Free Republic

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

Politics: The senator who called the president a liar and never apologized may have worn out his welcome in his home state. Harry Reid may be riding the liberal agenda into political oblivion.In 2004, Republicans defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle largely on the theme that he neglected his home state in favor of national party interests. The GOP is hoping that in 2010 lightning will strike a second time, and Nevada polls indicate it may be more than wishful thinking. In 1998, Reid beat John Ensign by a hair-thin 428 votes. Ensign would go on to win Nevada's other...

For more than 20 years, the government's plan to dispose of highly radioactive spent fuel piling up at U.S. nuclear power reactors has been to haul it to Yucca Mountain and entomb it in a maze of tunnels. But this year, more than a decade before the first shipment was ever expected to arrive at the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and years before a license could have been approved for the project, the Obama administration halted funding, saying the Nevada site was "not an option."

Cap-And-Trade: The administration likes to defend bad policies with analogies to the post office. New studies from a business group and the administration itself confirm that cap-and-trade belongs in the dead-letter bin.Along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Rep. Ed Markey likens the cost of the Waxman-Markey cap-and trade bill to "about a postage stamp a day," based on estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office and the EPA. But as we and others have shown, they arrive at this magical number in part by ignoring the hit on gross domestic product and employment that will occur. As Garret Vaughan, economist...

President Obama claims he wants to transform America's energy economy away from the fossil fuels that presently provide the lion's share of our energy. He talks about investing tens of billions of dollars for renewable energy technology research and development and to create a "smart" electricity grid. He pushes for a costly cap-and-trade system, while promising the creation of millions of new green jobs. All of this is designed to curb the greenhouse gas emissions he claims imperil the planet. So why does his administration show hostility to the one technology that can provide reliable, industrial-size amounts of energy while...

One can measure the dedication of the climate-change crowd in how they approach the zero-emissions technology of nuclear power. Some have realized that the only practical way to replace coal as a source for electricity is to invest heavily in nuclear power. Others, such as Harry Reid and his allies in the Senate, have done their best to shut the door on that path away from coal, which calls into question their motives in forcing cap-and-trade schemes onto the US. Investors Business Daily rips Reid and the administration for blocking the use of Yucca Mountain for safe fuel reprocessing, which...

Death Knell For Nuclear Power? August 03, 2009 Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid,...

Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental protection.Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid, who is up for re-election next year. "I...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else. "If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: Reid just irks Nevada GOP PAC raises more, but few dollars to defeat senator By MOLLY BALL LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL If anger were money, Sen. Harry Reid's opponents would be wealthy indeed. But it isn't, and they're not.Fundraising appeals sent out by a group that launched a supposedly major anti-Reid campaign last month reveal that the Our Country Deserves Better PAC is struggling financially. "Ouch folks, this is not too good" was the subject line on an e-mail sent Wednesday. It said only 75 people had chipped in less than $2,800 to the latest push for the "Defeat...

On ‘dead’ Yucca Mountain project, House subcommittee asks: If not there, where? The House lawmakers who appropriate money for energy needs were not pleased as Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared before them Wednesday. The legislators have approved spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Chu arrived to present the Energy Department’s annual budget request, which, it was widely known, had only minimal funds for the project. President Barack Obama is terminating the planned dump northwest of Las Vegas.

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. -- From the top of this brown, loaf-shaped ridge about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, there is little sign that this 5,000-foot desert outcropping remains a major battleground in U.S. energy and climate policy. Twenty-five years of government work and research has been sunk into the parched, sandy soil here, along with at least $9 billion of taxpayers' money spent to carry out Congress' 1987 law requiring that this be the final repository for the nation's nuclear wastes. The goal was to have it up and running in 1998. Eleven years after that, there is little...

Under the guise of cutting wasteful spending, President Obama is terminating support for the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. While not unexpected, this development means that there will be no place to store nuclear waste, probably for decades, other than at temporary storage locations at each of the nation's nuclear power plants. This termination decision was one among several contained in a document titled "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings" which were announced today by the White House to cut $17 Billion from the FY2010 budget. It seems disingenuous to suggest that canceling the Yucca Mountain project is going...

They try ‘use it or lose it’ approach to stalled project in Nevada. BY JAMES ROSEN WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, backed by 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, introduced legislation Thursday to provide “rebates” from a $30 billion fund to build the stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Nevada. Because South Carolina has more nuclear reactors than most states do, its residents have contributed a disproportionately large share — more than $1.2 billion — to the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund for developing the Yucca repository. Graham criticized President Barack Obama for his decision to mothball the Yucca project,...

In March Energy Secretary Seven Chu said he would shut down the nuclear waste strorage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, casting a pall over hopes for a resurgent nuclear power industry. The Yucca Mountain project came about from President Jimmy Carter’s decision not to permit reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in an effort to prevent nuclear proliferation. The alternative was a long term nuclear waste storage facility that eventually was sited and developed at

Arizona Republican John McCain said today that he will promote amendments to a Senate energy bill that would abandon the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear waste dump and refund about $16 billion in waste fees to electricity ratepayers.

Obama pulls the plug on the nuclear industry's last best hope. We've seen a lot of hyperbole lately about the significance of a presidency that's all of six weeks old. I hesitate to add to it. But the following statement happens to be the literal truth. The ramifications of the 2008 presidential election will be felt for 1 million years. One million years is a long time. A million years ago, Homo erectus (who looked like this, not this) was getting ready to invent the hand axe and discover fire. Yet 1 million years is the length of time that...

More than two decades after Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected to be the national nuclear waste repository, the controversial proposal may finally be put to rest by the Obama administration. In keeping with a pledge President Obama made during the campaign, the budget released last week cuts off almost all funding for creating a permanent burial site for a large portion of the nation's radioactive nuclear waste at the site in the Nevada desert. Congress selected the location in 1987 and reaffirmed the choice in 2002. About $7.7 billion has been sunk into the project since its inception. "Yucca...

President Obama won't allow radioactive waste to be buried at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the long-controversial project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion. Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu "have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period," said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The budget plan Obama released yesterday "clearly reflects that commitment," she said. "The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste," she said in an e-mail. The decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for...

Energy: While tilting at windmills, the administration deals nuclear power a blow by cutting funds for a spent- fuel repository in Nevada. What's wrong with clean domestic energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gases?During a campaign forum in Las Vegas last year, then-candidate Obama commented as follows on the site designed to safely store spent fuel from America's 104 operating commercial nuclear reactors: "I will end the notion of Yucca Mountain because it has not been based on the sort of sound science that can assure the people of Nevada that they're going to be safe." Now-President Obama has kept his...

President Barack Obama is taking the first step toward blocking a nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain by slashing money for the program in his first budget, according to congressional sources. Obama's budget to be announced Thursday will eliminate virtually all funding for the Yucca project with the exception of money needed for license applications submitted last year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The Yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear-waste disposal," the Energy Department will say as...

 Washington, DC—Nevada Senator Harry Reid delivered the following statement today at a hearing before the Commerce Committee regarding the safety and security dangers associated with the proposal to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.  Both Reid and fellow Nevada Senator John Ensign spoke about the Department of Energy's unpreparedness to begin a massive nuclear waste shipping campaign.  Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery: "I want to thank Chairman Inouye, Senator Hutchison, and the members of the Committee for scheduling this important hearing.  It has been a long time since the Senate has looked closely at plans...

WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced this morning it will conduct an in-depth review of the government plans for Yucca Mountain, another step forward for the controversial nuclear waste storage project. The decision by the nuclear safety agency to place a Department of Energy license application on its docket represents a milestone for the project over the objections of Nevada's elected leaders. The NRC concluded following an initial 90-day screening by its technical staff that an application that DOE filed on June 3 "is sufficiently complete" for the agency to move forward, according to its announcement. The move opens...

Federal regulators on Friday declined to reject an application to build a nuclear waste depository in the remote Nevada desert, a project that Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has vehemently fought. On Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to reject the application for the proposed Yucca Mountain project, where 77,000 tons of radioactive waste would be stored. The U.S. Department of Energy submitted its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 3. A day after the DOE filing, Masto filed a complaint outlining what she saw as flaws in the 8,600-page application. "After more than 25 years of...

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy announced in a new report this morning the estimated total cost to build and operate a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would be $96.2 billion. Counting inflation, the price tag increased by 67 percent over the department's most recent published estimate, which was $57.5 billion in 2001.

WASHINGTON - After years of delay, the Bush administration will submit a formal license application on Tuesday to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, government officials have told the Associated Press. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have three years to review the application, although it could extend that an additional year if needed. The agency's primary responsibility is to determine if the design as proposed will protect public health, safety and the environment. The Energy Department informed key members of Congress and the NRC of its plans on Monday. A truck is to deliver tens of...

May 14, 2008, 0:00 a.m. The Yuccafication of AmericaPolitical elites commit themselves to noble goals, and then nuke the best means available to achieve those goals. By Jonah Goldberg What do Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common? Well, there’s the obvious stuff. Both have Spanish names. Neither is a great spot for a family vacation. Each is controlled by the federal government. Oh, and both are essential tools in wars a lot of people claim they want to win. See, Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances — nuclear waste — until...

From the back of the Culinary union hall on Friday, all that could be seen were hundreds of upraised hands -- black, brown and white -- clapping to the chant "Sí se puede." They were clapping along with Geoconda Arguello Kline, an immigrant from Nicaragua who came to Las Vegas for a low-skilled job in a hotel. She learned English. She saved enough to buy a home for the family she was raising. She took advantage of job training programs to move up in her work, and she became active with the union. Now Kline, "Geo" to the union's members,...

By Lisa Mascaro <> Las Vegas Sun WASHINGTON - With the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project moving forward after clearing a major hurdle Wednesday, attention turns to whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can deliver the project a devastating blow. Nevadans overwhelmingly oppose the planned nuclear waste dump 90 miles north of Las Vegas, and every Democratic presidential candidate has joined their opposition. But a three-judge panel at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled Wednesday that the Yucca Mountain project's 3.5 million-document online library is complete - a necessary step that stalled the project three years ago when the panel ruled...

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. "Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist...

The leading Democratic presidential candidates are united on the government's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage plan: They'd scrap it. Their vigorous opposition to the project reflects Nevada's importance as one of a handful of states that will lead off voting in January for the Democratic and Republican nominations. Few local issues are as unpopular with Nevadans as the waste dump. The Democrats have just one problem — their records keep getting in the way. Front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton has created suspicion because she's refused to rule out expansion of nuclear power as a solution to the nation's energy woes and...

<p>Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) skipped an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday that she called for earlier this year.</p> <p>Clinton’s absence drew a strong rebuke from Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.</p>

New rock samples show preliminary evidence of an earthquake fault beneath where Yucca Mountain project planners want to handle highly radioactive waste before burial at the planned nuclear waste repository, a report says. A May 21 letter and U.S. Geological Survey maps show a fault beneath where officials hope to build concrete pads to store spent radioactive fuel canisters for cooling before they are entombed in tunnels inside the mountain, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday. The paper said it obtained the documents last week. "Preliminary data from the recent drilling phase indicate the location of the Bow Ridge fault...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Nevada can shut off water needed for bore hole drilling at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In a strongly worded order focusing on federal "credibility and good faith," U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas said the Department of Energy could not ignore state limitations and continue using water for drilling test holes near the repository site. "This entire 'crisis' is self-imposed and self-created," Hunt said in his 24-page order, dated Friday but distributed among the parties on Tuesday. "The only argument the DOE makes is that...

WASHINGTON - The longest serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stepping down, and, on his way out, saying something about Yucca Mountain that few in government dare to suggest out loud: "It may be time to stop digging." The reason Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. gives for his conclusion, however, is not that the mountain is a bad site or the science of storing radioactive fuel is unsound, two of the major arguments critics have mounted. Rather, Yucca Mountain is unlikely to ever open as a storage site for nuclear waste largely because the politics were flawed at the...

Close window Published online: 10 January 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070108-6 Canned nuclear waste cooks its containerEstimates of radiation damage to materials have been too low.Philip Ball The atomic order of a ceramic is muddled into a glassy mess by radiation. Storing high-level nuclear waste without any leakage over thousands of years may be harder than experts have thought, research published in Nature today shows. Ian Farnan of Cambridge University, UK, and his co-workers have found that the radiation emitted from such waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The state of Nevada on Friday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject the U.S. government's plan to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste temporarily above ground at a mountain located about 90 miles from Las Vegas. The Energy Department is set to file an application with the NRC in mid 2008 for a license to operate the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear storage repository in Nevada, which would hold radioactive waste underground from more than 100 nuclear power plants, along with the tons of leftovers from the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The permanent storage site is...

When Washington targeted Nevada as the nation's nuclear waste dump, the state didn't have the political power to say no.Twently years later the most ardent foe of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is about to become the Senate Majority leader.

WASHINGTON, April 25 — The United States attorney for Nevada has decided not to prosecute federal employees who admitted making up details about research involving the Energy Department's effort to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the department's inspector general said Tuesday. But the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, said the Yucca project had "internal control deficiencies" that allowed lapses that contributed to a loss of public confidence. Mr. Friedman's findings were part of a report about e-mail messages sent by employees of the United States Geologic Survey who said they had made up details about their research...

WASHINGTON - A long-delayed nuclear waste dump in Nevada that has cost $9 billion so far is years away from opening, the project's director told frustrated lawmakers Wednesday, and will be at capacity from radioactive waste now accumulating. The Energy Department also plans to determine the need for a second site for an underground dump, said Paul Golan, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Department officials had most recently set 2012 as the projected opening for the first nuclear waste dump, at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but have backed off that goal....

Miss Nevada is stirring up some controversy over her comments about Yucca Mountain. It happened Thursday when 23 year old Crystal Wosik was interviewed by judges. According to the pageant director, the judges asked Wosik what she thought of Yucca Mountain. She told them "it has to go someplace and that Yucca Mountain was the best built facility in the country." Then a judge said what would happen if people could die? She, according to the pageant director, answered "we just have to take one for the team." That drew a pretty direct response from Peggy Maze Johnson of Citizen...

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new radiation exposure limits for a planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada, a revision aimed at protecting the public for as long as 1 million years, agency officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency, trying to overcome a court ruling that threatens a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, proposed new radiation exposure limits for the project Tuesday aimed at protecting the public for up to 1 million years. Under the proposal, people living near the Yucca Mountain waste site 10,000 years from now could be exposed to as much as 350 additional millirems of radiation annually, more than three times what is allowed from nuclear facilities today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The maximum levels of exposure before 10,000 years would be 15 millirems per year, a...

NOW THAT CONGRESS HAS PASSED an energy bill with incentives for the development of more nuclear power, it remains to be seen whether this will lead to robust investment in nuclear energy and a new generation of nuclear plants. Results will depend on the response of some key players, specifically Congress, the investment markets, the environmental community, and the nuclear energy industry itself.Congress included liability limitations, tax incentives, loan guarantees, and risk insurance in the recent energy bill, and these should help reduce or remove some of the biggest obstacles to new nuclear plants. Congress deserves credit, but its job...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate yesterday approved $4 million in funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program, one of several nuclear-related measures contained in its version of the fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations bill (see GSN, June 17). Before approving the $31 billion bill with a 92-3 vote, the Republican-controlled Senate in a 53-43 vote beat back a Democratic amendment to prohibit funding for the feasibility study of the earth-penetrating nuclear weapon. The version of the bill already approved by the House denied any funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study. Differences in the two bills are...

LAS VEGAS -- A federal judge has denied an Indian tribe's plea to stop federal plans for a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada based on a claim that the project violates a 19th century treaty. With the Yucca Mountain repository yet to open and a disputed rail line yet to be built, U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro ruled that the Western Shoshone National Council couldn't demonstrate "immediate and irreparable" harm. Lawyer Robert Hager of Reno, representing the tribe, said Wednesday that no immediate decision had been made whether to appeal. A spokesman for the Energy Department had no...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Congress is scheduling hearings about the Yucca Mountain project after recent disclosures that quality-assurance documents for the proposed nuclear waste repository might have been falsified. Leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee announced Monday they will hold an April 7 hearing about the Nevada nuclear waste site. A House subcommittee led by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is preparing for an April 5 hearing. The Senate committee chairman is Pete Domenici, R-N.M., an influential voice on nuclear issues who has been promoting talk of alternatives while the Yucca Mountain project is delayed. The Energy Department...

WASHINGTON (AP) - About 40 percent of the nation's nuclear power plants have begun moving spent fuel out of cooling pools and into massive dry casks, embracing a storage approach that a National Academy of Sciences panel said offers safety advantages. The nation's 64 active nuclear power plants, which together house 103 reactors, all now store nuclear waste in pools of water after it is removed from reactors. Eventually, the spent fuel is supposed to be shipped to a national nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. As Yucca Mountain has been delayed, utilities are increasingly moving some...