ECA Update: April 9, 2013
Published: Tue, 04/09/13
New Era for Energy Department Expected Under a Secretary Moniz
Coral Davenport, National Journal April 8, 2013 With stimulus funding for clean energy at an end, climate-change policy dead in Congress, and harsh budget cuts looming over all agencies thanks to the sequestration, the days of President Obama's vision of the Energy Department as a green juggernaut have probably come to an end.
But Ernest Moniz, who faces a Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday morning as Obama's choice to become the next Energy secretary, would be likely to steer the department into a new era, one in which climate change still plays a key role in guiding its mission but so, too, do policies connected to the nation's recent boom in oil and natural-gas development.
The MIT professor and former Energy undersecretary in the Clinton administration is also likely to renew the agency's traditional focus on nuclear energy, nuclear waste, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.
Before Obama took office, the Energy Department had been widely viewed as a backwater agency. But people close to Moniz say they expect him to revitalize the department's original mission while also taking on new issues involving global trade and commerce.
Like the man he would succeed, Nobel laureate Steven Chu, Moniz is a renowned physicist with serious research chops: He is director of the Energy Initiative at MIT, where he has been on the faculty since 1973. Unlike Chu, however, Moniz has a long record of supporting a broad portfolio of energy sources, including natural gas. He also has a strong background in nuclear issues, making him a better fit considering the agency's historic nuclear portfolio.
Also unlike Chu, Moniz is viewed as a pragmatic and politically savvy operator who knows his way around Washington.
"I think it will be a very different agency than it was in the first term," said Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution, who has worked with Moniz on energy policy for many years.
"Ernie knows climate change, but also unconventional oil and gas and coal and nuclear. He will push the president towards a more balanced policy. I think you'll see a focus on unconventional oil and gas and not as much on renewables."
Frank Verrastro, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "He'll be a more complete secretary of Energy. He brings different skills. He's focused on climate and clean energy, but he's aware of what's going on in the oil and gas space. It's an opportunity for the administration to gain back some energy-policy stake."
The nation's energy picture has changed profoundly since 2008, when Obama appointed Chu to lead the DOE. Since then, a boom in unconventional oil and gas development, thanks to breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," technology has led to a dramatic increase in domestic oil and gas supply. Obama has been particularly bullish on natural gas as a one-two punch for his climate-change and economic goals: The fuel has half the carbon emissions of coal, and the new glut of it has lowered U.S. manufacturing costs.
The fossil-fuel industry, which regularly railed against Chu, has already indicated its openness to Moniz.
"Moniz seems to be a pragmatist on the important energy issues facing our nation including natural-gas development," said John Krohn, a spokesman for Energy In Depth, which represents the gas-fracking industry in Washington. "When he arrives at DOE, he will join many senior-level Obama officials who have publicly stated that natural gas is an important fuel for our nation's environment and economic future."
Among the biggest policy decisions facing the Energy Department in the coming years will be the question of whether or not to grant permits for U.S. companies to begin exporting natural gas. Manufacturers fear that exporting the fuel will increase their prices, but foreign policy thinkers believe it could help increase U.S. muscle in Asia. Moniz is expected to be a key player in these decisions.
Nuclear-energy issues are also likely to get more attention under Moniz. While some environmentalists remain wary of nuclear energy, Moniz is among a group of thinkers who see nuclear power--which produces no carbon emissions--as a key piece of a future climate policy. While nuclear-waste issues were not a forte of Chu's, Moniz was part of the blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste that last year recommended building medium-term nuclear-waste storage facilities that could hold waste for up to a century.
"There will be more attention paid to nuclear waste and the nuclear stockpile," said John Deutch, a professor at MIT and former head of the CIA who held senior positions in the Energy and Defense departments during the Carter and Clinton administrations, and who has worked with Moniz on energy issues for more than 30 years.
"He will have a much broader agenda, and he will be asked to have a broader agenda by President Obama," Deutch said.
Sequester looms over storied energy labs Darius Dixon, Politico April 2, 2013 The Energy Department's sprawling network of national laboratories helped spawn the atomic bomb and survived the end of the Cold War -- and the labs have withstood calls for the federal government to downsize or merge them.
But now comes the sequester, which may force the department to do what lawmakers haven't: downsize this piece of the government despite the parochial politics that have kept the labs going.
The 17 national labs cost $10 billion a year and have a storied history -- think the Manhattan Project, lithium batteries and particle accelerators. But they've become an example of how bureaucratic inertia can thwart calls for streamlining government.
The labs also have a major presence in 14 states, meaning that nearly a third of the Senate has a national lab back home. They provide thousands of high-paying jobs, often in rural areas like Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Aiken, S.C. That provides a powerful reason for lawmakers to guard their home turf.
The sequester may burst that bubble.
"We've not had a comprehensive review of the role and mission of the national laboratories in a long, long time," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose home state doesn't contain any of the labs.
"The basic structure has been as it is for 50 years or more," he said.
DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman, one of the most outspoken advocates of streamlining the labs, warned in 2011 that their current setup "may be unsustainable in the current budget environment." He told a House Science Committee panel last month that it's time to get serious about "resizing" or consolidating them.
But the labs' champions in Congress are having none of that.
"The national labs are the last thing the DOE should be cutting," said Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), whose district includes the agency's Fermilab. Hultgren, who co-founded the House Science & National Labs Caucus a few months ago in part because of budget cuts, argued that other DOE programs ought to be cut before ever considering a lab.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a self-described fiscal conservative who came to Congress on the 2010 tea party wave, has become a vigorous defender of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which lies in his district.
"When you look at what our labs are doing -- whether it's at Oak Ridge or the other labs, in terms of research, in terms of what they're doing to partner with the private sector -- it's a very good system and a great return on the taxpayer's dollars," said Fleischmann, who made it onto the House Appropriations Committee this year.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), whose state hosts the Sandia and Los Alamos national labs, said any effort to close a lab through consolidation would be "a nonstarter."
"The issue of lab consolidation has been looked at many, many times, and there's a reason why it hasn't happened," Heinrich told POLITICO. "If you're intimately familiar with the different labs, whether it's Livermore, whether it's Sandia, whether it's Los Alamos, they have dramatically different strengths. You can't just eliminate one of them and expect the rest of the complex to work well."
The labs had their origin in the World War II atomic bomb project, which scattered nuclear facilities around the country in the name of secrecy, and that tradition continued through the Cold War. Over the decades, many of the labs became economic engines in formerly isolated regions like central Washington state and East Tennessee.
An agency advisory board considered streamlining proposals for the labs in the 1990s but sidestepped shuttering any labs.
DOE's current leadership hasn't proposed consolidating the network of labs as a strategy for carrying out the sequester or because of concerns over shrinking budgets. But that hasn't prevented plans to cancel a major X-ray research facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory or an expansion project originally slated for Oak Ridge.
President Barack Obama gave the labs a shout-out during a visit March 15 to the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, where he credited that lab with groundbreaking research on batteries for plug-in vehicles and lamented the cuts that the sequester will impose.
Obama cited a recent op-ed by the directors of the Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge laboratories, who warned that the cuts will mean at least a two-year halt in new research initiatives.
"I mean, essentially because of this sequester, we're looking at two years where we don't start new research," Obama said. "And at a time when every month you've got to replace your smartphone because something new has come up, imagine what that means when China and Germany and Japan are all continuing to plump up their basic research, and we're just sitting there doing nothing."
But Friedman, the DOE IG, said each lab spends an average of 30 percent to 45 percent of its budget on support costs like administration and overhead -- not research. Operating fewer labs could allow a higher percentage of the money to go to science, he said.
Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, agreed that the fiscal crunch warrants the possibility of shutting down one or more labs, and that science need not suffer.
"Closing a lab doesn't mean closing off that area of science," he said. "There may be a lab that's higher performing, and you can transfer some of the work to the high-performing lab and get more bang for your buck."
One former DOE insider thinks Ernest Moniz, Obama's nominee for energy secretary, could end up streamlining the labs while using the sequester as political cover.
"There are going to be some cuts, and I think smart guys like Ernie can say, 'Look, here's where we can cut and not damage our mission,'" said former George W. Bush-era Energy Undersecretary Bud Albright.
Moniz, a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is part of an academic community that depends on the labs for sophisticated science research, partnerships and federally funded facilities. Albright also highlighted Moniz's experience with the labs while overseeing them as a Clinton-era DOE undersecretary.
"Ernie Moniz is probably 'Nixon to China' here. He knows these labs inside and out, and he's a friend of the labs," Albright said. "He may be the guy who can look at it and say: 'We can make these cuts. We can make these changes and still fulfill our mission.'"
Friedman has made the controversial recommendation that DOE establish an independent commission to review the national labs, much the way the Pentagon set up its Base Realignment and Closure Commission to close hundreds of military bases.
Resistance to that kind of process is palpable on Capitol Hill. But at least one lab champion, Fleischmann, said he would welcome a comprehensive review, predicting that "the people of this country will realize what a great benefit they get for their tax dollars based on the overall performance of these labs."
Friedman also endorsed DOE's Quadrennial Technology Review, a 2011 report that tried to outline and set priorities for the agency's research, although it didn't tackle the lab network directly. That process was designed to be the first step toward an expanded, interagency Quadrennial Energy Review, which would realign DOE's mission in national energy policy and potentially shift or cut significant resources among the labs.
Undertaking that broader review would be one way to get at many of the streamlining and duplication issues at the labs, said Margot Anderson, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Energy Project.
On some level, the labs were designed to compete with one another, which leads to occasional duplication -- but perhaps not as much as the labs' critics think. A Government Accountability Office report last year said it "did not find clear evidence of duplication" across dozens of government battery research initiatives being partly done at the labs.
Young, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who focuses on nuclear weapons, pointed to the decades-old competition between Los Alamos and California's Lawrence Livermore as a place to start looking at duplication.
Highlighting a widely held belief that Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos are friends of convenience that are in fact archrivals, Young said the labs' directors would be likely to turn on each other if a serious review were to gain steam. The infighting wouldn't be much different from the jockeying among branches of the military to avoid budget cuts, he said.
"When it comes to [their] public face, they're always saying, 'We're both grossly important, we need to have both,'" Young said. Still, "If it came down to making their case, they'd make their case. There's no doubt that they would say, 'If you're going to pick one lab, pick us.'"
Of course, Albright noted, the directors would have another option: turning to their allies in Congress.
"You can't call them in and put shock collars on them [to keep] from going up to the Hill," he said.
Sen. Murray Keeps Hanford Nuclear Site Safe From Budget Cuts
Amy Harder, National Journal April 8, 2013 She may not attend Tuesday's confirmation hearing for Ernest Moniz, President Obama's nominee for Energy secretary, but you can bet Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., will make sure the department has all the money it needs to keep the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in her home state running safely.
That's not an easy task when the DOE, along with most other government agencies, is facing across-the-board sequester cuts and intense scrutiny over how Washington spends taxpayers' dollars. The positions Murray holds on the Senate Democratic leadership team and key committees empower her to ensure that funding for the nuclear-waste site--a whopping $2 billion a year--remains intact.
The Hanford site, which takes up nearly 600 square miles along the banks of the Columbia River in south-central Washington, produced plutonium for nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War, including the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. Today, the site holds 56 million of gallons of radioactive waste from those weapons in underground tanks fraught with problems, including leaks into surrounding soil. It's considered the most contaminated radioactive site in North America.
In addition to her role on the Democratic leadership team and her chairmanship of the Budget Committee, Murray is also the second-most senior Democrat on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees DOE's budget.
"Senator Murray has an important role in leadership, and she's got a key facility in her state and she sits on the key subcommittee. You add all these pieces together and she has a major role to play," said Dan Reicher, who worked on Hanford issues when he was chief of staff to President Clinton's first Energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary, in the 1990s.
From her perch atop the Budget Committee, Murray also made sure her party's first budget blueprint in four years included language supporting funding for nuclear-waste sites. She didn't mention the name Hanford, but the language included implied as much.
"The environmental effects have spread to the surrounding soil and groundwater, which must be remediated," the Democratic budget proposal states. The plan won't become law, but it has symbolic importance in the wake of its Senate passage last month, and it could be a sign of what Obama includes in his budget proposal due out Wednesday.
In addition to securing $2 billion in annual funding for Hanford, Murray was also instrumental in getting an additional $2 billion included in the $800 billion economic stimulus that Obama signed into law in February 2009.
The amount of money the government pours into Hanford every year is a sign of its importance. Hanford's $2 billion budget is just $300 million less than the entire FY 2013 budget proposal for DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
The government is trying to protect Hanford as much as possible from sequestration. About 9,000 people work at the site.
Oversight Hearing - Nuclear Waste Programs and Strategies
House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee To be held on April 11, 2013 An audio-only webcast will be available at the website. Witnesses
Panel 1: The Honorable Dr. Peter B. Lyons Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Department of Energy Mr. Michael Weber
Deputy Executive Director Operations for Materials, Waste, Research, State, Tribal, and Compliance Programs Nuclear Regulatory Commission Panel 2:
Mr. Frank Rusco Director of Natural Resources and Environment Energy and Science Government Accountability Office Ms. Susan Eisenhower
Former Member Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future Dr. Rodney C. Ewing
Chairman Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Agenda Is Stacked for Return of Congress; Obama Will Pile on More With His Budget Billy House, National Journal April 7, 2013 The prospects for renewed talks on a long-term deficit-reduction deal reach a pivotal point this week with the release Wednesday of President Obama's budget plan, which offers cuts to Social Security and Medicare in the hope of softening Republican opposition to tax hikes.
But even before his proposals have been officially unveiled, Obama is taking political heat from Democrats and liberal groups for compromising too much. And congressional Republican leaders must decide how to respond to Obama's bargaining, including a determination whether the spending cuts and other concessions offered by the president are, in fact, enough to give ground on their antitax positioning. Their initial responses have not been warm.
Lawmakers, returning from their two-week recess, will pore over details of what Obama proposes, seek to gauge constituent reaction, and hold hearings with administration officials. The real show, however, could come on Wednesday night, when Obama dines again with Senate Republicans, the second time in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, gun control, immigration reform, and confirmation hearings for several Obama administration nominees are other topics that will grab the spotlight this week in the House and Senate. Activities will include:
Chuck Hagel's return Thursday to Capitol Hill for the first time in his official capacity as secretary of Defense. He and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey will appear before the House Armed Services Committee. A Senate Environment Committee hearing on Thursday on the confirmation of Gina McCarthy as Obama's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. A Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Tuesday on confirmation of Ernest Moniz as the president's nominee for Energy secretary. A House Rules Committee meeting Wednesday to consider procedures for a floor vote on a bill to freeze the work of the National Labor Relations Board if it does not have a full quorum, a response by Republicans to complaints that Obama overstepped his bounds last year by appointing board members without Senate consent. In a reversal of the usual process, in which the president's budget arrives first, the GOP-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate have already passed vastly different budgets this year. Obama's spending plan for fiscal 2014 is arriving late, thanks to protracted battles over the fiscal cliff and sequestration, administration officials say.
Obama may be floating potential budget savings in Medicare and other entitlement programs in an effort to convince Republicans to renew talks over a larger bargain, one that goes beyond just the next fiscal year's finances.
Such a bargain would seek to end Washington's chronic budget impasses with a multiyear plan to shrink the deficit, while securing an agreement to raise the debt ceiling this summer and avoid defaulting on the nation's debt. Talks over such a deal came undone last year when the president insisted on higher taxes for the rich and corporations.
The president's Wednesday budget proposal will also include as much as $600 billion in new revenues or tax hikes, and a new formula for calculating inflation that would reduce cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits for some recipients, an idea referred to as "chained CPI."
Senate Democrats declined to take on entitlements in their budget, and already there are signs Obama may be alienating some in his party by doing so. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn., are among those already disappointed.
"Republicans have been trying to dismantle Social Security ever since President [Franklin] Roosevelt proposed it during the Great Depression. We should not try to bargain for their good will with policies that hurt our seniors, especially since they've been unwilling to reduce tax loopholes for millionaires and wealthy corporations by so much as a dime," they said in a joint statement.
For their part, House Republicans don't appear overly impressed, either. In fact, some are dismayed that the president's budget calls for additional revenue. "If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes," said Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in a statement.
BUDGET
Fiscal Fault Lines Both parties will have the chance to react to Obama's budget in public during a series of hearings in which Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Jeffrey Zients will testify about its contours.
Lew's scheduled appearance Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee is also expected to include questioning by committee members on the administration's efforts and plans regarding comprehensive tax reform.
DEFENSE
Hagel on the Hill Defense-watchers will be keen to know the details of Obama's budget request for the Pentagon when it is released Wednesday. Defense accounts, expected to total $526.6 billion without war costs, according to Bloomberg, are also expected to ignore sequestration. Budget drama is likely to unfold as the House Armed Services Committee hears from Hagel and Dempsey on Thursday. The spotlight will be on Hagel, because it will be his first time testifying on the Hill in his new role as Defense chief.
ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
Climate-Change Showdown Expect lots of fireworks at Thursday's Senate Environment Committee confirmation hearing for McCarthy, Obama's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The hearing will represent this year's first big climate-change showdown between congressional Republicans and the Obama administration. Over the next four years, EPA will be the epicenter of Obama's climate-change policies, as the agency prepares to issue a series of regulations to slash greenhouse-gas pollution from coal-fired power plants. At the hearing, expect Environment Committee ranking member David Vitter of Louisiana, along with fellow Republicans John Barrasso of Wyoming and James Inhofe of Oklahoma -- all of whom hail from major fossil-fuel-producing states -- to go hard after McCarthy about regulations that the GOP has labeled "job-killing."
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Obama's nominee for Energy secretary will go before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for his confirmation hearing. Although he's likely to face some grilling from Republicans, Moniz is ultimately expected to enjoy a fairly smooth passage to confirmation. While his predecessor, Steven Chu, became a target of Republican attacks due to his full-throated championing of climate-change regulations and clean-energy spending, Moniz has a record of supporting more traditional fuels, such as nuclear power and natural gas.
On Wednesday, House Republicans kick off their springtime energy-messaging agenda with a hearing on their bill to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. The GOP wants to bring the measure to the floor for a vote ahead of Memorial Day weekend -- the kickoff of the vacation driving season -- to channel unhappiness over high gas prices against Obama.
And when Obama unveils his budget request Wednesday, it's expected to include funding requests in line with his energy and climate priorities, including spending on clean-energy research and regulatory offices.
GUN CONTROL
Losing Battle The Senate is slated to begin debate on gun legislation this week, which could amount to an almost total loss on the part of gun-control advocates. The real question is how long it will take. Democrats are still hopeful to reach a compromise with Republicans on background checks. If they succeed, votes could be delayed a week to draft the bill.
Several tea-party GOP senators, led by Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, have said they will filibuster the legislation that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will put on the floor. The "base bill" already lacks an assault-weapons ban or a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips, which means that proponents will have to try to add those items as amendments. The base legislation includes an expansion of background checks for gun purchases, increased penalties on "straw purchasing" of guns, and $40 million for safety grants for schools.
The assault weapons ban doesn't have enough support to clear a majority in the Senate, let alone the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. A ban on high-capacity magazine clips also does not have enough votes. Gun-control advocates are hoping that the background-check expansion can clear the 60-vote threshold, but they would need to be willing to accept a compromise that eliminates paper records of the purchases, a concept that they generally find unacceptable.
The school-safety grants, and perhaps even the gun-trafficking piece, could, in theory, pass the Senate, but the two smaller gun provisions are linked to the background-check measure in such a way that uncoupling them could prove difficult. If Reid decides to use his authority to stop the filibuster under a new procedure brokered with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., earlier this year, each side will be limited to just two amendments. Democrats already want votes on the assault weapons ban and, separately, on high-capacity ammunition. That leaves no room for additional parsing of the various gun proposals on Democrats' end. If Reid decides not to stop the filibuster, the tea party will have a heyday dragging the floor debate out for weeks until Democrats cry "Uncle!"
HEALTH CARE
Painful Cuts All eyes will be on the president's budget, expected to include $400 billion in suggested cuts to the major health programs. Few of them will be big surprises, because last year's budget was so detailed and because the president has been pushing a $400 billion package as part of fiscal cliff and sequester talks. But there remain a few critical unknowns.
But the big health event this week will be Marilyn Tavenner's confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee. If she is confirmed, Tavenner will be the first Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator to be approved by Congress in seven years. Tavenner, a former hospital executive, has ruffled few feathers and appears to have bipartisan support -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., (who does not get a vote) has been loudly singing Tavenner's praises to his Senate colleagues.
But there's a reason why it's so tough to confirm an administrator: CMS has oversight of nearly all of the Affordable Care Act's implementation, as well as the massive Medicare and Medicaid programs. Expect her to get tough questions about the department's regulatory approach and its plans for health reform. Finance will also hold a hearing on the president's budget Thursday.
Also on Thursday: The House Ways and Means Committee will hold its own budget hearing, bringing Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to testify; the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on Obamacare insurance-market regulations; and the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Medicare's benefit design.
IMMIGRATION
Numbers Game The Senate "Gang of Eight" Republicans and Democrats are still putting the final touches on a draft immigration bill that will likely put off the publication that was slated for this week. The "gang" left town before the spring break without a final agreement because labor groups and business groups had yet to ink a final deal on a new work-visa program. Since then, both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have issued public olive branches to one another and to Congress on the program. The initial dispute over wage rates for foreign workers appears to be resolved, but the two sides are still haggling over the numbers. Labor wants to keep the new foreign-worker numbers low--under 100,000 generally and never above 200,000 per year even in an economic boom.
Business says that isn't nearly enough. Lawmakers are waiting for them to come together in the middle.
Other outstanding issues are waiting for the work-visa details to be hammered out, including contingencies for border security, how family-based visas will be treated, and how the legalization program for 11 million undocumented immigrants will work. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has promised immediate but thorough consideration of the legislation in committee once it's ready. That has angered some Republicans -- notably Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. -- who want to slow the process with extensive hearings and public vetting. Leahy has largely rejected those pleas, saying time is of the essence if the bill is to be passed this summer.
WHITE HOUSE
Guns and Numbers For Obama, this week is all about guns and numbers. On Monday, he travels to Hartford, Conn., to remind the nation of the December killings by a lone gunman of 20 school children and six adults. On Tuesday, his message will be stressed by Vice President Joe Biden at a White House event with law enforcement. On Wednesday, first lady Michelle Obama carries that message to Chicago. And on Thursday, Biden participates in a gun discussion on Morning Joe on MSNBC.
While his wife and vice president keep the focus on guns, the president turns on Wednesday to taxes, spending, and entitlements with the long-delayed release of his budget. Finally, on Thursday, Obama will posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Capt. Emil J. Kapaun, the Army chaplain who displayed great bravery in the face of withering enemy fire during the Korean War.
OMB Warns Agencies Not to Be Short-Sighted About Sequestration Charles S. Clark, Government Executive April 4, 2013 The White House on Thursday gave agencies newly detailed guidance on coping with uniform budget cuts under sequestration, elaborating on earlier memos to address opportunities to reprogram funds, honor the independence of inspectors general and determine whether employee bonuses in these lean times are legally necessary.
Controller Danny Werfel, in an April 4 memo to all agency heads, reiterated the Obama administration's plea to Congress to negotiate a new budget deal that would cancel the dreaded across-the-board cuts that took effect on March 1. "To minimize the negative impact of sequestration on core mission priorities," Werfel wrote, "agencies must consider the long-term mission, goals and operations of the agency and not just short-term needs. For example, agencies should avoid taking steps that would unduly compromise the ability to perform needed deferred maintenance on facilities, invest in critical operational functions and support, conduct program integrity and fraud mitigation activities, and pursue information technology or other infrastructure investments that are essential."
Agencies that enjoy carry-over balances or reserve funds should not "use these funds in a manner that would leave the agency vulnerable to future risks due to a potential lack of available funds in future years," he said, citing several recent memos from the Office of Management and Budget. He encouraged further consultation with the budget office.
Though agency heads have ultimate discretion on how the cuts of roughly 5 percent are applied, all "should be mindful of the independence of the Office of Inspector General and should consult with the IG on a pre-decisional basis on matters that may impact IG funding," the memo said. In cases where IG funds are not intermingled with other agency funds, the IG should be provided "full discretion."
Werfel strengthened a February directive discouraging cash bonuses for employees, saying "agencies should not issue such monetary awards from sequestered accounts unless agency counsel determines the awards are legally required." Examples of permissible awards include quality step increases; travel incentives recognizing employee savings during official travel; mission-critical foreign-language awards; incentives for recruitment, retention and relocation; student loan repayments and time-off awards. "While these items are permitted," the memo said, "in light of current budgetary constraints, they should be used only on a highly limited basis and in circumstances where they are necessary and critical to maintaining the agency's mission."
OMB directed managers to consult with employee organizations on the implications for collective bargaining agreements.
The Senior Executives Association took issue with OMB's characterization of which bonuses are legally required, and asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to issue an opinion on whether Senior Executive Service performance awards are mandated by law.
DOE cuts furlough time for 1,800 at Hanford Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald April 4, 2013 The Department of Energy is cutting the furlough time for about 1,800 Hanford workers from five weeks to one week, employees were told late Thursday afternoon.
The furloughs -- paid or unpaid leave -- were required to meet federal budget cuts, called sequestration.
However, the 235 mostly union workers who were laid off because of sequestration in March will not get their jobs back.
In addition, furloughs for Washington River Protection Solutions have not been reduced. About 900 of its workers still must take 2.5 to 6.5 weeks of leave to reduce Hanford spending.
Washington River Protection Solutions is under DOE's Hanford office, the Office of River Protection.
But the change of plans was good news for the employees of contractors planning furloughs under the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office -- CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. and Mission Support Alliance.
The DOE Richland Operations Office is moving about $5 million out of non-cleanup accounts to reduce the amount of money that must be saved by furloughs, said DOE spokesman Cameron Hardy. The money comes from a wide range of accounts, including janitorial, laundry, utilities and record management, he said.
However, detailed information was not available Thursday.
"I understand that the roughly $5-6 million needed to shorten these furloughs is coming from RL (Richland Operations Office) accounts that are not directly involved in cleanup activities," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., in a statement. "I've asked DOE for additional information about these accounts and for precise details about where the money is coming from."
Although surprised by the announcement, Hastings said he is hopeful it will provide a greater degree of certainty for workers facing potential furloughs and help cleanup progress.
The Richland Operations Office had an overall cut of $79 million to be made by the end of September. It is responsible for all work at the Hanford nuclear reservation except management of underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of radioactive waste and the vitrification plant being built to treat the waste. Those projects are the responsibility of the Office of River Protection, which is cutting $92 million.
The Richland Operations Office was required to come up with a sequestration plan early in March, but Congress did not extend a continuing resolution to set the DOE budget for the remainder of the fiscal year until March 27, Hardy said. A continuing resolution was needed because Congress did not pass a budget for the year.
The continuing resolution, as expected, continued spending for the Richland Operations Office at the same level as the first six months of the current fiscal year.
"The department maintained a conservative budget approach earlier in the year to better enable adequate funding for the balance of the year," CH2M Hill and Mission Support Alliance said in their message to employees. "Based on conservative allocation and the final funding for fiscal year 2013, we have been able to revise our furlough plan."
The one week of furlough should be adequate if workers also take the normal amount of vacation time this summer, the memo said.
For workers with enough vacation time, none of the leave will be without pay.
Only nonunion employees are being furloughed because of restrictions in collective bargaining agreements, and costs to employ union workers have been cut through layoffs. Subcontracted work also has been cut to reduce the DOE budget.CH2M Hill and Mission Support Alliance will continue to look for efficiencies, they said in their messages to employees.CH2M Hill is responsible for environmental cleanup of central Hanford and contaminated groundwater. Because of sequestration, some work will be slowed to remove glove boxes and other highly contaminated equipment from the Plutonium Finishing Plant and to prepare for the retrieval of radioactive sludge from the K West Basin. CH2M Hill also will delay drilling additional wells to pump contaminated water out of the ground for treatment.
While sequestration still will slow CH2M Hill projects, work that continues will not be delayed because engineering, safety, project controls and administration employees are no longer taking extended time off, Hardy said.
Mission Support Alliance provides support services, including utilities, training and information technology, across the Hanford nuclear reservation.
A third contractor under the Richland Operations Office, Washington Closure Hanford, was not planning furloughs. It is responsible for completing most cleanup along the Columbia River in 2015.Washington River Protection Solutions, where workers still must take up to 6.5 weeks of furlough, is responsible for the Hanford tank farms, where sequestration has slowed retrieval of waste from leak-prone underground tanks. In February, six tanks were discovered to be leaking radioactive waste.
Aiken Chamber estimates huge economic impact from SRS furloughs WDRE-TV Augusta April 4, 2013 AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW) -- The talk of Savannah River Site furloughs is now reality, and some downtown Aiken businesses are worried.
"What we've heard from our customers is that they may have to cut back a little bit. I think they're still going to shop, but they may not shop as much," said Danny Minolfo, manager of Lionel Smith, Ltd.
As 2,500 SRS workers are reduced from 40-hour to 32-hour workweeks, Minolfo, who sells fine men's clothes, is already planning inventory changes.
"Maybe bring in a little less," he said. "Maybe a bigger selection but, maybe, less of it."
J. David Jameson, president of the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter out to chamber members last week, which warned them on the furloughs' overall impact.
"A lot of time people hear, 'Oh, somebody's going to move from 40 hours to 32 hours. That's pretty bad.' But they don't think. That's 20 percent of that person's salary multiplied times 2,500 people, and it begins to add up," he told News 12.
Jameson is doing the math. He estimates the community will lose $15 million over the next two months. He says if there's no fix soon, thing could get even worse.
"Well, what I said to our members is that when SRS has a cold, the surrounding community's have pneumonia, and I believe that to be true."
But what's the problem?
For one, Jameson says the site is facing a budget shortfall. On top of that, the sequester is bearing down, too.
"Headquarters has been asked for months to do the proper reprogramming to get the budget straightened out for Savannah River Site, and it has failed to act," Jameson said.
Now, Congressman Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has sent another letter to the Department of Energy asking for the same thing: a quick fix to the furloughs and shortfall.
"There are funds that can be, through reprogramming, shifted around," he told News 12.
Treatment Plant for Waste in Nuclear Cleanup Has Design Flaws, Panel Says Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times April 2, 2013 WASHINGTON -- A treatment plant that the Energy Department is counting on to stabilize the radioactive waste at the nation's largest environmental cleanup project, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, has design problems that could lead to chemical explosions, inadvertent nuclear reactions and mechanical breakdowns, a federal advisory panel warned on Tuesday.
The panel, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said the waste was also not safe where it was now, in leaking tanks that have long put dangerous pollutants into the soil a few miles from the Columbia River. In addition to the leaks, the board said, radioactive sludge and liquids in the tanks produce hydrogen that could burn and further disperse the waste.
The current problems are only the latest in the treatment plant's long and expensive history. The Energy Department signed an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State to start construction of the plant in 1989, paid for two sets of designs for such a plant in the 1990s and then did not build either one.
Construction on the project finally began in October 2001. Two years ago, the plant was expected to cost $12.2 billion, but the schedule, and the price, have grown since then. The Energy Department does not have a current estimate for the plant's cost and completion date.
For now, the agency has stopped work on some sections of the plant while it tries to figure out how to solve the problems.
The board described the difficulties in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. Mr. Wyden said in an interview on Tuesday that the board's experts had raised "a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all."
An Energy Department spokeswoman, Aoife McCarthy, said in a statement that the plant was "a highly complex facility with first-of-a-kind applications of many advanced technologies," and that the department was working with its contractor, Bechtel National, "on resolving the remaining technical issues."
But changes to address some issues have raised other potential problems. Engineers realized that they needed to mix the radioactive waste more thoroughly to break up concentrations of plutonium to ensure that there would be no chain reaction. But more thorough mixing raised the possibility of more erosion of the pipes.
The waste is a byproduct from nine nuclear reactors at the vast site that were used to produce plutonium, including for the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in World War II. The government has known for decades that the oldest tanks, made of a single layer of carbon steel, were leaking.
At the least, the board's report raises the question of whether reports of past progress at the site were illusory.
In 1991, Mr. Wyden, then a member of the House, was the author of a law requiring the Energy Department to pay closer attention to the hydrogen in the tanks. In 2001, the department gave him a plaque after 24 tanks were taken off the "watch list" because the hydrogen problem had supposedly been solved. But the board said in its report that "many of the double-shell tanks currently have enough flammable gas retained in the waste" that, if it is released in the tank's head space, it could create "a flammable atmosphere."
"Here we are again," said Mr. Wyden, who added that he planned to raise the issue next week when his committee holds a confirmation hearing for President Obama's nominee to be energy secretary, Ernest J. Moniz.
The treatment plant now under construction is to mix the radioactive waste with molten glass, which would turn it into a solid that could not spill and would be very difficult to break down, even over millenniums. The waste includes materials that give off hydrogen when they are bombarded with high levels of radiation.
The board noted that the Energy Department had decided that hydrogen explosions would be acceptable in some piping systems, but said it had not demonstrated that such explosions would not break open pipes or tanks.
Mr. Wyden expressed exasperation in the interview that the problems had surfaced when construction of the plant was nearly complete. "These are the questions that should have been resolved at the front end," he said.
The project also has issues, apparently still not resolved, about whether managers have sought to intimidate professional staff members who raised safety questions. In 2010, the board received a letter from a former engineering manager, Walter Tamosaitis, in which he alleged that he "was removed from the project because he identified technical issues that could affect safety." The board investigated and agreed that the site had "a flawed safety culture" that was "inhibiting the identification and resolution of technical and safety issues."
The board said in its letter to Mr. Wyden that since then the Energy Department had taken significant steps, but that "progress in changing any organizational culture is historically slow."
Budget cuts for MOX plant feared Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle April 4, 2013 The consortium building the mixed oxide fuel plant at Savannah River Site is bracing for possible budget cuts that could stall a project already facing criticism for cost overruns and delays.
"It's reasonable to say there would be a big impact," said Kelly Trice, the president of Shaw AREVA MOX Services. He said Thursday that it is possible the fiscal year 2014 federal budget could include cuts for the program.
The MOX plant, part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's nonproliferation effort, is designed to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium extracted from dismantled warheads. Blending the material with uranium to make reactor fuel renders the plutonium permanently unusable for weapons.
If the new budget, to be released next week, includes cuts severe enough to cause even a temporary halt to construction, it could disperse an experienced workforce that would be difficult to reassemble, Trice said.
About 2,300 workers are employed at the site.
"In the short term, we could deal with it, but if it's longer term, like multiple years, it's harder to predict," he said.
A 50 percent cut, he said, would allow the partly finished structure to remain intact and stable but would affect equipment and materials being made in many parts of the country. The effect on local jobs, he added, would depend on the impact on procurement.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy forecast that the plant's $4.9 billion cost would increase to $7.7 billion and that the start of operations would be delayed from October 2016 to November 2019.
Trice said that original estimate goes back to 2005 and has risen because of the challenges of building a nuclear facility in a nation where such construction has not occurred in decades.
"The U.S. had a lot of nuclear manufacturing dormancy," he said. "The cost of manufacturing high-level components is very challenging."
The project, he said, has an excellent safety record and has met strict oversight and quality control standards imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - but those have come at a cost.
"We've had to enhance oversight of vendors and suppliers to the point of embedding inspectors in their shops," he said, adding that there are more than 400 contracts under way for materials produced in 40 states.
The MOX plant is a one-of-a-kind facility that has undergone design refinements, along with increases in commodity and equipment prices. Also affecting price and schedule is the increasing cost of personnel, Trice said: Turnover in the nuclear industry has been accelerated by competition from nearby nuclear projects.
"All those complications have really challenged us, but we are able to work through them," Trice said.
Though critics have called for a halt to the MOX program, Trice said he believes it will survive.
"My gut feeling is good," he said. "My belief is that the administration is firmly on our side and they believe this is important. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried."
Trice had positive news about potential new clients interested in using MOX reactor fuel.
"There are several new players who want to participate in the program," he said. Low natural gas prices have pushed nuclear power producers to become more competitive, he said.
Critics continue to seek a halt to the project, citing the absence of reliable long-term "life-cycle cost" estimates that could become astronomical. Tom Clements, the Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, called the plant a "monument to mismanagement."
Spent Nuclear Fuel Management at the Savannah River Site DOE Federal Register Notice April 5, 2013 SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is amending its August 7, 2000, Record of Decision (ROD) pursuant to the Savannah River Site Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Final Environmental Impact Statement, Aiken, SC (DOE/EIS-0279, 2000; SRS SNF EIS). In the 2000 ROD, DOE decided to develop and demonstrate the ''melt and dilute'' technology to manage approximately 28.6 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM) of aluminum-clad SNF, consistent with its preferred alternative identified in the SRS SNF EIS.
DOE now amends that decision and will manage approximately 3.3 MTHM from the currently projected inventory of 22 MTHM at SRS using conventional processing 1 at the H-Canyon facility at SRS, as described and evaluated under the Conventional Processing Alternative in the SRS SNF EIS. The quantity of 3.3 MTHM is the minimum amount of SNF necessary to avoid the need for costly modifications to the L-Basin that would allow DOE to accommodate expected receipts of SNF for the foreseeable future. This includes up to 200 High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) cores generated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and approximately 1,000 bundles of aluminum-clad SNF currently stored at SRS, as well as target residue materials 2 containing enriched uranium (including target materials from Canada that contain liquid Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) of U.S. origin). DOE anticipates that processing this SNF and target residue material would begin as early as 2014 and continue approximately four years. As a result of this amended decision, HEU in the SNF and target materials will be downblended to low-enriched uranium (LEU). This end product will not be useable in nuclear weapons, but will be available for use in commercial power reactors such as those operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to generate electricity. DOE will continue to safely store the aluminum-clad SNF not addressed in this Amended ROD in L-Basin at SRS, pending future analysis and DOE decisions.
In accordance with DOE regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), DOE has prepared a Supplement Analysis (SA) to examine previous NEPA analyses of the management of SNF at SRS, particularly the SRS SNF EIS and the Proposed Nuclear Weapons Nonproliferation Policy Concerning Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0218, 1996, FRR EIS) tiered from the Programmatic Spent Nuclear Fuel Management and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Programs Final Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0203, 1995), to determine whether DOE's amended decision would make substantial changes in its proposed actions or whether there are significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns and bearing on the proposed action or its potential impacts. Based on the SA, DOE has determined that a supplemental or new EIS is not required.
The actions to be taken pursuant to this Amended ROD strongly support U.S. non-proliferation policy and goals by permanently dispositioning HEU. In particular, this amended decision implements the U.S. and Canadian agreement reached at the Nuclear Security Summit in March 2012 to expand efforts to return U.S.-origin HEU currently stored in Canada to the U.S. The commitment supports international efforts to consolidate and dispose of HEU and to combat nuclear terrorism. The actions addressed in this amended decision will free existing storage space in L-Basin, avoiding the need and cost required to provide additional new space in the Basin. This in turn will allow for continued receipt of Foreign Research Reactor SNF (FRR SNF), adequate storage for HFIR cores, continued operation of HFIR in support of DOE's research and development mission, dispositioning of HEU out of South Carolina, and cost-effective use of DOE's H-Canyon processing facility at SRS.
Aiken County receives DOE funds to offset potential losses Michael Ulmer, Aiken Standard April 3, 2013 Aiken County is now $1.6 million richer after County Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday to accept a payment in lieu of taxes from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The payment is a negotiated amount generated by the fact that Savannah River Site is partially located in Aiken County.
Aiken County Administrator Clay Killian explained that since SRS is located on federal property in the County, the Department of Energy is exempt from paying property taxes at the site. The agreement involves the Department of Energy because it owns SRS.
Technically, the Department of Energy doesn't have to award any contribution to the County, but Killian said such agreements are typically approved in order to allow local governments to offset losses in property tax revenue.
"The Department of Energy has historically contributed to the County, actually all three counties that the property is in, Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell, some amount of money based on a negotiated value of what people think the property was worth," Killian said.
The payment is agreed upon based on a certain percentage of the overall assessment value, he said.
"They actually don't get into discussions about how much the improvements are to the buildings or reactors or anything above ground. They just look at the land," he said.
SRS consists of about 300,000 total acres. Approximately 72,000 is located in Aiken County, Killian said.
Local governments can also approve agreements for fee-in-lieu of taxes, but those typically involve a county offering a lower property tax rate, an incentive to companies looking to locate their business in a particular county.
In other business, Council unanimously approved second reading of an ordinance rezoning property located off Toolebeck Road in Aiken from residential to rural horse-business district. The proposal, if approved on third reading, would rezone the property to establish an equine veterinary office and horse farm.
Council also unanimously agreed to formalize an agreement with Georgia Regents University to continue an internship partnership between the County and the university.
White House Advances Controversial Nuclear Incident Response Guide Douglas P. Guarino, Government Executive April 2, 2013 The White House has cleared the way for a controversial guide on responding to nuclear incidents that is expected to relax long-held cleanup standards, prompting watchdog groups to call for Senate scrutiny of the matter during hearings on Gina McCarthy's nomination to become the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
The White House Management and Budget Office completed its review of the Environmental Protection Agency's protective action guidance for radiological incidents on Friday, according to the OMB website. While the document is not yet public, it is widely expected to suggest cleanups do not have to comply with public health guidelines established during the 1980s by the EPA Superfund program.
One of the Obama administration's first actions upon taking office in January 2009 was to halt publication of a Bush-era draft of the document.
The earlier version suggested people could drink water contaminated with radiation levels thousands of times above what the Environmental Protection Agency would normally allow following an incident such as a radiological "dirty bomb" attack or a nuclear power plant accident. It also embraced a loosely defined approach to cleanup called "optimization," under which stakeholders would be permitted to develop unique remediation standards for a given incident rather than follow Superfund rules.
The Obama White House now backs optimization, according to a recently completed draft report sponsored by the Homeland Security Department. This has alarmed nuclear watchdogs, particularly since the report suggests optimization would permit annual radiation doses that could cause as many as one in about 20 people to develop cancer over a 30-year period. In a worst-case scenario, EPA rules do not typically allow a cancer risk greater than one in 10,000 during this time frame.
Given the findings of the DHS report, nuclear watchdogs say they expect the EPA guide will suggest that following its own Superfund rules is not necessary in all cases. A version of the EPA guide floated internally during President Obama's first term included such language, and activists say the findings of the DHS report show the White House approves such statements.
Activists would have preferred that the EPA guide continue to languish in a state of perpetual review, but now that it has been cleared by the White House they are pushing the Senate to scrutinize the issue when it considers Gina McCarthy's nomination to become the agency's next administrator. McCarthy, who as assistant administrator for air and radiation was responsible for overseeing revisions of the guide, is due to appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on April 11.
"The responsibility is shared between the EPA officials who did not stand up for strong environmental protection and the White House which has been eager to show its tilt toward industry when it comes to environmental protection," said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, which led some 60 public interest groups against the Bush-era version of the guide in 2008.
A spokeswoman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) did not respond to a request for comment. White House and EPA officials also did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Activists, meanwhile, are calling for the private National Council on Radiation Protection, which organized the drafting of the report on optimization on behalf of the Homeland Security Department, to extend its public comment period for the document. The present deadline is Thursday, but activists are asking that it be pushed back 60 days after learning of it from reports in Global Security Newswire.
"It has just come to our attention that this extensive and potentially highly influential NCRP document is available for public review and comment," 16 watchdog groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility, Friends of the Earth and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said in a Monday letter. "It is clearly intended to serve as an influential recommendation that will affect the regulations that protect the public from ionizing radiation. To our knowledge, the public and public interest groups have not been included in the development of this document despite many of us actively interacting for decades in the issues it covers."
Activists have previously raised concerns about the makeup of the panel that drafted the report. While the document discusses the Superfund cleanup approach extensively, no experts from the EPA office that works on the program directly were included on the panel. Instead, representatives of the agency's radiation and emergency management offices - which have routinely argued against the Superfund approach - were selected to participate as consultants or advisers.
The draft report argues that the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan demonstrated that abandoning normal EPA standards is necessary in some cases. The DHS report says the disaster contaminated an area the size of Connecticut and, it claims, showed that cleaning up as thoroughly as the U.S. government usually requires would not be possible.
Activists have challenged this argument, noting that many dirty bomb scenarios the DHS report and the pending EPA guide address would affect areas substantially smaller than those traditional Environmental Protection Agency standards have been applied to in the past. The normal EPA benchmarks have been used at hundreds of sites, including nuclear weapons facilities owned by the Energy Department, mining grounds stretching across hundreds of square miles and the urban areas affected by the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
A major concern of not only activists, but also some EPA and state government officials, is the precedent a federal document allowing for relaxed remediation standards in a wide range of radiological scenarios could set for routine cleanups. Private companies and government officials are already arguing against using the Superfund approach at several radiological sites, including the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California and an area of in central Florida where EPA officials fear some 40,000 people living on former phosphate mines may be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.
San Onofre's other problem William Alley and Rosemarie Alley, Los Angeles Times Op-Ed April 4, 2013 The beleaguered San Onofre nuclear power plant north of San Diego has been idle since January 2012 after the discovery of unsafe reactor conditions. The operator is now seeking approval to restart one of the plant's two reactors at 70% power for a five-month test. The plant's license expires in less than 10 years.
Overlooked in the concerns about the short-term future of San Onofre are the 1,400 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at the coastal site. Regardless of the immediate dilemma, San Onofre is destined to follow in the footsteps of nine former nuclear power plants (including two in California) whose reactors are long gone, but whose waste remains stranded on site. There's nowhere else to put it.
This problem will only worsen. The fleet of aging U.S. nuclear reactors means that as many as 40 more reactors could be shut down in the next 15 years. Something needs to be done about the dangerous radioactive byproducts that will be left behind.
Meanwhile, the United States nuclear waste program is in shambles.
In 2010, after almost three decades of work and more than $15 billion spent, President Obama unilaterally shut down the proposed underground repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. That repository would have provided long-term disposal, as well as possible retrievability of the waste in the event that a safe and economical reprocessing technology became available.
Obama's action set off a firestorm of bipartisan protests in Congress. In a standoff with the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claims lack of funds to review the Yucca Mountain license application.
Even if a repository were approved tomorrow, it would take decades to construct and to transfer the existing waste to the site.
Currently, about 75% of San Onofre's spent fuel is submerged in pools. As a result of the nuclear waste backlog, many U.S. pools contain five times the amount of fuel that they were designed to handle.
The dangers of pool storage came to worldwide attention during the 2011 disaster at Fukushima, Japan, which left operators unable to circulate water to cool the fuel or even monitor water levels in the pools. If spent fuel assemblies at a nuclear power plant are exposed to air and self-ignite, thousands of people within 50 miles of the facility could die from the radiation released, the NRC estimates.
Dry casks, which house the remaining 25% of San Onofre's spent fuel, are less vulnerable than pools to natural disasters or terrorist attacks. At Fukushima, the dry casks survived the disaster unscathed. But they are not a permanent solution. Dry casks have a 50-year design life; spent nuclear fuel remains dangerous over hundreds of thousands of years or more.
As a geologic repository for the waste continues to recede into the ever-distant future, the NRC has considered new rules that would allow onsite storage for up to three centuries. Three centuries ago George Washington was not yet born.
Since 1976, California has maintained a moratorium on building nuclear power plants until a method for permanent disposal of spent fuel is assured. With 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel now scattered among 75 sites in 33 states, this skepticism is well founded.
These numbers don't include the high-level waste from the nuclear weapons program. At Hanford, Wash., there's enough high-level waste to fill the tanker cars of a train 26 miles long. And to top it off, more than 30 tons of excess weapon-grade plutonium at half a dozen sites across the U.S. must be disposed of.
It's now more than half a century since the dawn of nuclear energy. As dangerous, long-lived nuclear waste piles up across the country, we continue to shift the burden to future generations.
Passing the problem on to others was not always the case. In the early years of nuclear energy, the United States committed to developing deep geologic repositories for isolation of long-lived radioactive wastes from humans and the environment. This commitment has waned over the years, leaving us with over-packed pools and stranded waste.
Regardless of one's stance on nuclear energy, it is clear that we need to take responsibility for the nuclear waste we have generated and commit to its safe disposition.
William Alley oversaw the U.S. Geological Survey studies of Yucca Mountain from 2002 to 2010. He and Rosemarie Alley are the authors of "Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste."
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