enterprise," to include buildings at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, McMillan noted. A more permanent approach would similarly "take advantage of the infrastructure that's already there," he said.
Wyden to ask for GAO examination of nuclear leaks in Washington state
Bernie Becker, The Hill
February 23, 2013
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chairman of the Senate Energy committee, has asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine recent nuclear waste leaks in Washington state.
Wyden has long had an interest in the contaminated Hanford nuclear reservation in southeast Washington, where six tanks are now said to be leaking.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, a Democrat, and Energy Department officials have stressed that neither the public nor the environment is currently at risk from the underground leaks.
But Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Wyden, told The Hill that the Oregon Democrat will ask the GAO to investigate how the Hanford tanks, which hold tens of millions of gallons of radioactive waste, are monitored and maintained.
The request was earlier reported by the Associated Press.
Wyden said earlier, after touring Hanford, that any replacement for outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu would need to commit to cleaning up the site.
The Energy Department spends about a third of its nuclear cleanup budget on Hanford, which is close to Washington's border with Oregon. Wyden and three colleagues are currently working on bipartisan nuclear waste legislation, and the Oregon Democrat has vowed to hold a hearing on Hanford as well.
"This should represent an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," Wyden said this week. "There are problems that have to be solved, and right now the Department of Energy cannot say what changes are needed, when they will be completed and what they will cost."
Environmental Document for Plutonium Fuel (MOX) Project at SRS Delayed Again
Thomas Clements, The Aiken Leader
February 26, 2013
Columbia, SC -- Issuance of the Department of Energy's Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on use of weapons-grade plutonium fuel (MOX) in commercial nuclear reactors has slipped another month. Given the increased scrutiny over massive cost increases and schedule delays with the MOX program, the slippage comes as no surprise. The SEIS is being prepared by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The February 15, 2013 monthly Department of Energy listing of dates of release of key environmental documents shows the issuance of the final SEIS is anticipated in mid-April 2013 and the "Record of Decision" in June 2013. Both of these dates have slipped a month since the January 2013 schedule and, given the turmoil in the MOX program and lingering legal questions about the status of the SEIS, further delay could be possible.
The DOE's Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance maintains the monthly updates on release of environmental documents.
In a February 6 webcast entitled "Nuclear Energy Policy and Small Modular Reactors," by Dan Stout of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Mr. Stout incorrectly characterized the Supplemental EIS process which DOE has undertaken. He said: "We're in the middle of our environmental reviews to make sure that it's safe for the public and going to be safe in our reactors and if we reach a decision that is OK and have a good contract with the Department of Energy we may be the first to start using MOX in the United States. The soonest that could happen is around 2018."
According to DOE's description in the draft SEIS, TVA is merely a "cooperating agency" in the development of the Supplemental EIS. TVA is thus not conducting its own independent analysis of MOX testing and use in the aging Sequoyah and Brows Ferry reactors. Without a thorough analysis of MOX use by TVA itself, as a lead agency in conducting the analysis, TVA cannot come to any conclusion to test or use MOX. DOE's superficial analysis of MOX use will not be a substitute for a TVA-prepared EIS. Any Final SEIS that DOE may be able to issue will not be a legal presentation of any TVA decision, or "preferred alternative," related to MOX.
Annual MOX Report not Delivered on February 15 as Required by Law
Meanwhile, it appears that the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has failed to meet the February 15 deadline for submitting an annual report on the MOX plant to the Congress. An annual report to be delivered by February 15 is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, SEC. 3182. DISPOSITION OF WEAPONS-USABLE PLUTONIUM AT SAVANNAH RIVER SITE.
Though NNSA claims in a February 5, 2013 response to a FOIA request for the 2012 MOX report that it could not be found by a search by the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (NA-20), it appears that the report was delivered by Secretary of Energy Chu in May 2012. The FOIA non-response has been formally appealed.
The totally inadequate 3-page plutonium "report" dated May 2012 is simply a few pages of cursory information designed not to provide useful information about the status of the MOX project. The "report" contains no cost information, underscoring NNSA's efforts to suppress information related to soaring costs.
But the "report" does admit cost challenges:
"However, there continue to be significant challenges in key areas, including identifying suppliers and subcontractors, with the ability and experience to fabricate and install equipment to the requirements of Nuclear Quality assurance (NAQ) 1 standard for the nuclear work, which has resulted in a lack of competition for work and higher than expected bids. The project is also encountering significantly greater than expected turnover of experienced personnel due to the expansion of the U.S. commercial nuclear industry. This year, the Department will formally evaluate the possible impacts that these cost challenges have on the schedule for construction and operations of the MOX facility, and will consider changing the performance baseline if necessary."
MOX Costs Soar but NNSA Sticks to Policy of Silence on Costs
The Government accountability Office (GAO) reported in a document entitled High Risk Series - An Update, released on February 14, 2013, that the cost of the MOX plant under construction at the DOE's Savannah River Site (SRS) had increased a whopping $2 billion in one step, to nearly $7 billion. The GAO report says that "...GAO is currently conducting work on NNSA's project to construct its Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site, to which NNSA recently added $2 billion to the project's cost estimate even as the facility nears completion." (page 219)
Even as the embarrassment and pressures grows on the MOX program, the NNSA remains mum about costs increases. Shaw AREVA MOX Services (SHAMS), which is designing and constructing the MOX plant at tax-payer expense, has also remained silent about MOX costs.
The DOE's "Project Dashboard" for January 2013 has not yet been updated for February and still lists a cost of the MOX plant at the fossilized figure of $4.857 billion and notes that the "Project is expected to breach its Performance Baseline cost, schedule, or scope."
On February 20, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) posted a blog entitled GAO Report Reveals $2 Billion Cost Jump for MOX, in which it is stated that the "MOX facility is just one more in a long history of NNSA projects that end up grossly over budget and behind schedule."
Cost to Finish MOX Plant Roof and Mothball Facility?
An inquiry has been sent to Peter Hanlon, Assistant Deputy Administrator for Fissile Materials Disposition (NA-26), about the NNSA's estimate for finishing the roof of the MOX plant but there has not yet been a response. An estimate of the amount of funds necessary to finish the roof of the MOX plant has been circulating in the public interest community, along with the funds necessary to mothball the facility and honor contracts.
Rumors persist that the MOX program is facing significant cuts when the DOE budget request is sent to congress in mid-March. The amount requested should equal what it would take to finish the roof and secure the MOX building and otherwise suspend the program.
In a November 27, 2012 presentation entitled "Fissile Materials Disposition Program Overview," Mr. Hanlon avoided mention of the soaring costs of the MOX project. On January 29, 2013, a parallel presentation -also called "Fissile Materials Disposition Program Overview" - was given to the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (SRS CAB) by Mr. Jeffrey Allison, former SRS site manager and now "Senior Program Adviser." That presentation also carefully avoided any mention of cost of the MOX program and did not address any back-up plan - "Plan B" - to dispose of surplus plutonium if MOX fails. Such a plan is urgently needed.
The bumbling strategy of avoiding any mention of skyrocketing MOX costs has risks that are now emerging as the lid is being blown off the cover-up of the huge cost increases to the MOX plant construction and life-cycle costs of the MOX program.
NRC License Board Sides with Intervenors Against MOX Plant Operating License
On Thursday, February 21, the Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) which is reviewing the challenge by intervenors to the issuance by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to MOX plant operating license issued a decision allowing the intervenors more time to submit filings before a May 21, 2013 hearing.
The ASLB's decision was scathing in its language about the tactics of Shaw AREVA MOX Services and stated that, when referring to a March 2012 hearing before the ASLB, that "Had we rendered a decision on these contentions immediately following the hearing, and had that decision gone against the Applicant and been upheld by the Commission, the license request would have been rejected. In that event, the Applicant would have been required to go through the lengthy delay of re-applying for its license had it wished to preserve the project." The issuance of an operating license for the MOX plant is far from certain.
To see the February 21 ASLB ruling in the license intervention proceeding, see "MOX Services" in list of ASLB proceedings at: http://adams.nrc.gov/ehd/ If that doesn't work, go to http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/adjudicatory.html and click on "Access the Electronic Hearing Docket" and then go to the MOX Services docket)
Plutonium Disposition Program Negative Proliferation Impact: Russian Pursuit of Plutonium Breeder Reactors
In a February 20 Huffington post article entitled MOX Fuel, Plutonium Proliferation and the Russians, the MOX boondoggle is reviewed as being damaging to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime as it has helped Russia construct the new BN800 breeder reactor, which would be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. That sodium-cooled reactor, which may have trouble starting due to technical problems, is a precursor to an even larger breeder sought by the Russians, the BN1200.
As of February 22, DOE has not responded to a list of key questions about the MOX program which were submitted by Representative Ed Markey in a letter dated January 14, 2013.
Big-Spending Politicians Choose More Debt Caused by MOX Program Excesses
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) have maintained their silence about addressing the tremendous cost overruns with the MOX program and seem to be choosing to stay the course with their big-spending, big-government ways. As sequestration looms and budget pressures grow, how long can the single-minded approach hold out to keep running up the debt via unconstrained spending on the misguided MOX program?
Time will tell if fiscal conservatives will step forward to constrain Graham and Wilson and others in the South Carolina congressional delegation - Representatives Clyburn, Mulvaney, Duncan, Gowdey and Rice - who are backing parochial, self-serving support of excessive federal spending for MOX construction project in their home state.
Stay tuned on March 1 to see if sequestration causes the MOX plant to be suspended and in mid-March to see how the MOX debacle fares in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget request. Rumors persist that a 75% cut is possible.
'Interim' nuclear fuel storage could bring more waste to SRS
Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle
February 28, 2013
A federal strategy to consolidate spent nuclear fuel from the nation's 104 commercial power reactors could send huge volumes of radioactive waste to Savannah River Site, according to a study released Thursday.
"Because of its proximity to most of the nation's reactors, access to ports, and its nuclear material processing history, Savannah River Site in South Carolina is considered by some to be a prime candidate for the interim storage and reprocessing of spent power reactor fuel," wrote Bob Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank.
The nation's spent fuel inventory - more than 75,000 tons - was to be buried in a repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain until the project was halted by the administration, whose Blue Ribbon Commission suggested "consolidated, interim storage" of the dangerous material until a solution can be found.
Alvarez, a former U.S. Department of Energy adviser, calculated such a facility at SRS would likely involve "hundreds to thousands of shipments of dry canisters" moved by rail or truck.
Citing spent nuclear fuel data from the Nuclear Energy Institute, a pilot storage facility there might store as much as 5,000 metric tons containing more than 1 billion curies of intermediate and long-lived radioactive wastes, the report said.
"This (is) more than twice the radioactivity currently contained in high-level wastes stored at the SRS site, which already has the single largest concentration of radioactivity of any DOE site," Alvarez wrote.
Though there is no official proposal to build an interim storage site at SRS, groups have acknowledged the site's potential, and the SRS Community Reuse Organization expects to release a study this month focusing on the site's potential role in disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Thursday's report was released by a citizens group, Don't Waste Aiken, formed to address concerns about bringing more radioactive waste to a site that already has more than its share.
"The people of Aiken are proud of our service to the country during the Cold War, but this does not mean we will consent to become the nation's nuclear waste dump," said Lisa Darden, a co-founder of the group. "All efforts should be made now to clean up the legacy of Cold War waste, not bring in and create a whole new generation of toxic waste."
Another concern aired in the study involves using SRS to reprocess spent fuel, which Alvarez contends would be dirty, dangerous and expensive.
A report in January by Energy Secretary Steven Chu stated that "the administration supports development of a pilot interim storage facility with an initial focus on accepting used nuclear fuel from shutdown reactor sites," with hopes of later finding a suitable "geologic repository."
A key difference between future and past disposal efforts, the report added, involves a greater reliance on community sentiment in areas vetted for nuclear waste storage or spent fuel disposal.
"In practical terms, this means encouraging communities to volunteer to be considered to host a nuclear waste management facility while also allowing for the waste management organization to approach communities that it believes can meet the siting requirements," Chu said, adding that such facilities would bring an economic benefit to those areas.
Nuclear Waste in the Age of Climate Change
Coral Davenport, National Journal
February 21, 2013
In the icy deadlock of the partisan Congress, there's a new thaw around an old problem: what to do with the nation's nuclear waste.
It's a worrisome question. For more than 50 years, the nation's nuclear-power plants, which produce about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, have been generating radioactive spent fuel--the toxic stuff left over after the power is produced. At 121 current and retired power plants in 39 states, nuclear waste continues to accumulate, a state of affairs that came under renewed scrutiny in 2011 when an earthquake struck Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant. The damage caused the plant's on-site stores of spent fuel to ignite in a radioactive inferno.
Scientists determined long ago that the best place to store nuclear waste was not on- site at power plants but underground in an earthquake-proof repository where it can be kept for millions of years. Congress decreed in a 1987 law where that repository should be: Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But Nevada lawmakers--who derided the law as the "Screw Nevada Act"--vowed to keep nuclear waste out of their home state. So, the project has stayed dormant, and President Obama has said that Yucca is "not an option" for a dump.
But new realities--including the specter of Fukushima, the fragile economy, a soaring deficit, and a renewed push for action on climate change--have revived interest in finding a solution to the nation's nuclear-waste problem. The effort is also getting a push from the emergence of a key senator, whose efforts illustrate dramatically how local politics can influence national policy.
Because Yucca Mountain is not on the table as long as Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, retains his post, experts have come up with another solution: creation of an interim storage site, a government-run "halfway house," where the waste could be moved from power plants and sit for up to a century awaiting construction of a final resting place.
The most likely location for such a spot is near Carlsbad, N.M., where the Energy Department already stores nuclear-weapons waste. But from 2001 to 2012, the Senate Energy Committee was chaired consecutively by two New Mexicans--Republican Pete Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman--who didn't relish that prospect. Now, both have retired from the Senate. And the committee's new chairman, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, has a very different take. For 16 years, his state was home to the Trojan nuclear-power station, a facility that was dogged by protests from the day it was built. Trojan is now retired, but the site remains home to 34 casks of buried nuclear waste, which Wyden and his constituents would love to see hauled out of Oregon.
"This is going to be a priority for me," Wyden told National Journal. "It's an issue where I think we can break through partisan gridlock."
Wyden is working with the Senate Energy Committee's ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, on a bill to create a "medium-term" nuclear-waste storage site. Joining them is another powerful bipartisan pair--California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, who cochair the spending committee that would oversee the project. As long as it doesn't name Yucca Mountain, their bill appears to have strong prospects on the Senate floor.
In the House, there's also a bipartisan push--particularly by those in the 39 states home to current or retired nuclear plants--to find a nuclear-waste solution. For now, House leaders say that a bill to create a nuclear halfway house must still name Yucca Mountain as the waste's final destination, dooming the measure's Senate prospects. "We cannot have a serious conversation about solving America's nuclear-waste problems without talking about Yucca Mountain," said House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.
Even if House Republicans do agree to strip Yucca Mountain from a bill, other challenges await: Any state hosting the facility will fear that it could become a de facto permanent dump. There will be fights about nuclear waste traveling across the country by train, truck, and barge.
Several forces are coming to a head to force a resolution. By law, the U.S. government was to have taken title of all the nation's nuclear waste in 1998, presumably at Yucca Mountain. For each year that power companies hold that waste on site, they sue the government; to date, Washington has paid $1.2 billion in liabilities. Without a government-run site for nuclear waste, some utilities estimate that the taxpayer costs could rise as high as $100 billion in the coming decades.
In addition, Peter Lyons, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for nuclear energy, sees a major shift in how states view nuclear waste. In today's economic environment, several have approached DOE to express interest in hosting a nuclear-waste facility. "There's a very different dynamic. Nevada had no choice. It was crammed down their throats. But a lot has happened since then," Lyons said. "Now, communities see that this is going to be a jobs engine."
Meanwhile, Obama's call for action on climate change could lead to new demand for nuclear power, which is the nation's cheapest and most widely available source of zero-carbon-pollution electricity. But the industry acknowledges that it's almost impossible to build nuclear plants until lawmakers find a solution for the waste.
"I think there is a change, a new openness to this as a solution," said economist Cliff Hamal, chief author of a federal report recommending the creation of an interim site. "California, Oregon, and other places that keep spent nuclear fuel are tired of having it. Centralizing this waste will lower the government's financial liability. The savings are substantial. And from a community's perspective, it will add well-paying jobs."
He added, "This is a real problem, and the numbers are adding up."
A Fresh Look at Nuclear Waste
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
February 28, 2013
The American program to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive wastes is at a standstill for a variety of reasons. First-of-a-kind efforts tend to be technologically difficult, but the real problems are not hardware issues, according to a new book, "Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste."
"The technical characteristics of nuclear waste make the disposal problem difficult, yet it is the human factors that have made it intractable,'' the authors, William M. and Rosemarie Alley, a husband-and-wife team, write.
Those include "unrealistic demands for earth-science predictions far into the future, eroding confidence in government and institutions, confusion about which 'experts' to trust, and the ever-present NIMS [not-in-my-state] and Nimby,'' they report.
Since the Obama administration killed a plan to build a repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, some supporters of nuclear power have fallen back on a rather simple view of the problem: if politics had not killed Yucca, it would be well on its way today towards operation.
The Alleys, however, take a more subtle approach. For the site to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they write, it had to be guaranteed that the repository would fully contain the radioactive material and not deliver a significant radioactive dose to anybody for "time periods beyond our wildest imagination'' -- even the next million years.
"It was still anyone's guess if Yucca Mountain would meet the stringent tests that would allow it to become a fully licensed and operating repository,'' they write.
The spread of nuclear waste is a little bit like the flow of hot wax down the side of a candle on the dinner table; the question is not so much whether it will drip as whether it will stop before damaging the tablecloth.
For Yucca, a volcanic structure, and other kinds of rock that have been investigated as potential storage sites, one big question is whether the waste will move fast enough, driven mostly by underground flows of water, to reach the human environment before it becomes harmless through the simple process of radioactive decay.
That depends heavily on chemical and mechanical interactions of the waste and the surrounding materials.
The Alleys provide something of a history of the sciences of geochemistry, nuclear physics and climate. Understanding the climate of past epochs is essential for a scientist who wants to predict whether a repository site will one day be covered by a new glacier, change from desert to tropical rain forest or undergo a variety of other transformations that seem plausible over tens of thousands of years.
They study of Yucca has moved science forward in a variety of fields, they write, but probably not enough to predict how the waste canisters, and then the wastes themselves, will behave through the eons.
In some ways, the Alleys suggest, American society is not well suited to solve this problem. Local officials may favor a repository (as was the case at Yucca), but state governments may not; lawmakers or the public may require a degree of certainty that science cannot in good conscience offer; and the public may be ill-equipped to think about complex technical problems.
"A large percentage of the public places little or no value on facts,'' they write. "Today's culture of infotainment, sound bites, fundamentalist religion, ideological extremism and rigidity, and the politics of fear and hate impairs reasoning and thoughtful debate.''
The debate is not helped by the popular media, which publishes theories that have not been through a full scientific review process, the Alleys argue. (They take particularly aim at this newspaper's coverage of hypotheses on Yucca's long-term safety as a repository.)
With Congress considering plans to restart the search for a burial site (assuming that if it can move past its tussles over the federal budget) "Too Hot to Touch" lays out some critical questions for the jostling parties to think about.
For example, how much certainty is required? How much risk can we can tolerate? How is the waste issue bound up in other challenges, like shifting to energy sources that generate fewer climate-changing emissions?
Post-Fukushima, Arguments for Nuclear Safety Bog Down
Eric Lipton and Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times
February 26, 2013
Alarms sounded and lights flashed as control panel dials at a nuclear power plant in upstate New York warned that the power for safety equipment was failing. The room went dark until the emergency lights kicked in. But there was no reason to worry on this frozen winter morning.
This was a simulation by Constellation Energy, the owner of the Nine Mile Point plant on Lake Ontario, for the benefit of two of the five members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was part of an intense lobbying campaign against a proposed rule that would require utilities to spend millions of dollars on safety equipment that could reduce the effects of an accident like the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan two years ago.
In this drill, the company tried to show it could handle emergencies without new devices and, of course, everything went according to plan.
Ever since the nuclear accident in Japan released radiation into the atmosphere, regulators in the United States have been studying whether to require filters, costing as much as $45 million, on the vents of each of the country's 31 boiling water reactors.
The filters, which have been recommended by the staff of the regulatory commission, are supposed to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere. They are required in Japan and much of Europe, but the American utilities say they are unnecessary and expensive.
The industry has held private meetings with commissioners and their staffs, organized a drill like the one this month at Nine Mile Point, and helped line up letters of support from dozens of members of Congress, many of whom received industry campaign contributions.
"We all desire an ideal solution, but it needs to be an integrated one," said Maria G. Korsnick, Constellation's chief nuclear officer. She said that a filter was not as helpful as water in the reactor building that would both cool the fuel and absorb radioactive contaminants.
Already, at least two commissioners have questioned the proposal, and industry officials predict that when the vote is taken in the coming weeks, the industry will prevail. But critics are hardly convinced that the industry's alternative is the safer.
Computer models, they said, may suggest that plant operators can prevent large radioactive releases without the filters, but real-life accidents come with unpredictable complications.
"You never know if it is going to run according to the script," said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear power expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The debate over the filters reflects a simmering tension that has been building inside the regulatory agency since the Fukushima accident in Japan. A tug of war among commissioners and between some commissioners and staff members has produced repeated votes that reject staff safety recommendations.
Animosities have welled up to the point that four of the five members complained to the White House in late 2011 about the "serious damage to the institution" caused by Gregory B. Jaczko, then the chairman of the commission. The members complained that Mr. Jaczko was cutting them out of the loop as he prepared plans for how the industry should respond to the disaster in Japan.
Mr. Jaczko, who has since resigned, fired back, telling the White House that, "unfortunately, all too often, when faced with tough policy calls, a majority of this current commission has taken an approach that is not as protective of public health and safety as I believe is necessary."
The White House shied away from the dispute, but accepted Mr. Jaczko's resignation.
Congress has since gotten involved. Over the last month, 55 lawmakers have signed letters, some pushed by industry lobbyists, that urge commissioners to reject the filters.
"It's not the time to be rash with hasty new rules," wrote Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees the industry, in a letter signed by six other senators. (Twelve senators -- 11 Democrats and an independent -- signed a letter supporting filtered vents.)
Representative John Barrow, Democrat of Georgia, in a letter signed by 25 other House Democrats, argued that the filtered vent "is not justified on a cost-benefit basis," a fact the commission staff acknowledges. The commission must "achieve the regulatory goal in the safest, most effective, and least costly manner," the letter said.
Many of these lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have received significant campaign contributions from the industry. For instance, Mr. Barrow's top contributor in the 2012 election was the Southern Company, a Georgia-based utility that is a major player in nuclear power. Some of the lawmakers also have nuclear reactors in their districts, a major source of tax revenue and jobs.
The appointment books for certain commission members, reviewed by The New York Times, show frequent meetings with the industry, including private sessions at the commission's headquarters. Nuclear industry opponents occasionally have had their own private meetings, but not nearly as often, the records show.
E-mails obtained by The Times also demonstrate the teamlike approach taken by the industry and the regulators in dealing with safety questions, as they have worked behind the scenes with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading trade association, to try to prevent a reaction against nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.
"It would be nice if the industry was even more proactive by having N.E.I. send us a letter that says something to the effect that in the wake of the Japanese disaster here is a list of all the things the commercial U.S. nuclear licensees are doing," wrote Brian Sheron, the head of nuclear regulatory research at the regulatory commission, in an e-mail to his colleagues, referring to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Mr. Sheron, in a statement, said he was prodding the industry, not trying to protect it, as he realizes the "industry never seems to want to aggressively get out in front of issues." Since the accident in Japan, American regulators have imposed several mandates on the industry but none are likely to cost the industry much money, industry officials said.
The filtered vent proposal, by far the most expensive, would be required only on boiling water reactors like Nine Mile Point, which are considered much more prone to leaking during an accident because they have unusually small primary containment chambers and pressure can build quickly.
But how well the filters work is unclear because the vents to which they would be attached have never been used successfully in an accident at a modern commercial reactor, experts said. The vents failed at Fukushima, which would have rendered filters moot. A panel of independent senior advisers to the commission opposes a strict requirement for filters.
The industry wants the regulatory commission to reject the rule mandating the filters, and instead allow a plant-by-plant evaluation in which filters would be required only if goals for radioactive emissions could not be met.
Industry officials said that filters were not as effective as having water in the containment chamber, which would reduce fuel damage and thus help keep the radioactive material in the fuel. Water also would absorb contaminants that escaped the fuel. That approach is what Constellation executives and the industry trade group showed off at Nine Mile Point.
One commissioner, William C. Ostendorff, a former captain of a nuclear-powered attack submarine, said in an interview that he found the Nine Mile presentation helpful. "I wouldn't use the phrase lobbying," he said. "I think there has been a high level of interest."
His comments -- as well as those from other N.R.C. members, including Kristine Svinicki, who has made her own visits to nuclear power plants -- gave weight to predictions by industry lobbyists that their argument will prevail.
"In order to feel that was needed," Ms. Svinicki said last year of the filtered vents, "I would have to have a fundamental lack of confidence in so many other measures" before the staff had recommended in favor of filtered vents. "I simply haven't been convinced of it."
Japan to rethink candidate sites for nuclear waste disposal
The Japan Times
February 26, 2013
The Environment Ministry said Monday that it will restart the process to select candidate final storage sites for radioactive waste from the triple-meltdown disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, because residents living near the current chosen locations are up in arms.
Last September, the ministry selected state-owned forests near the communities of Yaita, Tochigi Prefecture, and Takahagi, Ibaraki Prefecture, as candidate sites for final disposal facilities of radioactive waste, mainly that from fallout from the nuclear catastrophe in neighboring Fukushima Prefecture that was triggered by the March 11, 2011, megaquake-tsunami disaster.
But the two towns demanded those candidate sites be dropped, claiming the explanation provided last fall by the Democratic Party of Japan-led government that was in power at the time was insufficient.
This prompted the ministry to examine the correctness of its site selection process, and to start again from square one.
"There was a lack of communication between the ministry and local authorities on how we select candidate sites and share the results with them," Senior Vice Environment Minister Shinji Inoue told reporters.
The ministry, now under the Liberal Democratic Party-led administration that came to power after the December election, said it will pick new candidate sites through consultations with all municipal governments.
The ministry plans to set up a new forum for detailed discussions with both prefectural governors and municipal leaders to try to find radioactive waste-disposal sites, amid strong public opposition to having any such toxic substances stored anywhere near where people live or frequent.
The ministry will also form a panel of experts next month for the evaluation of safety at any sites that are chosen.
After visiting the Tochigi Prefectural Government and Yaita Municipal Government on Monday afternoon to explain its latest decision, Inoue will pay similar calls Tuesday and later in Ibaraki, as well as visit the prefectures of Miyagi, Gunma and Chiba, where final storage facilities for radioactive waste from the nuclear calamity are also planned to be built.
Inoue meanwhile indicated it will be difficult to achieve the government's target of securing sites for all planned final storage facilities by March 2015.
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