G OVERNM ENT & POL ICY CONCENTRATES
YUCCA MOUNTAIN COST JUMPS SHARPLY
SENATE PANEL ADOPTS CHEMICAL-RELATED BILLS The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee in late July approved several bills that would affect the regulation of chemicals. Two of the bills address perchlorate, a contaminant in some drinking water supplies that is linked to developmental effects. S. 24 would direct utilities to monitor drinking water for perchlorate contamination and S. 150 would require EPA to set a nationwide limit on the amount of perchlorate allowed in drinking water. The Senate committee also approved S. 1911, legislation that would require EPA to tighten the national drinking water standard for trichloroethylene, a widely used solvent. Another measure adopted by the panel, S. 906, would ban U.S. exports of elemental mercury and is similar to a bill, H.R. 1534, that the House of Representatives passed in November 2007 (C&EN, Nov. 19, 2007, page 36). In addition, the Senate committee approved legislation, S. 3109, authorizing the use of electronic manifests to track shipments of hazardous waste and a bill, S. 2994, to reduce contaminated sediments in the Great Lakes.
The cost of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada has grown to a projected $96.2 billion over its lifetime, according to a revised estimate released by the Department of Energy on Aug. 5. Taking inflation into account, the price tag increased by 67% over DOE’s 2001 estimate of $57.5 billion. The total system life cycle cost estimate, updated to 2007 dollars, includes the cost to research, construct, and operate the Yucca Mountain facility for 150 years, from the beginning of the program in 1983 through closure and decommissioning in 2133. “This increased cost estimate is reasonable given inflation and the expected increase in the amount of spent nuclear fuel from existing reactors with license renewals,” says Ward Sproat, director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste. The updated estimate reflects a 30% increase in the amount of commercial spent nuclear fuel to be disposed of in the repository, from a 2000 estimate of 83,800 metric tons to a 2007 estimate of 109,300 metric tons, according to DOE. The increased volume would extend the transportation period by 16 years and the emplacement period by 25 years. The larger amount of spent nuclear fuel is a result of existing and anticipated license renewals at operating nuclear power plants throughout the U.S., DOE says.
trate CO2. These projects will be managed by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory under its Innovation for Existing Plants program.
CARBON SEQUESTRATION PROJECTS GET $36 MILLION
EPA DENIES WAIVER ON RENEWABLE FUELS
The Department of Energy has awarded 15 projects a total of $36 million to develop technologies for the capture and storage of CO2 emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. “The projects announced today will combat climate change and help meet current and future energy needs by curbing CO2 emissions from coal-fired plants,” Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said in a statement announcing the awards. The projects, which will be funded for up to three years and require cost-sharing by the award recipient, will focus on five technology areas. These include the use of permeable and semipermeable membranes to separate CO2 from flue gas, the use of solid sorbents in various configurations to remove CO2, research on oxygen combustion systems to reduce unwanted compounds in flue gases, the development of oxygen combustion boiler technology, and chemicallooping combustion technology using solid oxygen carrier particles to concen-
EPA last week reaffirmed the federal standard mandating the amount of ethanol or other renewable fuels in gasoline and diesel sold in the U.S. The agency rejected a request from Texas to waive the standard for renewable fuel standards in 2008, citing increased food prices because of the amount of corn being diverted to ethanol production. Midwestern Corn Belt states and the Renewable Fuels Association opposed a waiver. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson says he turned down the Texas request because the renewable fuel standard “is not causing severe economic harm.” Waiving the standard, he says, would cut corn prices only by an estimated 7 cents per bushel. Johnson says the standard is “strengthening the nation’s energy security and supply and supporting America’s farming communities.” Congress required an increase in the amount of renewable fuels in the nation’s gasoline and diesel supply as part of the 2007 Energy Independence & Security Act. The law calls for 9 billion gal
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of ethanol to be produced this year from corn and cellulose, growing to 36 billion gal by 2022.
NIGMS FUNDS MORE STEM CELL RESEARCH NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences will increase its support of stem cell research by $27 million. The additional funding will provide each of three new research programs with about $9 million over five years. The multidisciplinary programs will be based at the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California, Los Angeles. They will provide insight into why cells switch from self-renewal to specialization and will study the details of the early steps in specialized cell formation. The research adds to the effort NIGMS launched in 2003 to understand the basic molecular and genetic features of human embryonic stem cells. The new programs join six exploratory centers, two multidisciplinary research programs, and several independent projects that are ongoing as part of that effort. Work on all NIGMS-funded projects remains limited to the federally approved stem cell lines listed in the NIH human embryonic stem cell registry.
