ECA Update: May 15, 2013
Published: Wed, 05/15/13
MOX negotiations continue as Moniz heads for confirmation
Nick Juliano and Hannah Northey, E&E Publishing May 15, 2013 We haven't heard the last from South Carolina's senators on their effort to keep a planned multibillion-dollar nuclear facility in their state.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) last week lifted his hold on Ernest Moniz's nomination to become the next Energy secretary, but he said he continues to push the Obama administration to demonstrate its commitment to completing a proposed addition to the Savannah River Site.
The Senate is slated to vote on Moniz as soon as today after it completes work on the Water Resources Development Act, and he is expected to win broad support.
Observers suggest a lower-profile administration post -- perhaps the next head of the National Nuclear Security Administration -- could fall victim to a Graham hold if he does not extract the concessions he is after.
At issue is the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site, which was initially proposed during the Clinton administration to turn weapons-grade plutonium into usable fuel but has been plagued by cost overruns. President Obama in his fiscal 2014 budget request proposed a study into alternatives to the MOX site, raising fears that he would abandon the project.
Environmentalists say that the facility is little more than lucrative home-state pork Graham is trying to protect and that its projected cost increases demand an examination of alternative ways to deal with the 34 tons of excess plutonium.
"It clearly makes sense for the administration to re-evaluate and try to determine if it's time to fish or cut bait," said Stephen Young, a senior analyst on nuclear issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Instead of reprocessing the plutonium into MOX fuel -- which no companies have committed to buying -- Young said it could be "immobilized" by oxidizing the plutonium and combining it with other highly radioactive waste that could be stored in glass or ceramic rods, similar to other types of spent nuclear fuel.
It remains to be seen, he said, whether such an approach would run into problems that have plagued the search for a permanent disposal site for other spent nuclear fuel, which had been slated for Yucca Mountain, Nev., until plans for that site were abandoned. But he said a study into MOX alternatives could consider such issues.
Graham has said it would be too expensive to abandon the MOX project, but he acknowledged more should be done to bring down its costs, which have grown to nearly $8 billion from initial estimates around $5 billion. He said talks with the White House were ongoing but declined to provide specific details.
"I don't want to jinx things," Graham said yesterday when asked why he would not elaborate on the negotiations.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who pressed Moniz on MOX during a confirmation hearing last month and has been involved with the White House talks, said the goal is to get the administration to "live up to its agreement" to build the facility because "it's the only facility that can actually take the weapons-grade plutonium and make it into commercial use."
Scott was less enthusiastic about where the negotiations stand.
"We're still measuring our progress, but it's barely discernible right now," Scott told E&E Daily outside the Capitol yesterday. "We've got a little ways to go still."
Graham said he lifted the Moniz hold out of deference to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor's impressive qualifications and the need to have a permanent boss at DOE. But he noted that other nominees could face holds if the MOX issue remains unresolved (E&ENews PM, May 14).
"I'll have other leverage points, and moving him forward would be OK," Graham told reporters yesterday evening. "I've got their attention, and we'll see where this goes.
"We're working on it. I think it will all turn out well for everybody."
Is NNSA the next target?
If it doesn't work out, Young said, Graham could place a hold on Madelyn Creedon, who's rumored to be Obama's nominee to replace Neile Miller, the acting administrator for NNSA. "That would make the most sense because NNSA is the agency for the MOX program," Young said.
Creedon has had a lengthy, high-profile career on and off Capitol Hill, having served as counsel for the Democratic staff on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was confirmed as assistant secretary of Defense for global strategic affairs in 2011.
Obama tapped Miller to lead the agency in May 2010, and she was confirmed by the Senate three months later (Greenwire, May 28, 2010). As the acting administrator, Miller focuses on matters of management and policy across NNSA.
Prior to joining NNSA, Miller served as the Energy Department's budget director. She also oversaw NNSA and the Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction activities as senior program examiner for the Office of Management and Budget from 2004 to 2007.
Miller served as associate director in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the George W. Bush administration and worked on nuclear nonproliferation issues at the Congressional Research Service.
Young said former Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, a commander in the Air Force Global Strike Command, has also been mentioned as a possible replacement for Miller.
Although speculation surfaced that money was possibly shifted in Obama's fiscal 2014 budget proposal away from certain DOE programs toward the MOX plant, NNSA spokesman Josh McConaha said no such changes had occurred.
"The request is the request, and it hasn't changed," McConaha said in an email.
Once Moniz is confirmed, two of the three main energy and environment posts for Obama's second term will be filled; Interior Secretary Sally Jewell took office last month. U.S. EPA remains without a permanent administrator, and Republicans say they have not yet decided whether to obstruct the confirmation of air chief Gina McCarthy to lead the agency.
OVERNIGHT ENERGY: DOE, EPA nominees in focus Ben Geman and Zack Colman, The Hill May 14, 2013 ON TAP WEDNESDAY: Acting Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman will appear before a Senate Appropriations Committee subpanel to discuss his agency's proposed fiscal 2014 budget request.
But the Energy Department's (DOE) days under "acting" leadership are numbered. The Senate is slated to vote as soon as Wednesday on Ernest Moniz, President Obama's nominee to lead the department.
As for Wednesday's hearing, Poneman could face questions on several hot-button topics before the DOE, such as when decisions on controversial natural-gas export applications will begin.
Poneman, the department's deputy secretary who's temporarily in the top slot, recently told lawmakers those decisions will start rolling out soon.
Speaking of Moniz: The Senate vote on Moniz is proceeding because Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dropped his hold on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist.
Graham had been blocking Moniz over concerns about DOE management of a program in his state to transform weapons-grade plutonium into fuel.
The senator told reporters Tuesday that his concerns remain unresolved, but suggested he can block other nominees and that he has seen some progress.
"I don't dislike [Moniz] and I think he'd be a good secretary," Graham told reporters in the Capitol. "I'll have many other leverage points."
Graham said he's had "good collaborations" with the White House on the fate of nuclear fuel program. "I've got their attention and we will see where this goes," he said.
Updated Congressional Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Schedule Congressman Doc Hastings May 16 at 8:30 a.m. (rescheduled from May 15 at 3:00 p.m.)
Oak Ridge, Tennessee 1334 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. May 21 at 4:00 p.m.
Richland Operations Office, Washington 1334 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. June 4 at 4:00 p.m.
Idaho National Laboratory 1334 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. June 12 at 4:00 p.m.
Savannah River Site, South Carolina 1334 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. Gov. seeks $40M more for cleanup at LANL T.S. Last, ABQ Journal May 9, 2013 Gov. Susana Martinez wants to make sure sequestration doesn't slow down the cleanup of radioactive waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory. So she's asking that another $40 million of federal money be re-allocated to the cleanup effort in order to finish the job by the middle of next year.
Budget cuts put Hanford deadlines at risk Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald May 8, 2013 Budget cuts and other issues have put about 10 legally binding deadlines at Hanford at risk of not being met, Department of Energy officials said Wednesday during a public budget meeting.
Those deadlines include work on such key projects as cleaning out and demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant and moving radioactive sludge now stored near the Columbia River to central Hanford.
Given mandatory budget cuts called sequestration of about $156 million at Hanford this year and generally tight budgets since the end of Recovery Act spending, DOE will need significantly more money for many Hanford projects in fiscal 2015.And even if it gets that money in the difficult federal budget environment, delays this year may put some projects too far behind to meet future deadlines under the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement.
Sequestration cuts are delaying the building of an annex to load radioactive sludge from the K West Basin, making the start of removal of the sludge by a deadline of fall 2014 unlikely.
If work to remove the sludge starts late, then the deadline to have the sludge removed from the basin in 2015 might not be met, said Jon Peschong, DOE deputy assistant manager for cleanup along the Columbia River and in central Hanford.
Because of sequestration, DOE also may not meet February 2014 deadlines to submit draft schedules and plans for certain soil waste sites and a group of landfills, both in central Hanford.
DOE also will not be able to drill all the wells required in 2014. Wells are used to monitor and pump up contaminated groundwater.
Work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, which DOE has called the most hazardous and complex building at Hanford, has lost any margin that would allow the work schedule to recover from setbacks, Peschong said. That puts a Tri-Party Agreement deadline to have the plant torn down in 2016 at risk.
At the Hanford tank farms, legal deadlines this year and next for a report on the soundness of underground single-shell tanks likely will not be met. The report was started before six tanks holding radioactive waste were recently discovered to be leaking.
In addition, three deadlines in 2014 and 2015 to prepare for a decision about how underground tanks should be closed once they are emptied of radioactive waste are at risk of not being met, said Ben Harp, DOE manager of the vitrification plant start-up and commissioning integration. However, a proposal to "reprogram" or move budget money in the current fiscal year from the vitrification plant to the tank farms plus an adequate fiscal 2014 budget would allow DOE to meet most requirements under those deadlines. The Wednesday meeting was held to discuss DOE Hanford officials' proposed budget request for fiscal 2015.It already had been postponed once because of issues that included the late release this year of the Obama administration's proposed budget for fiscal 2014 and uncertainty in the current fiscal year budget, partly because of sequestration.
However, DOE said there still was too much uncertainty Wednesday to release a proposed budget request for fiscal 2015 for the tank farms and vitrification plant, the projects under the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection. The DOE office is waiting to see if Congress approves a reprogramming request to allow it to move its current budget among projects.
Among priorities at the tank farms is to meet a court-enforced consent decree deadline to have all 16 tanks in the group called C Tank Farm emptied in 2014 and then start retrieving waste from the next nine tanks, Harp said.
At the vitrification plant, priorities including resolving technical issues that have slowed construction at parts of the plant and continuing construction on other buildings. In addition, DOE's goal is to start glassifying the tank waste for disposal as soon as possible at the plant. It is studying whether it can bypass the plant's Pretreatment Facility, which has most of the technical issues, and start treating some high-level and low-activity radioactive waste.
The DOE Richland Operations Office, responsible for the rest of Hanford cleanup, is proposing an increase from current spending of $943 million this year to $1.5 billion in fiscal 2015 to meet legal and other requirements.
Budgets for the K Basins, cleanup along the Columbia River and cleaning up contaminated groundwater would each see substantial increases. Digging up temporarily buried transuranic waste -- typically waste contaminated with plutonium -- would resume. In addition, DOE would resume work to tear down the U Plant Canyon, a huge chemical processing plant in central Hanford.
But even if Hanford gets the much-increased budget Hanford DOE officials say is needed in fiscal 2015, all projects will not be able to recover schedule slips and DOE could miss more Tri-Party Agreement deadlines in later years, said Dennis Faulk, Hanford program manager for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Hanford cleanup will need larger budgets year after year to get environmental cleanup work done, he said.
DOE earlier spent money to get smaller sites cleaned up across the nation, but it did not roll that money back into cleaning up Hanford and other large sites once smaller sites were completed, he said.
Hanford receives a little more than $2 billion in a typical budget year.
But DOE's 2013 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost report, which estimates how much money is needed for Hanford cleanup through completion, includes annual budgets of $3 billion to $3.5 billion for five of the years between now and 2020, said John Price, of the Washington State Department of Ecology.
"We need that sort of spending sustained for several years," he said.
After touring LANL's Area 54, where above-ground transuranic waste is packaged for shipment, Martinez on Wednesday called on the U.S. House and Senate appropriations committees to approve a "reprogramming" of budgets to ensure the cleanup is finished by an agreed upon June 30, 2014, deadline.
The governor said approval would spare about 120 jobs of LANL subcontractors tasked with doing the cleanup work.
The DOE has already agreed to shift money from existing accounts to allocate $19 million to the cleanup. Martinez and New Mexico's congressional delegation is also asking for $21 million to be reallocated from the National Nuclear Security Administration's budget.
"Most of the waste has been sitting here since the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire and little had been done," Martinez said. "Enough is enough."
Following the 2011 Las Conchas Fire, when flames came within 3 1/2 miles of the lab's transuranic waste storage facility, the DOE and the state Environment Department negotiated a framework agreement that would complete the job of shipping 3,706 cubic meters of transuranic waste, most of it going to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad.
But across-the-board federal budget cuts that went into effect March 1 jeopardize the timely completion of what's formally called the 3706 TRU Waste Campaign.
Martinez called missing the deadline "unacceptable," especially with drought conditions posing the threat of another active wildfire season.
"The federal government needs to recognize that we have a framework agreement in place," she said. "Every time a fire gets near LANL, there's great concern. That's why its so imperative to get it off the ground and into WIPP where it's safe."
Jeff Mousseau, assistant director of environmental programs at LANL, said for the most part, shipments have been on or ahead of schedule since the framework agreement was reached with the state Environment Department in January 2012.
As of now, the process of removing the waste drums is about 39 percent complete, with operations in motion 24 hours a day.
"Without the money, that deadline is in jeopardy," Mousseau said.
Martinez said if the deadlines set for shipping waste aren't met, the state can impose heavy fines against the federal government. "These are hard and fast deadlines," she said. "They must approve the funding."
Transuranic waste is the result of decades worth of nuclear research and weapons production at the Lab, which came into being during the 1940s when the atomic bomb was first being developed. This lab "legacy waste" consists of clothing, rags, tools, soil and other items that are contaminated with small amounts of radioactive elements, mostly plutonium.
About 70 percent of the waste, mostly machinery and other equipment, has been stored in large "oversized" containers. Roughly 20 percent is stored in 55-gallon drums, and 10 percent in "standard waste boxes."
Fred deSousa, a LANL spokesman, said some of the containers were packed and stored as far back as the 1950s. It's a painstaking process to prepare them for shipment, he said, as each container has to be unpacked to see what's in them. Liquids and aerosol cans must be removed and each drum has to be certified before being sent out.
Martinez emphasized that the safety of workers and the general public has always been the No. 1 concern. Safeguards have been put in place to ensure water runoff doesn't affect drinking water, she said, and the framework agreement requires regular groundwater testing.
The governor said she spoke with Vice President Joe Biden and NNSA officials about the issue during a trip to Washington, D.C., last week.
Martinez said efforts to have budgets reprogrammed was truly a bipartisan effort, with members of New Mexico's congressional delegation also pushing for it. Local government and business leaders have also lobbied for more clean-up money.
SMUD wins $34.6 million nuclear waste suit, but won't see the money soon Mark Glover, The Sacramento Bee May 7, 2013 A federal court has awarded more than $34.7 million to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in connection with the federal government's failure to provide a permanent storage site for nuclear waste from the utility's long-dormant Rancho Seco plant.
Trouble is, SMUD sought more than twice that total, is not likely to see a penny of that money anytime soon and faces the unsavory possibility of continuously suing the federal government to obtain compensation for storing waste at the Rancho Seco facility east of Galt.
The developments are the latest in a politically saturated flap dating back to 1987, when Congress singled out Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for nuclear waste generated by numerous utilities.
In a 59-page decision issued Thursday, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Susan Braden concluded that SMUD was owed $34,659,185 over what amounted to a partial breach of contract from 1992 through 2009.
SMUD and other utilities maintain that the federal government has long avoided its legal obligation to find a permanent storage site for nuclear waste.
All the while, the Yucca Mountain site has been awash in politics. Shortly after President Barack Obama took office, his administration voiced concerns that Yucca Mountain could become a possible target for terrorists.
On Friday, Arlen Orchard, general counsel for SMUD, said the Yucca Mountain possibility "appears to be dead at this point."
In the meantime, however, utilities have been stuck with the task of storing nuclear waste as safely and cheaply as possible.
Today, SMUD says nuclear waste storage at Rancho Seco costs about $6 million a year.
SMUD had sought around $80 million, but the court reasoned that the utility actually saved money, in part, with its current method of storing waste at Rancho Seco, which was closed as a power-generating facility following a public referendum in 1989.
SMUD moved nuclear waste from wet ponds to dry storage containers - a less-expensive option - in 2004.
Orchard said he was mystified by the court's logic, calling it "crazy math." He said SMUD's storage costs wouldn't have figured in had the government simply lived up to its original waste-storage contract.
"The good news," Orchard said, was the Washington, D.C.-based court acknowledging that the federal government had an obligation to provide a waste storage site and that utility customers were entitled to compensation.
"The bad news," Orchard continued, " ... is that until this is finally resolved, the government has no obligation to pay (the $34.7 million), and SMUD won't see any money until that time comes."
Orchard added that SMUD and other utilities face the prospect of "periodically suing the federal government" in the future as more nuclear waste storage costs are compiled.
Orchard said that scenario could be negated with a settlement, but he said that prospect is open-ended at this point.
Court: 'No merit' to environmental challenge of nuclear plant Megan R. Wilson, The Hill May 14, 2013 An appeals court on Tuesday denied complaints from environmental groups that said federal regulators are ignoring the lessons from Japan's Fukushima meltdown when approving the first U.S. nuclear construction project since 1978.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved construction for two new units at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, and the design of the Westinghouse Electric Co. AP1000 nuclear reactor, before receiving the results of an investigation into the Fukushima disaster.
That drew the ire of environmental groups, who called for the new nuclear project to be halted.
Judge Harry Edwards said the groups "failed to indicate any environmental data that were not considered in the EIS [environmental impact statement]," and the U.S. District Court of Appeals panel found "no merit" in the environmentalists' claims.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, along with eight other groups, asked the NRC to reassess the design standards of the $14 billion nuclear power plant expansion, and its potential impact on the environment, after those applications were processed and closed. The NRC and its post-Fukushima task force in charge of investigating safety regulations in the wake of the disaster of 2011 decided to move forward with the projects and later implement more regulations, if needed.
Pleas from environmental groups to halt the approval process were "premature," the NRC said in response to the petitions. The agency said "existing procedural mechanisms were sufficient to ensure licensees' compliance with not-yet-enacted regulatory safeguards."
Further, the task force found in its report that "a sequence of events like the Fukushima accident is unlikely to occur in the United States," and argued new steps have already been taken to be ready in the event of a disaster.
NRC has issued three rules to help mitigate a situation similar to the one in Japan, which was the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. But the agency has come under fire from some lawmakers for not making more progress on issuing or proposing safety regulations.
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