Entries from December 2, 2007 - December 8, 2007
Tommorrow, We start a multi part series on: Still no toxic cleanup plan for Navajos
Look for this shameful series in which the Indigeous peoples of the Southwest United States are still subject to Toxic Waste -gregor
Gregor Gable
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PrintJonh Lennon speaks about"Give Peace a chance"
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John Lennon & Yoko Ono: 'War Is Over! (If You Want It)'
December 8, 2007
I miss you, John. 27 years later, I still wish I could turn back the clock to the Summer of 1980. I remember everything - sharing our morning coffee, walking in the park together on a beautiful day, and seeing your hand stretched to mine - holding it, reassuring me that I shouldn't worry about anything because our life was good.
I had no idea that life was about to teach me the toughest lesson of all. I learned the intense pain of losing a loved one suddenly, without warning, and without having the time for a final hug and the chance to say, "I love you," for the last time. The pain and shock of that sudden loss is with me every moment of every day. When I touched John's side of our bed on the night of December 8th, 1980, I realized that it was still warm. That moment has haunted me for the past 27 years - and will stay with me forever.
Even harder for me is watching what was taken away from our beautiful boy, Sean.
He lives in silent anger over not having his Dad, whom he loved so much, around to share his life with. I know we are not alone. Our pain is one shared by many other families who are suffering as the victims of senseless violence. This pain has to stop.
Let's: Think Peace, Act Peace, and Spread Peace. John worked for it all his life.
He said, "there's no problem, only solutions." Remember, we are all together.
We can do it, we must. I love you!
Yoko Ono Lennon
Yucca licensing documents missing
That doesn't sit well with Nevada officials who are fighting what they call "the dump" and want to strike DOE's certification of the so-called Licensing Support Network.
Their arguments were heard Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
The panel also heard arguments from an attorney for the Department of Energy, who tried to persuade the panel that regulations allow for some flexibility on missing and incomplete documents.
Not so in this case, said Nevada's hired counsel, Charles Fitzpatrick.
Inside the NRC's $4 million hearing facility on Pepper Lane, with armed guards watching and security screening like that in an airport, Fitzpatrick argued that it's unfair to deem the network certified when it lacks so many "core basis documents" vital to DOE's license application.
Fitzpatrick said adding them to the collection in the 11th hour wouldn't give Nevada enough time to analyze them before DOE files its license application before its self-imposed deadline of June 30.
The Energy Department "has backed itself into a corner," Fitzpatrick said in his opening remarks to the panel chaired by Administrative Judge Thomas Moore.
"There are rampant inconsistencies" with the Licensing Support Network, Moore said.
If all goes as it did in 2004, the last time Nevada succeeded in striking the network's certification, the panel should reach a decision on Wednesday's hearing in about a week.
Jane Feldman, of the local Sierra Club, was one of about 40 members of the public who attended the hearing.
"I think it's incredibly frustrating that such a common sense issue is wrapped up in legal convolutions," Feldman said.
"The documents that Nevada needs to respond to are not available," Feldman said as she left before the end of the four-hour hearing.
Steve Frishman, a full-time consultant for the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said the missing information included seismic safety analysis for surface handling facilities near the planned repository, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Yucca Mountain Project scientists were only wrapping up their bore hole drilling operations to collect data about earthquake faults in the site's Midway Valley a few weeks before DOE certified the Licensing Support Network on Oct. 19.
Within 10 days, Nevada had filed its motion to strike the certification.
"Our point is, we should be able to have those documents for a full six months if we're going to develop contentions," Frishman said during a break in the meeting.
Judy Treichel, representing the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, complained that the monstrous, online collection of documents isn't user friendly and many topics can't be found in a reasonable search.
Moore and panel Judge Alex Karlin concurred that some searches for documents by their titles fail because the titles are "jibberish" and "gobbledygook."
"You can't get anything out of those titles," Karlin said.
DOE's counsel, Michael Shebelskie, noted that a group of 800 documents have placeholder titles, some of which have been replaced with real titles.
"We have made available 1.3 million documents since 2004," he said. "On our own there are some groups of documents that we might improve the titles."
Shebelskie said the Licensing Support Network "generally speaking" can be 98 percent complete in 60 days and 100 percent complete in 90 days.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.
NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE PROJECT: Yucca plans draw public's ire
http://www.lvrj.com/news/12110861.html
FURTHER ARGUMENTS WEDNESDAY
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission board will hear oral arguments Wednesday regarding Nevada's challenge to the Department of Energy's certification in October of its document collection to support a license application for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
The board will begin the proceeding at 9 a.m. in the commission's Las Vegas Hearing Facility, Pacific Enterprise Plaza, Building 1, 3250 Pepper Lane. Attendees should allow enough time for security screening.
Also Wednesday, the last in a series of public hearings on impact statements for the proposed repository and a rail line to haul spent fuel and highly radioactive defense waste to it will be held in the nation's capital. The hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time at the Marriott at Metro Center, 775 12th St., in northwest Washington, D.C.
Click image for enlargement.
Southern Nevadans showed up in force Monday to voice concerns about the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, saying the transportation risks are too great, the design has too many shortcomings and the government's nuclear weapons testing track record cast doubt on the project.
One speaker, Ian Zabarte of the Western Shoshone National Council, drew some of the loudest applause from the crowd of more than 200 that packed a hearing room at the Cashman Center when he accused the Energy Department of "environmental racism."
"A moral people with ethical scientists cannot condone the use of such practices to the benefit of the nuclear industry," Zabarte said. He suggested that tribes along all transportation corridors "and especially those with tourism-based economies and gaming facilities must be assessed for stigma-related impacts."
"Transportation of waste to Yucca Mountain would place a disproportionate burden upon the Western Shoshone nation and has not been addressed in the (supplemental impact statement). It is environmental racism," he said.
Only a handful of the 53 who signed up to speak at the hearing favored the Energy Department's plans. They said the draft supplemental impact statement for surface facilities to handle nuclear waste canisters, and another analysis of building a rail line from Caliente to reach the mountain, are improvements over the final impact document issued in 2002.
"The fact the SEIS (supplement) shows impacts to Nevada from transportation is small confirms what we found," said Paul Seidler, a senior director for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Las Vegas. The institute is a lobbying organization for the nuclear power industry.
In all, 212 people, most from Southern Nevada, attended the hearing in addition to the two dozen Energy Department employees and consultants on hand to answer questions and explain exhibits.
In comparison, Yucca Mountain hearings last month in Hawthorne, Caliente, Reno-Sparks, Amargosa Valley, Goldfield and Lone Pine, Calif., drew a combined 244 public attendees. Of those, a total of 71 spoke at the hearings, said Allen Benson, the senior Department of Energy official and spokesman at the Las Vegas hearing.
"It's a tremendous turnout," he said. "I think a lot of people take this seriously. It's important that they come out and talk to us about their views."
That they did, from the first speaker, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, to a former Yucca Mountain Project worker, Robin Drew, who bemoaned how project officials have opposed her in a legal battle over compensation for carpal tunnel syndrome.
Goodman weighed in on the federal agency's plans for transporting nuclear waste across the nation and especially through the Las Vegas Valley, saying privately before he took the podium, "It's a disaster waiting to happen."
In his public comments, Goodman said, "If the material is as safe as we're told it is, let it stay where it presently exists."
He said no one can guarantee that an accident won't happen "or, God forbid, the act of a terrorist."
Robert Halstead, transportation adviser for the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, emphasized in his remarks that spent fuel "is lethal" and that the 77,000 tons of it and highly radioactive defense waste destined for a maze of tunnels to be dug in Yucca Mountain contain far more fission products than were released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II.
Each truck cask of spent nuclear fuel would contain 350,000 curies of radioactive cesium and strontium, or about 20 to 30 times the amount of fission products released by the Hiroshima bomb, Halstead said.
"Every dedicated train hauling three or four rail casks would contain more cesium-137 than the total amount released during the Chernobyl nuclear power accident," he said.
Halstead noted that since the DOE's last impact statement five years ago, the residential population within a half-mile of the rail route through Las Vegas has doubled, from 45,000 to about 90,000.
Irene Navis, planning manager for the Clark County Nuclear Waste Program, said the Energy Department's plans lack details, especially regarding an increased inventory of waste to be disposed that one project official has said will increase the life-cycle cost from $58 billion to $78 billion.
"We don't know what's up with a second repository," Navis said.
In concept, she said, there could be "twice as much waste, which means twice as many shipments for twice as many years. ... So far it's not clear. We're looking for answers."
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.