Rick Perry Rejects Facts in Favor of Coal and Nuclear Bailouts, Union of Concerned Scientists, JEREMY RICHARDSON, SENIOR ENERGY ANALYST | AUGUST 9, 2018
As is typical with this administration, substance and science and evidence are inconsequential compared to ideology, and their attempts to bail out money-losing coal and nuclear plants are no exception. Here’s a quick take on how we got here and what to expect next…….
LET’S SEE WHAT STICKS…
THE ADMINISTRATION DIDN’T EXACTLY HIT THE GROUND RUNNING AFTER THE 2016 ELECTION—NO ONE BOTHERED TO SHOW UP AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING OF 2016, EVEN THOUGH CAREER STAFF WERE READILY AVAILABLE AND PREPARED TO BRIEF THE INCOMING ADMINISTRATION ON THE IMPORTANT WORK OF THE AGENCY. BUT BY THE SPRING, IT HAD BECOME CLEAR THAT ENERGY SECRETARY RICK PERRY WOULD BE THE FRONT-MAN IN LEADING THE CHARGE FOR A FEDERAL BAILOUT OF COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS. HIS SHIFTING RHETORIC AND POOR JUSTIFICATIONS FOR USING CONSUMERS’ MONEY TO PROP UP UNECONOMIC COAL PLANTS SUGGESTS THAT HE AND HIS INNER CIRCLE ARE DESPERATE TO FIND AN ARGUMENT THAT STICKS AND SURVIVES LEGAL CHALLENGES.
JULY 2017: A LEAKED VERSION OF THE DRAFT GRID STUDY SUGGESTS THAT DOE CAREER STAFF WERE PUTTING TOGETHER AN UNBIASED REPORT IN SPITE OF TREMENDOUS POLITICAL PRESSURE.
AUGUST 2017: THE FINAL GRID STUDY CONCLUDES THAT CLOSURE OF COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS DO NOT THREATEN RESILIENCE AND RELIABILITY, NOT EXACTLY THE CONCLUSION PERRY WAS LOOKING FOR. THE STUDY FINDS THAT THE GRID IS OPERATING RELIABLY WITH HIGH LEVELS OF RENEWABLES AND THAT LOW NATURAL GAS PRICES WERE LARGELY TO BLAME FOR RECENT PLANT RETIREMENTS. BUT, IN A HINT OF THINGS TO COME, IT DOES SUGGEST EXPLORING THE IDEA OF “UTILIZING EXISTING FEDERAL AUTHORITIES UNDER THE FEDERAL POWER ACT … TO ENSURE SYSTEM RELIABILITY AND RESILIENCE” AND HAVING STATES USE REGULATORY AUTHORITY “TO SUPPORT SPECIFIC AT-RISK PLANTS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO SYSTEM RESILIENCE.”
SEPTEMBER 2017: PERRY PUSHES FORWARD. UNDETERRED BY THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE STUDY HE REQUESTED AND EVIDENTLY UNINTERESTED IN FURTHER RESEARCH, PERRY ASKS THE FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION (FERC) TO GUARANTEE PROFITS FOR COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS UNDER THE GUISE OF ENSURING A RELIABLE AND RESILIENT GRID.
MAY 2018: AN INTERNAL MEMO LEAKS ON MAY 31. IT REVEALS THE ADMINISTRATION’S PLANS TO USE EMERGENCY POWERS, UNDER THE KOREAN WAR-ERA DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT AND THE FEDERAL POWER ACT, IN ORDER TO BAIL OUT THE MONEY-LOSING COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS, WHICH TOOK FERC BY SURPRISE. THE NEW RATIONALE IS THAT THESE PLANTS ARE VITAL FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND THAT WITHOUT THEM, THE ELECTRICITY SYSTEM WOULD SOMEHOW BE MORE VULNERABLE TO CYBERATTACKS.
JUNE 2018: THE LEAK PROMPTS THE WHITE HOUSE TO RELEASE A STATEMENT ON JUNE 1 DIRECTING PERRY TO “TAKE IMMEDIATE STEPS TO KEEP BOTH COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS RUNNING” ON THE BASIS OF NATIONAL SECURITY.
IN SHORT, THE ADMINISTRATION IS PROPOSING TO USE EMERGENCY AUTHORITIES TO FORCE GRID OPERATORS AND CONSUMERS TO BUY ELECTRICITY FROM UNECONOMIC COAL AND NUCLEAR PLANTS. LET’S BREAK DOWN THE ARGUMENTS ONE BY ONE. …….
Led by Secretary Perry, the administration continues to make false and misleading arguments about the purported need for keeping uneconomic plants from retiring early—and this issue will be with us as long as the current president is in office. ……
After U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry came to Oswego County last week to praise the state’s support of nuclear power plants, several environmental groups and New York politicians sent a letter to state leaders saying the opposite.
The idea of using public dollars to keep financially struggling nuclear power plants afloat because they don’t emit carbon dioxide was never popular among some environmental groups that consider the facilities dangerous and dirty because of the radiation and nuclear waste they create. So when the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) voted two years ago to bail them with about $8 billion in fees on consumer’s energy bills, they left the door open to a potential compromise.
Then-chair of the PSC Audrey Zibelman said they would look at letting customers opt into a program to buy 100 percent of their energy from clean, renewable sources instead of paying into the system that supports the nuclear subsidies. Jessica Azulay with the Alliance for a Green Economy says it’s time for the state to make good on that promise.
“What this letter does that we filed with the governor and the chair of the Public Service Commission is to try to win the right for consumers to decide that they no longer want to pay this extra money toward nuclear energy and they want to instead adopt 100 percent renewable energy,” Azulay said. “We think that this is a really common sense approach – maybe a first step – in reversing the nuclear subsidies by allowing people to vote with their dollars and really create the pathway for renewable energy to accelerate in New York and phase out the nuclear reactors.”
To date, the nuclear subsidies have cost New York ratepayers about $650 million. A spokesperson for the PSC says the price would be even greater had the plants been allowed to shut down because they could have been replaced with fossil fuels that would have emitted carbon dioxide, setting back the state’s goals to lower carbon dioxide emissions 40 percent by 2030.
Dave Toke’s Blog 7th Aug 2018 So finally the Government has, after I feared so long it would, chosen the
doomsday option to fund new nuclear power stations – one that will be
disastrous for the consumers and taxpayers.
After years of swearing that
they would not offer subsidies to nuclear power, and saying that in the
future the terrible drain of (historical) over-spending on nuclear power
would stop, the Government has gone back to square zero.
Essentially, under
the Government’s proposals for so-called ‘Regulated Asset Base’ (RAB) of
funding nuclear power (described in a recent article in ‘Unearthed’, a
Greenpeace publication), the nuclear developers will have no real limit on
what they can spend to build the power stations. It is a recipe for
national disaster.
No private developer is willing to take the construction
risks of funding nuclear power in the UK, whatever ‘strike price’ is
offered for the electricity that might be generated in future. Doesn’t that
tell you something?
So EDF stepped up to the mark. EDF, the French
state-owned company, may be starting the real part of the construction of
Hinkley C in 2019/2020. The French state will pay for the inevitable cost
overruns that come along with building the plant, combined quite probably,
with an out-of-contract bailout by the British Government when the going
gets tough.
But now the Government is casting around for another nuclear
power plant to be built, – Wylfa or Sizewell C – but neither developer
(Hitachi or now EDF) wants to take the risk of paying the almost inevitable
losses on the project. So enter the Government’s new proposals which will
no doubt be promoted as a simple accountancy trick to lower costs, but hide
the fact that the state will take the losses, to be divided up between us
as taxpayers (loss of guaranteed loans and construction risk guarantees)
and electricity consumers (advance payments on top of electricity bills).
And, note this, whatever ministers may say, the exposure by taxpayers and
consumers in UNLIMITED. http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-nuclear-plan-means-that-consumers.html
Trump says firms doing business in Iran to be barred from U.S. as sanctions hit,Babak Dehghanpisheh, Peter Graff, BEIRUT/LONDON (Reuters) 7 Aug 18, – Companies doing business with Iran will be barred from the United States, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, as new U.S. sanctions took effect despite pleas from Washington’s allies.
Iran dismissed a last-minute offer from the Trump administration for talks, saying it could not negotiate while Washington had reneged on a 2015 deal to lift sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump decided this year to pull out of the agreement, ignoring pleas from the other world powers that had co-sponsored the deal, including Washington’s main European allies Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China.
Unearthed 6th Aug 2018 , Consumers could pay for new nuclear power plants years before they are
built. The government is considering using a controversial financing system
to build new nuclear power stations which would see customers charged for
construction costs long before a project has actually been built.
The approach, called the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model, has been described
as an “open cheque book” for developers, as consumers could be locked
into paying the costs of a project going wrong – like construction taking
longer than planned, or prices spiraling – indefinitely until it’s
complete.
Shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead MP said: “The problem
with this model as applied to new nuclear power stations is that it
transfers all the risk of construction from the developer to the customers,
with the rather wobbly promise of benefits to come in the future.
” Like other public-private finance models, the RAB model has a sticky history.
The government has already supported the use of RAB for the Thames Tideway
Tunnel, a £4.2bn project to revamp 15 miles of sewer lines in North
London, which Thames Water says a RAB model has helped lower costs. Much of
the work around taking a RAB approach to financing nuclear power has been
carried out by Dieter Helm, professor of Energy Policy at the University of
Oxford and a figure respected by government.
Writing in a blog about the
model’s application to nuclear last month, Helm highlighted a number of
open issues – such as which regulator would set the RAB for nuclear
projects, as well as the “very severe lobbying pressures” any regulator
would come under when making its RAB evaluations. Helm concludes that the
RAB may be an efficient approach to financing nuclear power, but still
doesn’t address fundamental issues about its cost competitiveness with
other technology like wind and solar, or what do with all its radioactive
waste. “It is for society to decide whether it wants new nuclear or
not,” he said. “The market cannot decide.”
More than 120 groups push NY to lift broad nuclear subsidies. by Associated Press & CNYCentral , August 7th 2018 ALBANY, N.Y. — Some 130 environmental groups are taking aim at New York’s nuclear subsidies.
The coalition, led by the Alliance for a Green Economy, wrote to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday urging him to overhaul the subsidies so New Yorkers who would prefer cleaner forms of energy can opt out. Groups including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and Food and Water Watch signed on to the letter.
Under a two-year-old policy, New York utility customers pay extra each month to support aging upstate nuclear plants. The subsidy could raise as much as $7.6 billion over several years.
The James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear plant in Scriba, in Oswego County, was in danger of closing in 2016 just before the state announced it would subsidize the plants.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured the plant with Rep. John Katko last week, where the issue of subsidies came up. Katko said he disagrees with Cuomo at times but applauded his effort to keep the FitzPatrick plant open.
President Trump appeared on Sunday to place blame for massive wildfires in California on the state’s environmental laws, including its water and forest management policies, saying that such regulations have made the blazes “so much worse.”
“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” Trump tweeted. “It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”
The president’s tweet comes as California continues to face a series of wildfires that have destroyed buildings, homes and left several people dead.
California has seen a spate of highly destructive wildfires in recent years. Fueling those fires, in part, has been a buildup of vegetation in the state, along with long droughts that dried up that vegetation.
The chair of a New Mexico legislative committee that monitors radioactive and hazardous materials in the state says he finds it troubling Attorney General Hector Balderas has concluded the state cannot legally stop a New Jersey-based company from the building a nuclear waste storage facility.
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company specializing in nuclear storage, has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct a nuclear waste storage facility about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Carlsbad.
The facility, to be located in western Lea County, could eventually store up to 10,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, as much as 120,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste, from nuclear power plants around the country. It would be stored just below the surface.
The facility is intended to be a temporary storage site, storing nuclear waste only until a permanent storage facility can be built. But opponents fear that it could become permanent because plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have stalled because of opposition.
Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, said Wednesday that New Mexico should have a say about the proposal and that he was disappointed in the attorney general’s opinion, The Hobbs News-Sun reports .
“It’s troubling that a project of this magnitude with this much exposure to the state — I mean exposure in the sense of the hazardous materials involved and long-term ramifications of it being here — that our state would not have a say in being able to approve it or not,” said Steinborn, who chairs interim Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee.
Balderas said in a letter last month the state cannot legally stop Holtec International from temporarily storing up to 100,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste in New Mexico.
Balderas cited the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and two court cases clearly establishing two principles.
“(F)irst, that the NRC has the statutory authority to license and regulate consolidated interim nuclear waste storage facilities, and secondly, that the comprehensiveness of that federal regulatory scheme pre-empts virtually any state involvement,” Balderas wrote.
Traditional owners “locked out” of nuclear waste vote, InDaily, 3 Aug 18 Stephanie Richards The head of the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association says the majority of Adnyamathanha people have been denied a vote on a proposed radioactive waste management facility near the town of Hawker in the Flinders Rangers.
Wallerberdina Station, located approximately 30km northwest of Hawker on Adnyamathanha country, has been shortlisted by the Federal Government for a facility that will permanently hold low-level nuclear waste and temporarily hold intermediate level waste.
It is one of three sites, the other two situated close to Kimba, that were shortlisted by the Federal Government to store nuclear waste.
The selection process is entering its final stages, with a postal ballot beginning on August 20 to measure community support for the three nominated sites.
But ATLA CEO Vince Coulthard said the voting guidelines were disrespectful to traditional owners, as the majority of Adnyamathanha people do not live close enough to the proposed Wallerberdina site to be eligible to vote.
The voting range includes residents of the Flinders Ranges Council and those who live within a 50km radius of the Wallerberdina site.
According to Coulthard, there are approximately 2500 Adnyamathanha people in total but only about 300 Adnyamathanha people who live in the voting range.
Coulthard said about 50 Adnyamathanha people who lived outside the voting range had expressed interest in voting, but when ATLA asked Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan during a consultation trip to Hawker last week if those people could be granted a vote, Coulthard said Canavan told him that only those living in the prescribed voting range could participate.
“It’s a crazy situation,” Coulthard said.
“This is Adnyamathanha country and it is a very important place to the Adnyamathanha nation.
“People have strong connections to land. There’s a large amount of people, many who don’t live on the land but they go back on a regular basis to travel around the land.”
……… Coulthard said he was disappointed that Canavan had not consulted with all ATLA members during his consultation visit.
He said Adnyamathanha people had been “locked out” from the vote, despite holding native title rights over the land.
“Canavan is saying this will strengthen our culture, that this will be good for us, but what it is actually doing is punishing the environment.
“This is a place where we have gone to get bush tucker, where we have come as traditional owners for thousands of years.
They’ve shown us disrespect and this is very hurtful.”
The proposed site holds sacred meaning for Adnyamathanha people, as it is located close to the Hookina Waterhole and ancient burial sites.
…….. Last month, the Federal Government tripled the incentive package for the community that hosts the nuclear waste repository.
The Government had promised to spend more than $10 million in the district where the facility is built, but under new incentives announced by Canavan, the Government increased funding to $31 million.
Morrison cited several fears some of the townsfolk have about the project, such as negative impact on tourism, water contamination from the DGR boring project and the risk of accident while transporting high level waste along the highway.
Morrison said money has already come into Hornepayne because of its progression into the project. NWMO’s Learn More Project provides funding to cover travel expenses for individuals who represent the community to meet with the NWMO at its office in Toronto. It also funds the hiring independent experts to advise the community ($15,000 or less) and pays to support authorities to engage citizens in the community to learn about the project ($20,000 or less).
“Businesses that are for the project get some of that money from council and businesses that aren’t don’t get any.”
Nuclear waste debate divides Northern town Ben Cohen Special To The Sault Star, August 3, 2018 Hornepayne, Ont., a community of 980 people about 400 kilometres northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, is one of the five finalists to see who becomes home to a nuclear waste facility.
In 2011, the town entered a bid to become a repository for 5.2 million log-sized bundles of used nuclear fuel. They were joined by 21 other Canadian communities that have since been whittled down due to internal protest or geological unsuitability.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) of Canada’s plan is to take this used fuel, known as “high-level nuclear waste,” contain it in steel baskets stuffed into copper tubes and encased in clay, and place that in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR), a 500-metre deep hole reinforced with a series of barriers. This is where it will stay for the 400,000 years it remains radioactive.
Bradley Hammond, senior communications manager for NWMO, told the Sault Star that the project only moves forward if it receives “broad social acceptance” within the selected communities.
“We won’t proceed in an area with opposition,” he said, adding that he has complete confidence that NWMO will find a suitable town by 2023.
When asked if there was a plan in place if all five of the finalist communities, Huron-Kinloss, Ont., Ignace, Ont., Manitouwadge, Ont., and South Bruce, Ont., back out of the project, Hammond indicated there isn’t, because that would be impossible.
A rally is being held in Hornepayne Aug. 14 to oppose the town being used for nuclear waste storage. Those at the helm of the rally said the project “exploits” their small town. Continue reading →
Moorside nuclear bidder stripped of preferred status, Construction News, 3 AUGUST, 2018BY BINYAMIN ALI
The £10bn Moorside nuclear power plant has been plunged into further doubt after Korean energy firm Kepco lost its preferred bidder status to develop the scheme.
The plant’s current developer Toshiba is now looking at alternative options for the future of the site after negotiations with Kepco failed to reach a conclusion.
Toshiba said this week that a sale to Kepco was still on the table and it was in “consultation with stakeholders including the UK government” to find a solution.
The protracted negotiations have also forced NuGen, Toshiba’s Moorside development body, to restructure its business………
NHK 2nd Aug 2018 The president of Tokyo Electric Power Company says the utility is
considering scrapping some of the reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant,
at the request of one of the 2 municipalities that host the nuclear
facility. TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa revealed for first time the
request is under consideration during a meeting with Kashiwazaki Mayor
Masahiro Sakurai. The pair met in the Niigata Prefecture city located on
the Japan Sea coast on Thursday. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180802_36/
REPORT PROJECTS DOE COAL, NUCLEAR BAILOUT COSTS COULD TOP $34 BILLION, Popular Resistance, By Emma Foehringer Merchant, Greentechmedia.com
A previous estimate, from a pro-coal group, put the cost at $4 billion.
Analysis out this week from The Brattle Group estimates the Trump administration’s coal and nuclear support plan could cost between $9.7 billion and $17.2 billion annually.
Working off of the scant details presented in a draft memorandum released by Bloomberg in May, The Brattle Group analyzed several scenarios the administration might employ to support nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
One assumes the government would pay an average $50-per-kilowatt flat rate to all plants, costing $16.7 billion a year. In another scenario, facilities experiencing shortfalls would be compensated directly at a customized level between $43 to $58 per kilowatt, costing between $9.7 billion and $17.2 billion each year. The draft memo suggested facilities would receive payments for two years, putting high-end cost estimates north of $34 billion for the duration of the program.
If the administration moves forward with a plan that pays facilities back for capital already invested in power plants, in addition to operating shortfalls, it bumps the price to $20 billion to $35 billion per year.
Brattle’s cost estimates dwarf the $4 billion calculated by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, presented in a report earlier this month. Groups that have opposed the potential policy, including Advanced Energy Economy, the American Wind Energy Association and the Natural Gas Supply Association, funded the Brattle report.
The widely varying price tags echo diverging opinions on the bailout policy.
In a statement on the Brattle analysis, Amy Farrell, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Wind Energy Association, called the costs “a steep price to pay in an era of U.S. energy abundance, when independent regulators and grid operators agree that orderly power plant retirements do not constitute an emergency.”……https://popularresistance.org/report-projects-doe-coal-nuclear-bailout-costs-could-top-34-billion/
Building 26th July 2018, The National Infrastructure Commission’s landmark report this month
seemed to sound the death knell for nuclear energy new-build, calling for a
large-scale shift to renewables by 2050 – and for only one more nuclear
power station approval by 2025. But are we really likely to get 90% of
Britain’s electricity from green sources within a generation? The NIC’s
assessment does not call for the end of all nuclear new-build aspirations.
But the direction of travel is clear: its prediction is that the cost of an
energy system heavily reliant on nuclear will, on current terms, be
marginally more expensive than one powered 80%-90% by other renewables, and
– importantly – that the cost of renewables is much more likely to fall
in future and thus ultimately work out significantly cheaper.
It is only because of all the uncertainties inherent in these predictions that it
recommends continuing with nuclear at all, albeit on a “go slow” basis,
so as not to entirely lose capacity in the industry in case the programme
has to be fired up again.
The assessment says a minimum of 50% and as much
as 90% of UK electricity should come from renewables such as wind and solar
power by 2050. And hence, that no more than one further nuclear reactor
should be given the go-ahead before 2025. This, it says “will allow the
UK to maintain, but not expand, a skills base and supply chain [and] to
pursue a high renewables mix […] without closing off the nuclear
alternative”. This may sound like a nuanced shift, but for those in the
sector it is very radical.
Few outside of environmental lobby groups have
ever proposed a UK electricity generation sector reliant 80%-90% on
renewables before. Richard Lowe, director of power in Aecom’s
environmental division, welcomes the emphasis on renewables but questions
how realistic it is. “Others such as the Committee on Climate Change have
done their own projections as to what is realistic, and I wouldn’t say
this is the midpoint of the range – it’s very much at one end of the
scale.”
Arizona’s nuclear power caught in crossfire, A renewable energy ballot measure could shutter the largest nuclear plant in the country. High Country News, Elena Saavedra Buckley July 27, 2018 “……. in the light of a controversial ballot measure meant to steer Arizona towards renewable energy, Palo Verde’s fate has been caught in the crossfire of a battle between state utilities and environmentalists.
Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, a committee backed by former Californian hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, drives the initiative. They submitted over twice the amount of signatures needed to get on the ballot. If successful, the measure would constitutionally require Arizona utilities to use 50 percent renewable resources by 2030, holding them accountable for certain percentages each year.
But Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, funded a lawsuit filed last week against the initiative. The political action group that filed the suit claims most of the signatures are fraudulent, which the initiative denies. The utility has bigger worries than the signatures, though — they’re worried the measure would force Palo Verde to close in six years. An oversupply of solar, they say, would render the plant useless.
………..In Nevada, an identical, Steyer-backed measure is already on the ballot. If the measures pass in November, the two states will join California as the West’s most ambitious examples of renewable commitment.
…….. Beyond Arizona, nuclear energy’s place in the carbon-free future of the West is an open question. In California, whose renewable goal is already 50 percent by 2030, nuclear plants have closed decades before their licensed expiration dates, struggling to compete with cheaper natural gas and solar. Whether nuclear plants should stay open as a stable alternative to fossil fuels divides environmentalists. Amanda Ormond of the Western Grid Group, which promotes incorporating clean energy into the grid, thinks nuclear power is an obstacle to a functional renewable future.
“Transitions have costs, and this is a huge transition,” Ormond said of the ballot measure’s proposals. “Palo Verde might close anyway. It’s an inflexible, expensive resource, and it will face the consequences of any resource.”
The facility is intended to be a temporary storage site, storing nuclear waste only until a permanent storage facility can be built. But opponents fear that it could become permanent because plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have stalled because of opposition.
nuclear-news 