DOE 'Thumbs Nose' at Judges Yucca Water Ruling

[bananas]

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7044164

DOE 'Thumbs Nose' at Judges Yucca Water Ruling

Sep 7, 2007 07:41 PM

This week brought another round in the war of water use at the Yucca Mountain Project, but this time, it might end with sanctions or fines against the Department of Energy.

In June, the state barred water for test drilling at the site and earlier this week a judge agreed the state's water should not be used.

<snip>

Friday, the Nevada Nuclear Department spoke out saying the federal government is "thumbing its nose" at the water use restriction ruling.

Bob Loux, with the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said, "The Department of Energy and its lawyers arrogantly believe that they are entitled to do whatever they want, whenever they want it with whatever resource they think is appropriate."

<snip>

[ReadTomPaine]

1. Who is going to stop them? The DOJ?

Sadly - since this has executive branch support, that judge's ruling won't mean anything. The governor, Jim Gibbons, is an utter GOP tool as well - and he's backing the DOE on this.

Doesn't look good.

[malakai2]

2. The judge

Contempt can be a useful thing when Federal agency heads decide to ignore the law.

[ReadTomPaine]

4. Without enforcement power, the judge can say anything he wants, but nothing will happen.

It's the equivalent of the phrase "Stop, or I'll say stop again!"

[phantom power]

3. Just so I'm clear..

Nevada said they didn't want any Nevada water used for test-drilling at Yucca, and the DOE is overruling them?

[NNadir]

5. And the Nevada coal waste lawsuits to control water contamination are going how?

http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/energy/coal/nevada.php

The Toquop plant was originally proposed as a 1,100 MW natural gas plant in 2003, but due to rising prices of natural gas, was re-proposed as a coal plant. Sithe Global states that they hope to begin construction of the plant in 2007 and have it online by 2011. The company claims that they will use the latest technology to control air pollutants from the plant, but also say that carbon dioxide is not an air pollutant...


The DEIS reported that the plant would emit, among other pollutants, 330 pounds of mercury, 4,812 tons of nitrogen oxides and 6,071 tons of sulfur dioxide per year. In addition to these dangerous pollutants, the plant and the nearby Ely Energy Center would consume over 2.6 billion gallons of water each year – an amount that would greatly affect an arid state already struggling with water issues.

There is NOT ONE, zero, anti-nuke(s) who would even dream of pretending to care about this billion gallons of water - which is just for ONE coal plant for ONE year.

By contrast Yucca Mountain, if built, would represent all of the energy produced by all of the nuclear plants that have operated for 50 years.

Personally, I don't think that Yucca Mountain should be built, since the storage of used nuclear fuel has killed zero people and there is excellent evidence that this fuel will be a valuable resource for many generations to come.

However if Yucca mountain <em>were</em> built, it would never be as dangerous as the dangerous fossil fuel plant being built in Nevada to light Wayne Newton's billboards in Las Vegas.

Somewhat arrogantly - indifferent to the uses of resources for all of the alternatives to nuclear power - all of which are dangerous fossil fuels and nothing else - the anti-nuke industry assumes that simply because it couldn't care less about environmental damage from anything other than nuclear energy, every one else should act as if they couldn't care less.

If Nevada as developed a system of exajoule scale form of energy that does not involve billion dollar quantities of water, maybe they should produce it.

I suspect that no matter what Nevada says about water and energy, the members of the highly paid anti-nuke industry (which includes the natural gas shill Gerhard Schroeder and the coal apologist and Walmart consultant Amory Lovins) will act as if they couldn't care less about the intellectual integrity of their attempt to view nuclear energy in isolation from the dangerous waste and environmental impacts of all the stuff about which they couldn't care less.