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http://www.defensedaily.com/publications/dd/White-House-Moves-To-Restrict-DoE-Nuclear-Research_9090.html The White House has proposed barring Energy Department research on fast reactor recycling of nuclear waste and technical support for licensing of small, modular light-water reactors, drawing protests from Energy Secretary Steven Chu that such prohibitions will have broad adverse effects, including hurting the U.S. nuclear industry's renaissance; crimping U.S. ability to influence other countries' fast reactor designs to address proliferation concerns; and taking away nuclear waste disposal options that might be considered by the administration's planned blue-ribbon panel on alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository. The policy dispute inside the Obama administration was revealed in a Dec. 22...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled yesterday that DOE cannot claim that the lack of a federal repository or storage facility constitutes an “unavoidable delay” in failing to meet its statutory obligations to remove used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plant sites. The court’s decision reversed a lower court’s finding that could have significantly limited the federal government’s liability for damage claims by nuclear utilities. Costs for utilities to store used fuel on reactor sites have been mounting since January 31, 1998, when the federal government was to begin accepting it under the terms of...

Energy Department keeping nuclear repository options openDepartment of Energy lawyers are forging ahead with their defense of a license application to build the nation's nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. They met a deadline last week for filing briefs on questions that Nevada's attorneys raised with a nuclear regulatory panel, which is tracking safety concerns about plans for turning the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into a burial site for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. The briefs were filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board despite the Obama administration's stance that Yucca Mountain...

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.