The Department of Energy has extended the deadline for bids for the revival of the Deep Borehole Field Test to October 24 at 10:00 a.m. As borehole watchdog Donald Pay notes, there appear to be five bidders so far. One of those bidders, an apparent partnership of DOSECC Exploration Services and Enercon Federal Services, is following the USDOE’s directive to establish public support for the project with early public outreach in New Mexico:
Officials of two companies told Nara Visa-area residents and the Quay County [New Mexico] Commission that no nuclear waste will be involved in their proposed drilling of exploratory 3-mile-deep boreholes in the Nara Visa area for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Marc Eckles, program manager for DOSECC Exploration Services of Salt Lake City, hosted a public meeting on Oct. 4 at the Nara Visa Community Center to discuss the drilling project. On Monday, Peter Mast, president of Atlanta-based Enercon Federal Services, and DOSECC’s president, Dennis Nielson, presented the proposed drilling plan to the Quay County Commission.
After the companies’ presentation, the commission voted to allow them to proceed with their development of a bid for a contract with the energy department to conduct the drilling. Mast said four other bidders are competing for the deal [Thomas Garcia and Steve Hansen, “Borehill [sic] Drilling Discussed,” Quay County Sun, 2016.10.11].
I haven’t heard reports yet of similar meetings in South Dakota by potential boreholers. The bid deadline is only ten days away, so if any bidders are hoping to dig in South Dakota and avoid another Spink County fiasco, they’d better contact their targeted counties’ commissions or whoever else is meeting next week and get on the agenda.
Of course the bidding process is a way for the Department of Energy to keep everything secret until bids are awarded. Thus, it will be after elections before South Dakotans will find out if SD is once again targeted for this project. Shouldn’t candidates, from county commissioners to the US Senate race be asked about their position? And why can’t folks know if their is a proposal being developed for SD? Why can’t they weigh in before they are targeted?
Are you saying that when submitting proposals to the federal government that the other proposals should know everything in your proposal? And not only that….prior to the submission of said proposal?
But what if all the information comes out, the public has all of their questions asked and answered, all of the testing anybody wants is performed, and they approve such a non-nuclear test drilling by an informed public vote. What then?
Where is the responsibility for dealing with the wastes that we have already produced in the safest manner possible? This isn’t doggie waste left in your yard (which I might add is a potential health hazard that our politics is not solving!).
How about actually solving the issue (which requires research without any nuclear material), and taking those monies spent on the current oversight of these wastes and putting them toward social programs like social security? Or are we going to break those promises as well?
What’s the problem with honesty? I don’t think we are talking here about trade secrets, which have always had reasonable protection from disclosure. Simply disclose if there is a proposal being submitted for SD and the appropriate locations.
I don’t have a problem with honesty, but I don’t have a problem with patience either. They have to win the public consent at some point.
I’m sure some sites will be removed from current or future consideration based upon the review of their proposal, so why spend energy on sites that have no merit?
Yeah. I have no patience for delayed honesty. As a parent you figure out rather quickly that kids will try to delay honesty until it’s conveniently too late to do anything. Then they will come clean and expect praise. Can’t we be honest immediately.
Seems to be one proposal in Idaho, but I need a password to see it.
Do your kids have millions of dollars riding on who took a big swipe of chocolate icing from the big birthday cake? Money is a factor when state, community, and federal interests are at stake, and knowledge is a commodity that the other proposals will want to see.
Apparently both Trump and Clinton disagree with you on the immediate and full honesty clause…so I empathize to some degree with you.
It’s not a mystery that the DOE is interested in evaluating this technique. I don’t think the schedule that the DOE and the proposals are on stop anyone from becoming informed on the deep borehole disposal technique and voicing their opinion.
But I think you want to quash all progress in this area, and would rather do it now than later. The right thing to do is to perform the research necessary to safely dispose of the nuclear waste we have already produced. Don’t treat it like doggie waste, which is just left there on a neighbor’s yard in the hope that nature takes care of it. Dispose of it properly.
I think they posted the RFP in Idaho….not a submission…my mistake.
Look, we know this is about delay until after election day. Crookedness. Corruption. Dishonesty. Just tell the truth.
I would rather have the Supreme Court nominee voted upon prior to election day, but a lot of things don’t seem to move much until that lame duck period. Politics, politics, politics.
To be fair, the deadline is October 24, so there is still time for an announcement of the sites that submit something prior to election day.
How about a trade-off? Canada is giving us bitumen and its attendant problems with pollution. We give Canada nukular waste.
We get a trainload of tarsands-they get a trainload of our waste in return, plus most of their bitumen as a show of good faith.
My understanding of the DOE submission process is that everything will be secret until they select a proposal and they have a signed contract. The New Mexico submission appears to have been after a not very open process at the county level, and very little if any, public discussion.
New Mexico is where the atomic bombs were tested, and where a nuclear waste disposal site (WIPP) is actually operating. There are a couple of national laboratories (Los Alamos and Sandia) that deal with nuclear issues all the time. There have been on-going discussions in New Mexico about nuclear waste management beyond WIPP for years.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/low-carbon-future-unlikely-without-nuclear-power-director-general-tells-world-energy-congress
“In remarks made at the Congress, which discussed policies to address climate change in the midst of the rising demand for energy, Mr Amano said it was very difficult to envisage a low-carbon future, in which global warming is limited to less than 2° centigrade compared to pre-industrial levels, without nuclear power.”
Its Always the same situation like here in Holland. Everyone is against disposal of the radwaste in the deep subsurface. And also against storing it at the surface. So nothing happens and it will stay at the surface for ever. Its the waste of our generation So we have to solve the problem. Do research and take the less bad solution. There is no ideal one. Are you living in paradise?