Skip to main content

Yucca Mountain Update

By Eric McErlain
From today's Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The two people who testified at Monday's public hearing on the proposed radiation safety standard for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository had one thing in common: They're not worried about radioactive dangers because they've lived in the shadow of the Nevada Test Site for many years.

So, if they can survive 41 years of detonating more than 900 nuclear bombs, then they can endure 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and highly radioactive waste tucked away inside the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It doesn't matter, they said, if it's there for 10,000 or even 1 million years.

"This community has very little concern about the increase in radiation," Jan Cameron, chairwoman of the Amargosa Valley Town Advisory Board, said after making her comments to Environmental Protection Agency officials who traveled to this community of 1,400, the closest to the mountain.

"There is really very little likelihood of danger from Yucca Mountain," she said. "It doesn't mean there shouldn't be monitoring and they shouldn't be keeping an eye on it."

In testimony, she told the EPA panel that setting a 10,000-year standard "is iffy -- to try to define a standard for a million years passes ridiculous."
And in other Yucca Mountain-related news, back in Washington:
An order for the Department of Energy to post to the Internet its draft license application for Yucca Mountain was appealed on Monday.

Staff members for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission challenged the reasoning of a three-judge panel that sought to clarify the definition of draft paperwork for the proposed nuclear waste repository.

The judges said the Energy Department's 5,800-page draft license document met the definition and was required to be disclosed.
Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more