Top casino and tourism executives in Nevada on Monday told Congress that moving forward with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could be devastating for the state’s economic future.
In an open letter to the members of the House and Senate, Las Vegas Sands President and CEO Sheldon Adelson and 11 other executives said Yucca Mountain is roughly 90 miles from Las Vegas. The city attracted more than 42 million visitors last year, “and we are on pace to meet or break that figure in 2019,” according to the letter, first reported by news organizations in Nevada.
Another 2.2 million people live in the Las Vegas Valley, many of them casino and tourism employees, the executives wrote.
“The combination of these factors has a profound impact on the amount of revenue generated for Nevada’s general fund,” the letter says. “The impacts nuclear waste could have on our visitors and our employees would unquestionably have severe negative implications for Nevada’s future and economic growth.”
Along with Adelson, signatories included American Gaming Association President and CEO William Miller Jr., MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO James Murren, Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mary Beth Sewald, and Nevada Resort Association President Virginia Valentine.
The Department of Energy is more than two decades late in meeting the congressionally set deadline of Jan. 31, 1998, to begin taking the nation’s spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste for disposal. The agency submitted its license application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the proceeding has been frozen for nearly a decade after being defunded by the Obama administration. Congress has twice rejected Trump administration requests to fund resumption of licensing.
For fiscal 2020, the White House requested nearly $116 million for DOE and $38.5 million at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume licensing of the disposal facility. The House and Senate, currently on a two-week spring recess, have not yet released their initial appropriations bills covering the two agencies.
Jordan Haverly, spokesman for resolutely pro-Yucca Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), noted Monday that millions of tourists continue to visit large U.S. cities that sit near nuclear power plants with spent reactor fuel that would eventually go into the national repository.
“If spent nuclear fuel 90 miles from the Las Vegas Strip would stop 42 million people from visiting annually, why didn’t the spent nuclear fuel sitting 49 miles from the Chicago Loop stop 55 million people from visiting last year?” he tweeted. “One could ask the same for New York City and Los Angeles as well. Both have spent nuclear fuel sitting less than 90 miles away and have move visitors and permanent residents.”
A quasi-judicial Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scheduled on May 10 to decide which organizations are authorized to intervene in the license application for a temporary storage facility in New Mexico for spent fuel from nuclear power reactors.
The same three-person board would then begin adjudicating corresponding requests for intervention in the application for a spent fuel storage facility just across the border in West Texas, an NRC spokesman said Monday.
In March 2017, Holtec International applied for a 40-year NRC license to build and operate a facility for underground storage in Lea County of up to 173,000 metric tons of commercial spent fuel. The material would theoretically remain there until the federal government meets its legal mandate to build a permanent repository for U.S. spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The petitioners for intervention include: the Sierra Club; Beyond Nuclear; a coalition of environmental groups headed by Don’t Waste Michigan; regional energy interests Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners; the Alliance for Environmental Solutions; and NAC International, a spent fuel storage company participating in the competing Texas project.
Each petitioner must prove it has standing to intervene and has submitted admissible contentions for consideration in licensing. Broadly, the organizations have raised concerns about the potential environmental, safety, and economic impacts of shipping spent fuel across the country and storing it for decades.
Four jurisdictions near the planned facility have also petitioned to participate in the proceeding as interested local government bodies: the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad and Lea and Eddy counties. Those jurisdictions are the members of the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, which is partnering with Holtec on the project and separately petitioned to join the proceeding.
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board decisions on the intervention petitions can be appealed to the full commission.
The lineup of intervention petitioners is similar for Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) 2018 application for a 40-year license to store up to 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel in Andrews County, Texas. The storage facility would be built on the property of Waste Control Specialists, which is partnering with Orano on the project.
“The ASLB has said they will move on the ISP proceeding after deciding on the standing and admissibility for the Holtec hearing, since the two are very similar in terms of contentions and petitioners,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email.
There is no set schedule for the board to process the petitions for intervention on the ISP license application, McIntyre said.
Michael Graham, a principal vice president at Bechtel and general manager of its environmental, nuclear, security and environmental business line, is retiring this month.
“After a distinguished, 40-year career, 23 of them with Bechtel, Michael Graham is retiring,” company spokesman Fred deSousa said by email Tuesday. “Michael has held senior environmental leadership roles at many sites across the U.S. Department of Energy complex, has held offices in the EFCOG [Energy Facility Contractors Group] organization, and is well-respected in the industry.”
Graham’s approach to environmental remediation led to successful completion of several complex cleanup projects, deSousa said. He was unsure of Graham’s last day.
Graham is responsible for development of new commercial and government environmental business. He also oversees a number of existing contracts, including: the Waste Treatment Plant Bechtel is building at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington stat; Bechtel’s role in liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; and the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo Retrieval project at the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom.
Prior to joining Bechtel, Graham worked at Battelle for about 13 years.
John Atwell succeeds Graham as operations manager for the company’s government services and commercial nuclear global business unit, known as Nuclear, Security & Environmental. A 38-year veteran of Bechtel, Atwell has led projects in commercial nuclear power, environmental cleanup, national security, and civil infrastructure.
Atwell’s latest assignment was as the Bechtel project manager for the now-suspended Horizon Wylfa Newydd new-build nuclear plant project in Wales.
A bipartisan pair of senators last week introduced a bill to tighten ethics and transparency requirements for members of federal advisory committees: expert groups that advise federal agencies including the Department of Energy.
The bill from Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) would require, among other things, that agencies creating and maintaining such committees openly nominate members and solicit public input on the nominations. The bill also would bar “political litmus tests” for membership, unless Congress explicitly requires boards to have a certain political balance.
There are roughly 20 federal advisory committees that deal with Department of Energy issues, fewer than half of which provide advice for nuclear programs.
Notable among these are:
The Defense Programs Advisory Committee that provides classified advice about the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs.
The Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board that collects input from city, state, local, and tribal stakeholders near former nuclear-weapons sites being cleaned up by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
The Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee that provides advice to DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy: the branch of the agency responsible for management of the civilian nuclear waste created by commercial power plants.
The Portman-Hassan bill would also make the secretary of Energy personally responsible for ensuring “that the agency does not interfere with the free and independent participation, expression of views, and deliberation” by members of any DOE federal advisory committees.
The Senate referred the bill to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Congress is out of town for its annual spring recess and is not scheduled to return to Washington until April 29.
From The Wires
From The New York Times: Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) begins removing spent fuel from third reactor cooling pool at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
From the The Wall Street Journal: TEPCO plans to hire foreign workers for cleanup at Fukushima.
From E&E News: Waste Control Specialists hires to Washington, D.C., lobbying firms.
From the Bismarck Tribune: North Dakota legislature approves bill against nuclear waste storage in the state.
