Thread: The Three-Decade Delay of a Nuclear Waste Repository

The Three-Decade Delay of a Nuclear Waste Repository




Time for a rational, scientific solution

September 18, 2013

by Alan Caruba

There was a time when the United States was a can-do nation that built canals, bridges, railroads, and highways. Now we are a nation whose civil engineers annually report the dangers of decaying infrastructure. A perfect example of how incompetent our government has become is the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
In 1982 the U.S. Congress established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. As far back as 1957, the National Academy of Sciences had recommended that the best way to address the problem was to dispose of it in deep underground rock. In 1987, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as the site. It was immediately opposed by both environmentalists and others. Congress approved the site in 2002.
An Associated Press article on August 13 reported on a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to complete the licensing progress and approve or reject the Energy Department’s application for the site.
“The court’s decision was hailed by supporters of the Yucca site, which has been the focus of a dispute that stretches back more than three decades,” reported the AP. “The government has spent an estimated $15 billion on the site but never completed it. No waste is stored there.”
The failure to open the Yucca Mountain repository is an obscenity. Instead of storing nuclear waste in the most studied piece of U.S. geography in the history of the nation, it is stored at more than seventy (70) sites around the nation. The Yucca Mountain site was supposed to begin accepting spent fuel by January 31, 1998, fifteen years ago.

The Appeals Court delivered a serious rebuke to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which has essentially been treated as a political instrument of the Obama administration. The Court said the NRC was “simply flouting the law” when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close site. This is especially egregious insofar as federal law designates the site as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.

“The President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections,” said Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh who wrote the majority (2 to 1) opinion. “It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
It is not just the President and the NRC that will not uphold the law that Congress passed. It is has been the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada. Kim Strassel noted in an August 15 commentary that “Mr. Reid has for years single-handedly thwarted Congress’s will to create a deep storage facility…Such has been one senator’s ability to render the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 30 years of work, and $15 billion of federal funds moot.”
The arrogance of Sen. Reid, with the support of the President, is that of imperial kings and other monarchs for whom their personal agenda outweighs the welfare of the rest of the nation. The project was abandoned in the President’s first term; in 2011 the NRC, a supposedly independent agency, allowed the shutdown to stand.
The present claim is that there is no money to move forward with the completion of Yucca Mountain and it is true that opponents in Congress, led by Sen. Reid, have cut nearly all funding in the last three years, but the court said that the NRC has about $11 million remaining for the purpose of funding a review of its safety. Congressional staffers who have seen a redacted draft of the review to date say that is safe.
Nuclear waste, the by-product of electric power generation at commercial nuclear plants and of high-level radioactive waste from reprocessed spent fuel, must be stored somewhere. Congress addressed that in 1982, more than three decades go. We are still waiting for a rational, practical solution because of politics, not science, nor common sense.
© Alan Caruba, 2013

Alan Caruba

Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy. A veteran public relations counselor and professional writer, Caruba has emerged as a conservative voice through his weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Center’s Internet site and widely excerpted on leading sites. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and a charter member of the National Book Critics Circle, Caruba applies a wide-ranging knowledge of business, science, history and other topics as he examines issues that include protecting our national sovereignty, environment and immigration, education and international affairs. Caruba formerly served in the US Army, has been an advisor to corporations, trade associations, universities, and others who continue to utilize his public relations skills. He graduated from University of Miami. Caruba also finds time to offer a monthly review of the best in new fiction and nonfiction via Bookviews.Com, a popular site for news of books of merit that do not necessarily make it to the mainstream bestseller lists. He authored “Right Answers: Short Takes on Big Issues: Separating Fact from Fantasy”.


Why are they trying to shove this waste down our throats, Nevada has no nuke sites. We had the "Nevada Test Site", and people are still dying from the things they did out there. I know many who have worked out there in the past 20/30 years and they have died from Cancer... Now they want to transport this waste all across the Country through all kinds of towns, city's, and Bergs, etc. and to me the record so far clearly shows they cannot do that safely, they lie on everything they do, the trust level with these people is at 0, and they have earned that distinction......They also claim it will be "okay" buried in these casks for a thousand years, yep right, no one will be around to dispute that claim in a thousand years, then when they find out what damage it may have caused they will say oops!!!!! Go Preach to choir here boys!!! Bettor yet bury it under the WhiteHouse, then when they find out how bad that idea was they can say "WHAT DiFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE"!!!!

I am not a good little "soldier standing and saluting" as they shoot off those bombs in the desert again, those people are dead, the ones left are suffering ask them....Nevada did her fair share, bury it where it is produced. See right there they produced it with out a plan, are you impressed with that idea?? I am not!!!! Trust level is again at 0 and not in their favor. They plan to transport these waste trucks carrying the waste right through the Las Vegas area, that is a well thought out plan isn't it???? Sound Science was promised by Bush Sound Science was not done!!!!! Right there is the answer that explains why Harry Reid was elected into office. The people in Nevada also remember the Test Site and those promises...

FROM WATCHDOGWIRE - NEVADA

Study: NV PERS Unfunded Liability Among Top 10 Largest Per Capita



$48.5 billion unfunded liability

September 17, 2013

by Michael Chamberlain

According to a new study, Nevada’s Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) has the 9th-highest unfunded liability per capita among government worker pension plans at $17,568 and the 10th-highest unfunded liability as a percentage of Gross State Product. According to calculations by State Budget Solutions (SBS) Nevada PERS’s $48.5 billion unfunded liability is 36% of Gross State Product.
Officially, the unfunded liability reported by PERS in its most recent Annual Report, through the 2012 fiscal year, was $11.2 billion. PERS is scheduled to release its report for the 2013 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2013, in November.
The reason for the massive disparity is due to the difference in the rates of return on the investments in the fund each uses in its calculations. SBS uses a figure of 3.225% annual return, while PERS calculates its unfunded liabilities based upon an 8% annual rate of return. Since the fund’s inception, it has obtained a 9.4% annualized return.
SBS uses a “market-valuation” approach to determine unfunded liabilities for state pension funds, which is based upon the 15-year Treasury bond yield, a fairly standard risk-free basis for private pension funds. This is the highest return these funds can expect to receive without risking the loss of principle. Funds may invest in riskier investments that may have higher returns. But while they can calculate their present assets and liabilities based upon actual returns they’ve already received (even if higher than a “risk-free” investment) they can’t use predictions of greater than risk-free returns to calculate future assets and liabilities.
Government pension funds, however, are allowed to use valuations based upon rules set by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), which permit government pension funds to use much higher rates of return in calculating their future assets and liabilities.
According to Andrew Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,

The market-valuation approach considers both the risk and the return of a pension’s investments, while conventional GASB accounting ignores risk entirely.

This is because the risk in government pension funds such as PERS is borne not by the funds themselves but by the taxpayers of the states. Under current law, if PERS were not to have sufficient funds to pay promised benefits, the state of Nevada would be obligated to force the state’s taxpayers to bail out the fund and cover the shortfall.
As Biggs stated,

A real-life example from the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) may help illustrate. Some local governments that participate in CalPERS are considering terminating their DB pensions as a way to curb costs. CalPERS recently declared that terminating plans would have their liabilities valued at a low 3.8 percent discount rate rather than the 7.75 percent rate that CalPERS ordinarily uses. The reason, CalPERS says, is once a plan is terminated the employer can no longer be required to make extra contributions, should returns on the plan’s investments fall. Under those circumstances, the plan must invest its assets more conservatively. In other words…the difference between discounting at the expected return and using the low returns dictated under market valuation is wholly a function of ignoring the value of the taxpayer guarantee to pay full pensions even if asset returns fall short. CalPERS’ own logic shows this to be the case.

This allows PERS to invest in investments with much higher returns – along with a much higher risk – factor in the higher projected returns in calculations of unfunded liabilities but ignore the higher risk that is associated with them. This incentives the fund to make riskier investments. Approximately 90% of PERS investments are in publicly-traded stocks and bonds.
In fact, while the return on Treasury bonds has declined, PERS has increased its projected rate of return three times in recent years. The rate PERS uses to calculate long-term returns on its investments has increased from 3 percentage points above inflation in 2000 to 4.5 percentage points above inflation today.
Several bills have been introduced over the years to attempt to reform PERS, most recently AB342 in the 2013 Legislature. AB342, sponsored by Republican Randy Kirner, would have introduced a hybrid pension system for government employees, with existing employees continuing in the current program and new employees being enrolled in a defined contribution plan, in which shortfalls in PERS would result in reduced benefits for beneficiaries rather than higher taxes on other Nevadans.
AB342 died without receiving a hearing in committee.
Debates over reform of PERS can at times seem confusing because of two radically different definitions of the term “risk” when discussing PERS.
When those who support the status quo use the term “risk” they are referring to the risk that PERS will be unable to pay promised benefits. Because of the taxpayer backstop the chance of this happening is virtually non-existent.
When reform advocates discuss “risk” they are referring to the chance that a taxpayer bailout of PERS may have to occur. The chance of this happening is significantly greater than zero and increases with the size of the unfunded liability.
Nevada is generally considered one of the better states regarding making the legally-required contributions to its pension plan. Some states have delayed or made smaller contributions than required during years of budget shortfalls but Nevada has continually made the necessary contributions. That hasn’t stopped the unfunded liability from growing.
Michael Chamberlain

Michael Chamberlain is the Editor of Watchdog Wire - Nevada. Please contact him at Nevada@watchdogwire.com for story ideas or to get involved in citizen journalism in Nevada.


Hmmmm this could be the cause that sinks Nevada to have a forced Nuke site brought here, against the public wishes, this could be the game plan!!!!