Billions Down the Yucca Hole

  • Without the Yucca mountain site, companies like Exelon have to pay extra to safely store spent fuel in pools or in concrete casks. (Photo courtesy of Lester Graham)

The federal government had one place in mind to store the country’s most hazardous nuclear waste.

It was at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

President Barack Obama recently killed that project, even though the country had spent more than nine billion dollars on it.

Shawn Allee found that figure is just the beginning:

Transcript

The federal government had one place in mind to store the country’s most hazardous nuclear waste.

It was at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

President Barack Obama recently killed that project, even though the country had spent more than nine billion dollars on it.

Shawn Allee found that figure is just the beginning.

The Yucca Mountain project claimed more money than just the nine billion that’s on the books.

It also tied up cash from electric rate payers, power companies and taxpayers.

Let’s start with the first group – rate payers.

CHA-CHING

Yucca Mountain was supposed to store the radioactive spent fuel left behind in nuclear reactors.

The U-S government charges power companies a fee to cover costs.

Power companies pass it on.

“Everybody in the state of Georgia that uses electricity and pays an electric bill is paying into this Yucca Mountain trust fund.”

This is Bobby Baker.

He’s serves on Georgia’s public service commission.

Baker says now that President Obama took Yucca Mountain off the table, the federal government should return the money.

Georgia’s share of fees and interest is more than one point two billion dollars.

“We were supposed to be shipping our spent nuclear fuel out to yucca mountain back in 1998 they were supposed to be receiving shipments at that time. The only thing that’s been done is the fact that Georgia ratepayers are continuing to pay into that trust fund and getting nothing from that trust fund other than a big hole in Nevada.”

So far, the federal government’s collected a total of 31 billion dollars in fees and interest for the nuclear waste fund.

The next group who paid extra for Yucca – power companies.

CHA-CHING

By law, the federal government’s supposed to take away radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

But without Yucca, it stays put.

John Rowe is CEO of Exelon, the country’s biggest nuclear power company.

Last hear he complained to the National Press Club.

“My mother used to say, somebody lies to you once that’s his fault … lies to you twice and you believe it, that’s your fault. I don’t know what she would have thought about somebody lying to you for fifty years.”

Rowe is especially mad because his company and others like it have to pay extra to safely store spent fuel in pools or in concrete casks.

They sue the federal government to recover costs.

The US Government Accountability Office figures the government will lose these lawsuits and owe power companies twelve point three billion dollars within a decade.

The last group that paid extra for Yucca – taxpayers.

CHA-CHING

Yucca Mountain was supposed to handle nuclear spent fuel from civilian power reactors, but it was also supposed to handle decades-worth of the military’s radioactive waste.

That includes waste from former weapons sites, like Hanford in Washington state.

Washington’s Senator Patty Murray brought it up in a recent hearing.

Here, she’s looking straight at Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

“Congress, independent studies, previous administrations pointed to, voted for and funded yucca Mountain as the best option as the nuclear repository.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government chipped in at least three point four billion dollars to cover military costs at Yucca Mountain.

But the tab’s bigger than that.

Murray says without Yucca, Hanford has to store its waste on-site. it’s not cheap.

“Billions of dollars have been spent at Hanford and sites across the country in an effort to treat and package nuclear waste that will be sent there.”

The Obama administration’s getting complaints from states and industry and taxpayer groups.

The Administration hasn’t responded publicly, but Energy Secretary Steven Chu mentioned the financial fallout from Yucca Mountain during a U-S Senate hearing.

He said the administration’s convinced Yucca Mountain just won’t work …

So, no matter how much money people have paid so far, it makes no sense to send good money after bad.

He didn’t mention paying any money back.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Burying Radioactive Waste (Part 1)

  • Waiting for new waste solutions, power plants across the country are still stacking spent fuel in concrete casks like this one at the Yucca Mountain site. (Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

Hazardous radioactive waste is building up at nuclear power plants across the country. For decades, the U-S government’s only plan was to stick that waste out of sight and out of mind … far below Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Recently, President Barack Obama scrapped that plan. Shawn Allee looks at where the President wants to go now:

Transcript

Hazardous radioactive waste is building up at nuclear power plants across the country.

For decades, the U-S government’s only plan was to stick that waste out of sight and out of mind … far below Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Recently, President Barack Obama scrapped that plan.

Shawn Allee looks at where the President wants to go now.

The old nuclear waste plan was simple: take spent fuel leftover from nuclear reactors and bury it under Yucca Mountain.

That would have moved the problem away from nuclear power plants and people who live nearby.

The Obama Administration cut the program but only said, the program “has not proven effective.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu tried explaining that to the U-S Senate.

“I don’t believe one can say, scientists are willing to say Yucca Mountain is the ideal site, given what we know today and given what we believe can be developed in the next 50 years.”

So … Obama’s administration is switching gears, and government scientists have to adjust.

“I worked at Yucca Mountain for ten years.”

Mark Peters is a deputy director at Argonne National Laboratory west of Chicago.

“I ran the testing program, so I got intimate involvement in Yucca Mountain. The license application has pieces of me all through it.”

Peters says he’s disappointed Yucca Mountain was killed.

But he says that’s a personal opinion – he’s on board with the new policy.

In fact … he’s helping it along.

Obama created a blue-ribbon commissison.

Commissioners will come up with new solutions for nuclear waste within two years.

Peters will tell them about new technology.

“There are advanced reactor concepts that could in fact do more effective burning of the fuel, so the spent fuel’s not so toxic when the fuel comes out.”

Peters says these “fast breeder reactors” might not just produce less nuclear waste.

They might use the old stuff that was supposed to head to Yucca.

“You extract the usable content, make a new fuel and burn it in a reactor, so you actually get to the point where you’re recycling the uranium and plutonium and other elements people’ve heard about.”

But Obama’s blue – ribbon nuclear waste commission could find problems with fast-breeder technology.

In the 1970s, we ran a commercial prototype, but it didn’t work very long.

Peters says new versions might be decades away.

There’s another problem, too.

“One important point is that there’s still waste from that process. So we have to go back to ultimately, some kind of geologic repository for part of the system.”

In other words … we’d have less waste, but we’d still have to bury it … somewhere.

History suggests there’s gonna be a squabble over any location.

After all, Yucca Mountain wasn’t the government’s first stab at an underground nuclear waste site.

“It had an embarassing failure in Lyons, Kansas between 1970 and 1972.”

That’s Sam Walker, a historian at the U-S Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He’s talking about the old Atomic Energy Commission, or AEC.

The AEC pushed hard to bury nuclear waste in a salt mine, even though scientists in Kansas had doubts.

“And then it turned out that the salt mine they had planned to place the waste in was not technically suitable either. So, what the AEC did was to lose its battle on both political and technical grounds.”

Walker says for 15 years, the government scouted for another location to dump hazardous nuclear waste.

“There was lots of vocal public opposition to even investigating sites.”

Eventually, the debate got too hot.

Congress settled on Yucca Mountain, Nevada, even though scientists debated whether it’d work.

Congress kept Yucca Mountain going because it promised to keep nuclear waste out of everyone’s back yards … except for Nevada’s.

Now with Yucca Mountain out of the picture, it could take years for Obama’s administration to settle on a way to handle nuclear waste.

In the mean time, power plants across the country are stacking spent fuel in pools of water or in concrete casks.

For decades the federal government said this local storage is both safe and temporary.

It still says it’s safe, but now, no one’s sure what temporary really means.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Green Last Requests, Part Two

  • Steve Dawson is an undertaker trying to give people greener options (Photo by Todd Melby)

When businesses begin offering
earth-friendly alternatives to
traditional products, it often
takes a while for those items
to catch on. The funeral industry
is no exception. Todd Melby reports
on one undertaker’s attempt at
greening death:

Todd Melby and Diane Richard produced a documentary on green burial called “Death’s Footprint.” You can listen to it here .

Transcript

When businesses begin offering
earth-friendly alternatives to
traditional products, it often
takes a while for those items
to catch on. The funeral industry
is no exception. Todd Melby reports
on one undertaker’s attempt at
greening death:

Steve Dawson is an undertaker who lives above his funeral home business.
His backyard looks like many here in suburban Chicago. It’s full of cherry
trees and apple trees and he’s got one of those round, above ground
swimming pools. Next to the pool, there’s a small building that looks like a
two-car garage.

We step inside.

“This is the crematorium. This is a cremation retort. As you can see it’s a
fairly large machine.”

That retort is a big furnace. It’s also a big part of Dawson’s business here at
Sax-Tiedeman Funeral Home.

Dawson: “We have a body that has been dropped off here for cremation. If
this is bothering you because we have a body here, I will do what I can to
get the body out of the way.”

Melby: “No, I’m fine.”

Dawson: “We’ll go back over here and get this started.”

(sound of the crematory furnace)

“That starts out the blowers, which is a purging blower, to basically clear
out anything that might be in the way there.”

After the furnace starts, it takes about two hours to finish the process. Then
Dawson takes the remains over to a machine that sifts through what’s left.

Dawson: “What we do is we go through there and sort through the
cremated remains.”

Melby: “This is actually what happens at the end, obviously.”

Dawson: “Right.”

Dawson collects all the prosthetics, those titanium knee and hip joints, in a big
can nearby. They get recycled.

That’s important to Dawson. At home, he’s a passionate recycler of soda pop
cans, newspapers and other household items.

“My family calls me the recycling Nazi because I get after them to put it all gets
put in the recyling bin.”

On the job, he tries to be green too.

Dawson knows that cremation — an option chosen by nearly 1 in 2 Americans —
has environmental downsides. Many older people have mercury dental fillings.
During cremation, that cancer-causing toxin vaporizes and goes up into the
atmosphere. Heating up the cremation furnace also eats up energy.

Dawson is also a savvy businessman. He believes more Americans are going
to want green choices, even when buying death products.

That’s why he’s embraced green burial. Sax-Tiedemann is Chicago’s first —
and so far only — green-certified funeral home. So in addition to selling
baseball-themed urns and big wooden caskets, Dawson has other choices
too.

“In this area here, we have rental caskets and up on the top, these are e-caskets,
Eco-caskets. These are made out of bamboo and these are designed to be
biodegradable.”

Although most Jews and Muslims skip embalming, the procedure is still quite
popular among Christians. Green death advocates are opposed to embalming
because of the formaldehyde used in the process. So to get certified, Dawson had
to buy a new machine.

“This is a three-body cooler. Inside a three-body cooler, this is what we use to be
able to hold remains without embalming. The temperature in the cooler is kept at
roughly 42 degrees. That’s enough to be able to slow down the decomposition
process.”

(funeral music)

A chilled body will hold for a day or so, which is usually enough time for friends
and family to gather and say good-bye. As baby boomers begin dying in big
numbers, Dawson expects more of them to choose green burial.

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

Related Links

Underground Co2 a Long Way Off

  • Corn-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland creates excess carbon dioxide while brewing ethanol and other alcohols from corn. The company is donating carbon dioxide from a plant in Decatur, Illinois. Scientists will bury the CO2 deep underground and test whether the local rock can hold it there indefinitely. If it can, the government may encourage coal-fired power plants and other carbon sources to sequester their carbon underground. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make

electricity in America is to burn coal, but there’s

this little problem of global warming. The coal power

industry is a major offender because burning coal

gives off carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all?

Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove

we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:

Transcript

One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make electricity in America is to burn coal. But there’s this little problem of global warming. The coal power industry is a major offender… because burning coal gives off carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas. It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all? Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:


A big part of our global warming problem starts right in coal country. Recently, I recorded this coal train leaving a coal mine, destined for some power plants.


(sound of coal train)


It was a long train … and across the country, hundreds like it run constantly. The coal power industry generates half our electricity. And that’s responsible for nearly forty percent of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, we chuck into the atmosphere.


Well, wouldn’t it be great if we could reverse some of this? So, when we pull coal out of the Earth and then burn it … we could just send some of the carbon dioxide gas underground?


That’s getting tested by scientists.


I found one.


ALLEE: “What’s your name, sir?”


FINLEY: “Robert Finley. I’m the director for the center for energy and earth resources at Illinois State Geologic Survey.”


Finley wants to take carbon dioxide and bury it deep under the town of Decatur, Illinois.


He says the rock has to be just right.


One layer needs to absorb the carbon dioxide, while other rock has to keep it put.


“In order for the CO2 to remain in the subsurface, to not leak back in the atmosphere, we have to have an excellent seal.”


Finley calls this geological carbon sequestration, and he says it’s worked … in small tests. His experiment and six others across the country are much larger. Finley says the technology is promising, but needs testing.


“Decatur involves two years of characterizing the site and drilling wells before we even inject CO2. Three years of CO2 injection, then two more years of study of the site. So, that in total is a seven year effort.”


Again, he’s gotta make sure the carbon dioxide stays underground … and that it won’t hurt water or other underground resources. But while Finley experiments, coal plants continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s got some environmental groups a little impatient.


“The best way to avoid emissions from burning coal is to not burn it in the first place.”


This is Ron Burke, the Midwest Director for The Union of Concerned Scientists.


“We can meet most of our energy needs by substantially increasing the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy.”


Allee: “But when you listen to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, it seems that both of these candidates seem to want to make it work, when Mr. Finley and others doing work on the ground say I won’t even have my data until 2014.”


Burke: “It’s clear that a lot of elected officials share this aspirational goal to commercially develop so-called clean-coal technology. But right now we can’t depend on it. We shouldn’t be developing plans to mitigate greenhouse gases assuming that technology’s going to be available.”


Geologist Robert Finley says we cannot rely on carbon sequestration exclusively.


Even if CO2 can stay underground forever, there’s no guarantee we can afford to send it there.


“One could argue we should have been doing this five years ago or earlier, but we can’t go forward and simply drill a well next year and move forward without these kinds of studies, because that would be reckless in my view.”


Finley doesn’t apologize for the pace of science.


He says he’s confident it can answer questions about carbon sequestration…. he just hopes it’s in time to make a difference for the global warming problem.


For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links