Nuclear Waste

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the proposed Yucca Mountain site is no longer an option for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste, brushing aside criticism from several Republican lawmakers. Instead, Chu said at a hearing in Washington, D.C., that the Obama administration thinks the nearly 60,000 tons of waste in the form of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama's rival for president last year, asked whether it was true that Obama and Chu viewed Yucca Mountain as no longer an option.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who was championed by watchdogs for his cautious approach to nuclear power but criticized by Republicans in Congress for an overly hard-charging style has announced he will step down. Gregory Jaczko, who led the commission's efforts to protect Americans in Japan during the nuclear crisis at Fukushima and played a key role in fighting the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain as a former top aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

President Bush approved Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the burial ground for the nation's radioactive nuclear waste Friday, and an enraged Gov. Kenny Guinn promptly sued to block the proposal. "I am outraged, as are the citizens of Nevada, that this decision would go forward with so many unanswered questions," Guinn said. Nevada has set aside $5.4 million and hired lawyers in San Francisco and Washington to fight the decision in the courts.

A state ballot initiative proposed for next fall would force California's two nuclear power plants to immediately shut down, causing rolling blackouts, spikes in electricity rates and billions of dollars in economic losses each year, a nonpartisan analyst has found. The report by the Legislative Analyst's Office says the shutdown of San Onofre in northern San Diego County and Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County would disrupt one of the state's most reliable power sources and have profound effects on government and the economy.

Re "House OKs Nuclear Waste Site Bill," March 23: There is a simple solution to all this "NIMBY." Pass a bill that the nuclear waste will be apportioned to each state that has nuclear facilities, and the states can decide where to put it in their own sites. DOVE MENKES Fullerton

No radioactive leaks have been found following an explosion Monday at a nuclear-waste facility in southern France that killed one person and injured four others — including one person who was left with serious burns. None of the injured were exposed to radiation, and the cause of the blast remains unknown, according to a statement from France's Nuclear Safety Authority. The explosion was said to be under control within an hour of the blast that occurred shortly about 12:37 p.m. The explosion took place within an industrial oven used at the nuclear-waste processing facility called Centraco.

The Energy Department has asserted that Bechtel Corp. underplayed safety risks from equipment it is installing at the nation's largest nuclear waste cleanup project, according to government records. A federal engineering review team found in late July that Bechtel's safety evaluation of key equipment at the plant at the Hanford site in Washington state was incomplete and that "the risks are more serious" than Bechtel acknowledged when it sought approval to continue with construction, the documents say. Senior scientists at the site said in emails obtained by The Times that Bechtel's designs for tanks and mixing equipment are flawed, representing such a massive risk that work should be stopped on that part of the construction project.

For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown. Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant. The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.

When the first U.S. nuclear power plants went on line more than half a century ago, utilities built small cooling pools next to the reactors to store their radioactive waste, like the ones at Japan's Fukushima plant that overheated and probably leaked radiation into the environment. FOR THE RECORD: U.S. nuclear waste: A March 23 Section A article about U.S. nuclear waste management said a 2005 National Research Council study recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission force utilities to partially unload pools of spent fuel rods at their nuclear power plants and move their oldest waste into dry casks, which are considered much safer.

States and nuclear facilities that want to ship material to Yucca Mountain have sued to resurrect the plan the Obama administration wants to kill. 'It is like in a zombie movie, where you shoot off its arms and then its head and it still comes after you,' says a Nevada official. In the middle of the Nevada desert, jackrabbits and snakes keep watch over an abandoned, 5-mile-long shaft bored into a mountain. The tunnel was the first step in the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project, where it once hoped to store more than 70,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear reactors.

Let's set aside the charge that a state legislator could spend her time more wisely than promoting a law to drop the state rock (from statedom, not the top of her opponent). Let's also set aside the fact that it would surprise absolutely no one if we were to learn that state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who has proposed dropping serpentine as the state rock of California because it contains asbestos fibers, is getting campaign contributions from asbestos activists or plaintiffs' attorneys, which she's denied.

Nuclear power's place Re "Nuclear power isn't 'green,' it isn't safe and it isn't cost-effective," Opinion, March 5 Those who profit from nuclear power plants seem to have co-opted part of the media space to continue the falsehoods of "safe, clean" nuclear power. Nuclear power is not safe (ask worried workers at San Onofre) and not clean (when the polluting fossil fuels required for the whole nuclear fuel cycle are considered). It is never cost-effective, as no commercial company will touch a nuclear project without massive government subsidies and government insurance.

If the United States is at a loss over what to do about nuclear waste, it may be time to check out the Swedish model. A symposium at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in San Diego last week highlighted the Swedish power industry in gaining public support for a geological repository for high-level radioactive waste. The Scandinavian success comes in stark contrast to efforts in the U.S., where spent nuclear fuel rods have remained for decades in temporary storage at power plants around the country.