House spurns attempt to block Yucca Mountain funding

[FBaggins]

It’s become an annual tradition in the Republican-led House that every summer, members of the Nevada delegation lead their colleagues in a Yucca Mountain do-si-do.

The steps: First, the House Appropriations Committee dedicates money in the Department of Energy’s budget — usually about $25 million — to further the safety review of Yucca as a nuclear repository.

Next, one or more members of the Nevada delegation objects on the grounds of science, conscience, and finance, and present amendments to rewrite the Yucca sections of the bill.

Finally, the House votes against the Nevada delegation. Overwhelmingly.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/jul/09/house-spurns-attempt-block-yucca-mountain-funding/#axzz2YlPBLgNs

... and then Sen Reid blocks it despite bipartisan support in the Senate.

[enlightenment]

1. I love NIMBY's who complain

when the people who live in Nevada get uppity and block their efforts to send their nuclear crap to Yucca Mountain.

[wtmusic]

2. Interesting. You realize that all those pretty glowing lights on the Strip

are in effect Nevadans sending their nuclear crap to Arizona, right?

[enlightenment]

3. What a ridiculous statement.

Please explain yourself - because you sound pretty foolish at the moment.

[wtmusic]

7. I'll try.

"The state of Nevada does not have indigenous coal, oil, or natural gas to fuel conventional generators. As a result, Nevada must rely on the import of fuels and electrical energy to supply the electric load centers throughout the State. To support this, the existing transmission grid has been constructed to a large extent to import electric energy resources."

http://energy.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/energynvgov/content/NEAC_FinalRpt-Section4-StrategicTransmissionDiscussion.pdf

The transmission grid they're referring to is the Western Interconnection, which connects NV to the entire Western United States. Regional grids serve many purposes, but the most important are reliability of service and an open electricity market, which helps keep the cost down. Below is a map of the import/export paths for energy flowing into/out of Nevada:



Import path #49 consists of the sum of the flows on six various 500 kV & 345 kV lines. A contributor to power on #49 is Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest nuclear power plant in the U.S., with a capacity of 3,875 MW of baseload power. Any time NV taps into the Western Interconnection they use power generated by Palo Verde as well as any other western nuclear plants. In fact, Nevada uses more out-of state nuclear power than in-state renewable power:

The federal government has spent over $440 million subsidizing Nevada's "green economy," yet imported nuclear energy provides more power to Nevada customers than taxpayer-subsidized electricity generators such as solar, wind and biofuel.

According to recently updated data from NV Energy, since the stimulus passed in February 2009, imported nuclear energy generated over 328,000 megawatt hours of electricity for Northern and Southern Nevada customers, whereas solar, wind, and biofuel sources combined to produce less than 212,000 megawatt hours.

The biggest NIMBY offenders are Nevadans themselves, who have no qualms about forcing Californians and Arizonans to babysit the waste generated by their slot machines, but go on a tear should anyone suggest that the barren NV desert might be an ideal place to store everyone in the country's waste for awhile.

Nevada gets more energy from nuclear than from all heavily subsidized in-state renewables

[enlightenment]

9. You're comparing renewable energy sources to

nuclear imports. Renewables are not Nevada's primary power source - regrettable, but hardly a crime that should sentence them to storing the nations' high level nuclear waste.

If you do the math on that chart (btw) - a little addition and subtraction will tell you that we are exporting more energy than we import. Full stop.

Nice try, but you didn't even prove your own argument.

[wtmusic]

12. Well, I tried

but I knew it would go completely over your head (or you'd just evade the argument altogether, which is probably more accurate).

The fact that Nevada imports more nuclear power than its own renewable generation, including a significant contribution from Hoover Dam, is a useful one: it illustrates the pathetic contributions of wind and solar. But that's just icing on the cake.

I live in CA and have spent many months campaigning in Nevada; I've made enduring friendships there. What I've found is that thanks to the misinformed anti-Yucca movement, most Nevadans have no clue that the waste products generated by their nuclear electricity are being stored on-site at Palo Verde in Arizona, Diablo Canyon in California, and (until recently) San Onofre in California. They're storing their nuclear crap in our backyard. I'm not ignorant enough to think that poses a significant risk to anyone, but hey - if you're going to push the idea that the rest of the country is trying to screw Nevada, at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that's exactly what Nevadans are doing to neighboring states right now.

And in truth, on-site storage at any nuclear plant is far more dangerous and prone to proliferation than it would be at Yucca.

[enlightenment]

13. But that isn't what your argument says.

It didn't go over my head. I read what you said and it doesn't apply to the issue.

Illustrating the pathetic contribution of wind and solar is valid and I don't disagree with it. However, it does not apply to the issue at hand, which is the desire of the nation to store it's nuclear waste in Nevada.

You are singling out your state and suggesting that somehow Nevada is trying to hurt it by refusing to take it's nuclear waste. How about a compromise? Nevada will take only the amount of nuclear waste generated by the power that it imports from California. We'll do the same for Arizona.

How much of your nuclear waste would that account for, since you are so well-informed?

Would that be enough for you? Of course not. You have made your position clear - Nevada is a barren wasteland that should be used as the nuclear dumping ground for the rest of the country . . . and anyone who disagrees with your position is a misinformed "anti-Yucca" idiot.

Considering your position, I am surprised you would have the gall to suggest that I am lacking in intellectual honesty. You clearly don't have a clue what that phrase means.

[wtmusic]

14. You might be surprised at how much I'd compromise.

Quite seriously, I'd be wiling to store my household's nuclear waste on my property. Because my family's annual waste would, in volume, be about the size of a cigarette lighter - I could safely* store a millennium or two's worth in a shed in my backyard. That's if all of my electricity were generated from nuclear. If it was coal waste I'd have trouble storing even one year's worth.

Compared to most people on nuclear power I am well-informed, but that's not saying much. Knowing your own energy footprint from various modes of generation should be required if you want to have any meaningful kind of discussion. So you were wrong at trying to fill in my answer for me, and my position was not as clear as you thought it was.

*Back to this "safely" qualification - there is nothing harmful about above-ground, dry-cask storage. Standing next to it you will get the same radiation as everywhere else in the area. They are designed to be earthquake-proof (dry casks at Fukushima withstood the worst earthquake and tsunami in Japanese history literally without a scratch). However, if you take a diamond saw to a dry cask, or high explosives, you could probably manage to open it up. Once it's open you could drop its contents into a municipal water supply and create a lot of havoc.

The point is that it does not make sense to break up the waste responsibility into account-sized pieces and hand everyone their share. And a state-to-state perspective is arbitrary because everyone in each regional grid shares energy: while you're using our nuke energy, we're importing your hydro energy. CA should really help foot NV's bill for natural resource degradation, etc., but these import/export relationships are changing all the time.

The only thing that ultimately makes sense is a national repository, and despite all of the scare tactics it would have brought NV a thousand fulltime jobs and about $1 billion every year. It would have been safe - far safer than current on-site storage - and it would have been a boon to Nevada's economy that the whole nation would pay for. But we've gone too far down that road and lost too much money arguing about it. I think there's about a 50/50 chance that storage will move to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM. It's currently a storage facility for weapons waste, but the community is already the recipient of $600 million in federal funds, and the people of Carlsbad love their plant and the money that it brings in.

[enlightenment]

15. Last time I comment on this

because you can't even keep track of what you're saying from post to post.

To address your last point - I'm delighted for Carlsbad. They are entitled to make any kind of decision they want to make. The salt caverns there are part of the same salt deposits that make up the Deaf Smith County site in Texas - which was originally found to be the safest place for a nuclear repository, but was removed from contention by legislative objection from the Texas delegation (this led to the so-called "Screw Nevada" Act of 1987 - because Nevada didn't have the legislative clout to fight back in Congress).

[wtmusic]

16. Whatever

I'm sorry you feel the need to lash out with false accusations, but that's typical for the NV antinuke community.

Why bother screwing Nevada....they're more than happy to screw themselves.

[PamW]

17. Volume of spent fuel...

wtmusic states:
Quite seriously, I'd be wiling to store my household's nuclear waste on my property. Because my family's annual waste would, in volume, be about the size of a cigarette lighter

wtmusic,

If the USA reprocessed / recycled its spent nuclear fuel; then all the waste for a family of 4 for 20 years would fit in the volume of a shot glass or pill bottle.

That's about the size of your lighter. But that would be for a family of 4 for 20 years.

I wonder about this parochial nature of Nevada. They say they don't want the waste; but other states are hosting other item for the good of the USA.

Take North Dakota for example. North Dakota has missile silos with nuclear warheads in them. Nuclear warheads are WAY, WAY, WAY more of a risk than spent fuel. Although the USA makes / keeps our warheads safe - those thermonuclear warheads are designed to blow up.

The thermonuclear warheads that North Dakota hosts can do things that spent fuel could NEVER do, by the Laws of Physics.

Do we hear North Dakota WHINING like Nevada does because they have to have so many of those warheads?

NOPE - I've never heard a complaint from the good residents of North Dakota about hosting so many nuclear weapons.

How about New Mexico. There's a major nuclear weapons depot in New Mexico. No WHINING from New Mexico either.

Plus New Mexico has the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as wtmusic points out.

Are we really asking too much from Nevada? They enjoyed the money the USA spent there during the years of nuclear testing...

PamW

[wtmusic]

19. Gladly conceded.

I think the point is that even with the most pessimistic assumptions nuclear's environmental footprint is smaller, by orders of magnitude, than both fossil fuels (waste) and renewables (land use).

When I was campaigning for Kerry in 2004 and got a chance to discuss Yucca with residents, opposition was almost universally rooted in weapons testing - stores of relatives with cancers, respiratory illnesses, etc. Though anecdotal I believe most are true and people have legit reasons to assign blame. Coverups by the AEC didn't help, and left Nevadans with the feeling they were expendable guinea pigs which prevails today.

Though open-air tests and spent fuel storage have little in common, deceitful and reckless policies are the toxic waste which the industry itself needs to deal with if it ever expects to regain public trust in Nevada, Utah, and Washington.

[RobertEarl]

18. You could safely store nuke waste?

Last edited Sun Jul 14, 2013, 07:37 PM - Edit history (1)

What hubris!!

First, you couldn't touch it. You'd have to have a robot move it into your special container, and then make sure everybody knew it was there. Today and for 1,000 years. Which means for at least 950 years you would not have any control over the waste. You claim you can Safely contain nuke waste? Don't make us laugh.

Your lighter sized waste could kill thousands of people.

There are people smarter than you, thank the Gods, that are keeping people like you from getting anywhere close to the waste. Except for when the experts screw up, and like their 'safely stored' waste from Fukushima, goes out of control and spreads. They can hardly safely store nuke waste, what makes you think you can?

[kiva]

4. Good for Harry.

His primary responsibility is as a Senator from Nevada, and if he has the power to stop this more power to him.

[RobertEarl]

5. Is Yucca the best they can do?

After 50 years and billions of dollars spent, all the nuclear scientists can come up with is 'Bury It'.

Sure, they tried at Hanford to recycle nuclear waste and have failed, leaving leaking tanks that are too dangerous to even pump. And they developed some kind of new reactor that would use waste for boiling water, but that too never got off the drawing boards.

Seems the hot-shot nuclear scientists aren't so hot? They can boil water, heh, (who can't?) but they can't figure out what to do next. Maybe they just don't care?

[kiva]

6. I think they, along with the government,

from the Cold War forward, simply focus too much on what they see as present threats - either economic or military - and figure that the future will take care of itself.

[madokie]

8. Too many end timers in positions of power is my guess

Why bother with all this crap if Jesus is coming back any day now. Many people believe that

Not sure if I need the tag or not so just in case there it is

[RobertEarl]

11. Shortsighted explains a lot

How many of them pay attention to the environment? Seems only when the environmentalists make them pay attention, do they ever have a realization of the ultimate harm they are causing.

They, the nuke-ostitutes, use a small particle of specialized science to make money, all the while ignoring the great world problems their field creates.

Even when presented with the cold hard facts of radiation altering life, they just pretend it isn't happening. Maybe they are too radiated themselves to think clearly?

[PamW]

10. 100% WRONG and UNINFORMED, as per usual.

RobertEarl,

100% WRONG as always.

The hot-shot scientists SOLVED the nuclear waste problem LONG ago with spent fuel reprocessing.

See:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

The scientists have always wanted to reprocess / recycle the nuclear waste so that it is harmless in a relatively short time.

WRONG again about Hanford. There was NO RECYCLING done at Hanford. Hanford only EXTRACTED nuclear weapons fuel; because that was their mission. There was NO RECYCLING.

In the article above, Dr. Till describes an inherently safe, and proliferation resistant reactor that yielded short term waste. Contrary to "never got off the drawing boards", a prototype of the Integral Fast Reactor operated from the early '80s to the early '90s.

Contrary to your ill-founded, ill-considered, and uninformed opinion of nuclear scientists; it was the "so-called" environmentalists that got Congress to pass a ban on reprocessing in 1978, and Congress that limited spent fuel disposal to geologic repository in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and Congress that decided the repository would be Yucca Mountain in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987.

Why don't you do your homework before taking snide pot shots at people who are really very intelligent and bright?

PamW

[wtmusic]

20. Harry's primary responsibility is to get himself re-elected

and yes, that sometimes conflicts with his responsibilities to protect the health and welfare of the people he represents.

[kiva]

21. I would disagree with the word 'responsibility'

and substitute goal, but in this case all worked out well and he was indeed able to protect the health and welfare of his constituents, so a win-win.