ABQjournal: Netherlands Nuclear Plant Is the Model for N.M.
By Harry Moskos, Of the Journal

Herald Voschezang says New Mexicans need not fret over stored waste from Louisiana Energy Services’ proposed $1.2 billion nuclear fuel factory in Lea County.

“There is no issue regarding waste,” Voschezang said as we walked through Urenco’s seven-building, 55-acre uranium enrichment facility in Almelo, located near the German border and about a 90-minute rail ride from Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam in July, en route to Greece, and took a tour of the plant.

Urenco, with two similar plants in Great Britain and Germany, supplies about 19 percent of the worldwide nuclear power refining needs. The company describes itself as an independent, global group using its own centrifuge technology to do uranium refining for power generation.

The LES plant proposed for New Mexico near Eunice would be patterned after the Almelo plant and would be the first centrifuge uranium refinery in the United States. It would refine uranium for use as nuclear power plant fuel. …

LES would like to start construction next summer with a late-2008 completion date. The New Mexico plant would be the fourth in Urenco’s international network.

Voschezang, one of five shift managers at Almelo, said he sees no problems with storing waste in steel cylinders on site, as they do at Almelo.

“You may store them in my back garden. I have no problem with that,” he said as we looked over an open field with several hundred of the containers.

It is the storage of those cylinders containing uranium waste? “tails”? that is causing consternation in New Mexico. The New Mexico plant would generate about 8,000 tons of radioactive waste annually.

“Leakage is no discussion,” Voschezang added. “The enriched part of the uranium is used to make fuel, and you have the depleted part and that’s the tails. And that is what is in the barrels and they can be stored safely.” …

Each cylinder at the New Mexico plant would be 4 feet in diameter and 8 feet long. The cylinders would contain uranium hexaflouride, a substance that resembles rock salt. …

The New Mexico plant will employ about 210, including security, in the operation of the plant. This would be in addition to construction crews.

“Don’t worry,” Voschezang said, about having a facility that will process uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants. “And especially when you see the distances in New Mexico. Here, we are only two kilometers to the center of Almelo.”

Harry Moskos can be reached at 823-3837 or hmoskos@ abqjournal.com.

Did you read the Journal’s glowing account of the company that will build a dangerous nuclear processing plant in New Mexico? Didn’t it sound wonderful? I suggest you read the Sierra Club article about the same company — Urenco. Not nearly as chearleady. peace, mjh

Nuclear Proliferation Article Main Page – Sierra Magazine, May/June 2005 – Sierra Club

Sierra Magazine
Dangerous Liaisons
from the May/June issue of Sierra Magazine

The company whose nuclear secrets leaked to Iran and North Korea now wants to bring its know-how to New Mexico. What will be the fallout? …

Three decades ago, a brilliant young Pakistani metallurgist named Abdul Qadeer Khan managed to steal highly classified nuclear secrets while working in Amsterdam. It was a theft that would first shake Pakistan’s Chagai Hills test site, and ultimately the rest of the planet. Working for a firm that contracted with Urenco, a Dutch-German-British company that provides uranium-enrichment services to nuclear power plants, Khan had access to Urenco’s secret blueprints and manuals. He learned how to enrich uranium in centrifuges to make fuel for nuclear power plants but also for weapons. He took what he learned back to Pakistan, enriched uranium at the Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, and helped his country build its first nuclear bomb. …

Centrifuge plants, of which there are only a handful worldwide, can also be easily and covertly retooled to produce weapons-grade uranium, the key component in nuclear warheads. …

The problem is that no one knows whether the 21st-century Urenco has plugged its security leaks.

“[Urenco’s] technology was stolen a long time ago and a lot has changed since then,” says Bruce Moran, an NRC staffer who monitors international nuclear safety. When asked to explain exactly what Urenco had done to ensure that its classified nuclear secrets were secure, a Urenco spokesperson told me that since the New Mexico plant will be an “LES enrichment facility,” I would need to speak with LES (even though, according to an LES spokesperson, the centrifuges will be assembled on-site by Urenco security-cleared contractors). I then asked LES vice president Marshall Cohen what had changed since A. Q. Khan’s day to close security loopholes. Cohen didn’t know offhand but repeatedly assured me, in calls, by e-mail, and in person, his company would provide an answer. It never did. …

In Hobbs, New Mexico, a boom/bust oil town of 28,000, the public is noticeably absent from February public hearings before the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, which will recommend whether to license the LES plant. City officials are solidly behind the idea, and local residents are desperate for new jobs. “Very few people have gone to these public hearings,” says Rose Gardner. “They trust our leaders to make the right decisions.” Gardner, 46, owns Desert Rose Flowers and Gifts in the tiny town of Eunice, 20 miles from Hobbs and 5 miles from the proposed site. On the first day of the weeklong hearings, she and retired Hobbs businessman Lee Cheney are the only members of the audience not associated with either the media or LES. …

“Congress is taking a basically hands-off approach; that LES is a private enterprise and under NRC jurisdiction so there’s no point in intervening,” he says. To the degree that there has been intervention, it has been boosterism on the part of Pete Domenici (R-N.Mex.), the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. In 2003, the senator pledged to aid LES by working “at all levels to help get through the long permit and regulatory process.” He then praised LES partner Urenco and its history of uranium enrichment in Europe. Of Urenco’s past performance, he added, “We can expect as much here.” …

Senator Domenici is an old friend of the energy industry. He was the top Senate recipient of money from electric utilities (which include nuclear power plants) during the 2002 election cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, he received more than $175,000 from electric utilities alone, and more than $400,000 from the energy and natural-resources sector overall.

In interviews with the Santa Fe New Mexican, Domenici has expressed a desire to create a “nuclear corridor” along a 60-mile stretch of the Texas-New Mexico border, where radioactive waste dumps and the LES facility would support existing nuclear power plants and new plants around the country. Though no new nuclear power plants have been ordered since 1978, plans are now in the pipeline to relicense 18 reactors at 9 power plants nationwide. The LES centrifuge project would fuel the renaissance.

ABQjournal: Wilson, City Councilor Tour Valle Vidal
By Martin Salazar, Journal Northern Bureau

Northern New Mexico rancher Alan Lackey hoped he was nevertheless able to drive home the point that even the most environmentally conscientious drilling scars the land with its network of roads, pipelines, well pads and utilities? all visible on Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch, which is being drilled.

The drilling also depletes natural resources like water, Lackey said, adding that for each well that’s drilled an estimated 1 million gallons of ground water has to be pumped out before it can start producing. …

Lackey? a Republican and a founding member of the Coalition for the Valle Vidal? pointed out the networks of roads and well pads that have sprung up on the Vermejo Park Ranch and in southern Colorado.

As I read today about damage from drilling on Vermejo, I remembered John Dimdahl’s nonsense of 6 months ago. mjh

ABQjournal: Environmentalists Hijack Public Land Multiple Use By John Dendahl, For the Journal
Friday, March 4, 2005

How can those of us wanting balanced public land use be assured that drilling won’t spoil Valle Vidal? The first place to look is in the “environmentalists'” own back yards. Ted Turner, a major financial supporter of the environment movement, owns the Vermejo Park Ranch. An educated guess of his royalty income from gas production is several million dollars a year.

Turner’s ranch hands reportedly ask guests to play the game, Find a Well. There are hundreds of wells on the ranch, yet they are so inconspicuous guests rarely make a find. …

The important point here, though, isn’t the lying and hypocrisy, it’s that production of oil or gas is being achieved at Vermejo and Rainey with essentially no land, water or wildlife damage. …

There are myriad reasons familiar to nearly all of us why we should develop domestic sources of oil and natural gas. Despite dated, obstructionist hype, the needed development can — and will — go hand-in-hand with sound environmental protection.

If Ted Turner and the Audubon Society can write contracts with producers that protect their land and water, so can the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM.

Richardson needs to tell his “environmentalist” pals to take a long, enjoyable hike — maybe go look for wells at Ted Turner’s place up north.

Lifelong New Mexican John Dendahl is a retired executive and political leader. E-mail: jdendahl@swcp.com

mjh’s blog — Search Results for Dimdahl

mjh’s Blog: anti-environmentalists

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Sunday, August 14, 2005

Regarding the Corporate Welfare Act of 2005….

Billions for Billionaires

Why should the oil and gas industry require something on the order of $15 billion in tax breaks when for instance, Exxon/Mobil in one single quarter made on the order of $35 billion in profit? Exactly what kind of an energy strategy does that comprise other than giving huge amounts of money to companies already swimming in money. … And just how will that make us less dependent on foreign oil? Simple, it won’t!
ALAN PEZARO
Sandia Park

Energy Bill a Gift to Big Oil

America needs a new kind of energy strategy, but this energy bill is just another corporate giveaway which fails to help Americans at the gas pump, and deepens our dependence on foreign oil and does not diminish pollution.

The conservative Heritage Foundation said that “we’ll be dependent on the global market for more than half our oil for as long as we’re using oil, and the energy bill isn’t going to change that.”

America needs a new, visionary program for energy independence. …
REV. LARRY BERNARD
Laguna

Fuel Wasted on Energy Bill

WE USED how many pounds of jet fuel for Air Force One and how many pounds of jet fuel for commercial planes in a holding pattern while Air Force One landed and departed? all to fly in and sign an energy bill, which presumably could have gone in to law no matter where it was signed?

Perhaps if our elected leaders led by example, our energy woes would be a step closer to being resolved.
GREGORY ROTHROCK
Albuquerque

ABQjournal: Around the Metro Area
Councilor Urges Wireless Network

City Councilor Eric Griego will introduce a proposal Monday to explore the creation of a citywide wireless Internet network.

Griego said the city should seek proposals for a contractor that would install, maintain and support such a network.

Under the plan, users would generally pay an Internet service provider, although access to the wireless service would be provided for free at certain public locations.

“I think in about 10 years, cities that are not wireless are going to be at a major disadvantage for economic development,” he said.

Yes, by all means. Just this week, I easily connected at Wyoming library and UNM Continuing Education. Note that when Philadelphia attempted this, big corporations went to the state to block their efforts. peace, mjh

ABQjournal: Communication Guru Sends a Mixed Message
By Autumn Gray, Of the Journal

Frank Luntz, called one of America’s best “communication professionals,”… said he sees Albuquerque being left behind, in the wake of Phoenix, Denver and San Diego, largely because local politics is getting in the way of development that could spur careers, rather than just jobs.

Luntz suggested developers get more involved with the political process and hold politicians as well as themselves accountable for why the city does not have many of the same business opportunities other cities have.

Albuquerque should be delighted to be left behind by Phoenix & Denver. mjh

Duke City Fix — FRAME GAMES by Marston Moore

It was Luntz who came up with much of the language for Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America.

When Bush talks about initiatives like ?Clear Skies? (translation: Gut the Clean Air Act) or ?Healthy Forests? (translation: log it like there?s no tomorrow), that?s LuntzSpeak. …

?Never, ever refer to yourselves as ?developers? he warned the developers. (The term doesn?t poll worth a damn; voters think they’re the bad guys.) ?You are designers! You are creators!?

Out West, a Paradox: Densely Packed Sprawl
By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Staff Writer

Odd as it may seem, density is the rule, not an exception, in the wide-open spaces of the West. Salt Lake City is more tightly packed than Philadelphia. So is Las Vegas in comparison with Chicago, and Denver compared with Detroit. Ten of the country’s 15 most densely populated metro areas are in the West, where residents move to newly developed land at triple the per-acre density of any other part of the country. …

Open space in the West has always seemed endless. But deserts, mountains, huge tracts of federally owned land and a pervasive lack of water make much of the region unlivable. As such, it has remained the most rural part of the country in terms of land use while becoming the most densely urban in terms of where people live.

ABQjournal: Subsidy-Laden Energy Bill Light on Conservation
By David Cargo
Former New Mexico Governor

By failing to enact measures to reduce our nation’s oil consumption, Congress has committed an unforgivable sin of omission. The technology to dramatically improve vehicle fuel economy is fully mature, and the potential savings are enormous: a modest increase of five miles per gallon would save 1 million barrels of oil each day by 2010, nearly 10 percent of our current imports.

If all U.S. cars (not including light trucks) sold today used off-the-shelf hybrid technology, the nation would save 15 percent more oil than it received from the Persian Gulf in 2002. That’s what some of us would call progress on the path to energy security .

But instead of addressing the oil efficiency issue, Congress lavished billions on tax breaks and subsidies on the oil and gas industry — an industry that is hardly in need of financial assistance. It’s a stretch to imagine how these subsidies could lead to lower costs for consumers, or to greater energy security for our nation.

To add insult to the injury suffered by America’s taxpayers, Congress has decided that our right to clean, safe drinking water is less important than the oil and gas industry’s right to drill, drill, drill. By weakening both the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, Congress has imperiled the West’s most valuable natural resource.

This should cause special concern here in New Mexico, where many communities already struggle to protect their water supplies from contamination in the oil and gas patch.

While some may trust the industry’s promises to protect our water, I’d be far more comfortable knowing that those promises were backed by the force of law. Now, it will be up to cash-strapped state agencies to protect our water from pollution. Call it another unfunded mandate from Washington.

Lonesome Dave Cargo is the kind of Republican who can’t get elected anymore. mjh