Friday, March 06, 2009

Administration Abandons Yucca Mountain

Screw the billions of dollars and years of research… we’re going in a yet undefined direction. 

Driving a last nail into a $13.5 billion coffin, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the nearly completed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada is no longer an option for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Instead, Chu said, the Obama administration believes the nearly 60,000 tons of waste in the form of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed.

[...]

For 22 years, a ridgeline of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas has been the focus of the government’s plans to build an underground repository for high-level reactor waste. To date about $13.5 billion has been spent on the project and last year the Bush administration submitted an application for a construction and operating license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

But Obama’s first budget a week ago proposes scrapping all spending on Yucca Mountain except for what is needed to answer questions from the NRC on the license application “while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.”

 

(12) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0058 hrs
Politics + Politics - General

  1. I’m not going to put this all on Obama.  First, Obama isn’t smart enough to know the facts about Yucca, especially considering he voted for funding several times.
    This is a payback to Harry Reid, a vile person who personally has killed thousands of jobs in Nevada.  Reid has been a leading opponent of Yucca and now he has his wish of closing it down.
    Yucca is not widely supported in Nevada, by either party.  As a realitively new Nevadan, I support it, especially with the jobs it will create, but now, at least a couple hundred of people will lose jobs. 
    This will have ramifications elsewhere.  The chances of a nuclear power plant being built just got substanially lower because there is no where to put the waste.  With Yucca, at least there was a place in the future.
    So, now we will not have nuclear or coal for electricty.  But we will have wind and solar in a few years.  Yeah right.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 0127 hrs


  2. Dan, Yucca Mountain would fill up with nuclear waste as soon as it opened. It’s not a longterm solution for anything.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 0718 hrs


  3. Steve, you can document your remark?

    Posted by dad29 on March 06, 2009 at 0816 hrs


  4. It gets worse.  The Congress also refuses to allow the recycling of the spent fuel or collaboration with other countries that use nuclear power on research.  The existing technology - used by Europe and Japan is not the most efficient, but it is a proven technology.  France has a facility that currently recycles most of the spent fuel from these countries.  There is also a mountain facility in Sweden for storage of spent fuel.

    There was a facility being built here in the US to do this as well, but Jimmy Carter killed it before he left office.  Now it would have to pretty much start from scratch.

    There are also other technologies for recycling being researched that would be much more efficient, but Congress is reluctant to fund it because 1) they are idiots and don’t understand nuclear power because they watched the China Syndrome too many times and 2) they are scared of anything but the proven technology that they don’t want us to use either.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1001 hrs


  5. This is a terrible idea. Yucca mountain is an ideal location. On the bright side, as others have mentioned, should we be smart enough to get going on nuclear power again, newer technologies can get more energy from what we thought were spent rods. So, I guess it’s good they are still scattered around the country.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1057 hrs


  6. Dan, Yucca Mountain would fill up with nuclear waste as soon as it opened. It’s not a longterm solution for anything.

    It would be a long term solution for every bit that it can hold…. are you always this bi-polar?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1215 hrs


  7. There are two primary reasons to have the spent rods in one place instead of scattered around the country. 

    1) it would take a different type of reactor to recycle the spent rods.  So it would make sense to build that reactor close to the storage site.

    2) security - watch the 60 minutes report on the attack on Pelindaba in South Africa
    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/20/60minutes/main4621623.shtml

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1251 hrs


  8. Why does Obama feel the need to follow thru on GW Bush’s campaign promises to the people of Nevada?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1410 hrs


  9. Security is the primary reason to shut down Yucca Mountain. There is no safe way to transport all that nuclear waste across the country. The trains would be a terrorist target.

    Posted by Ordinary Jill on March 06, 2009 at 1554 hrs


  10. Nuclear material is safely transported all of the time.  It just isn’t highly publicized - for obvious reasons.

    Or do you think the plants should hold public hearings and put out flyers so that the usual suspects can lay down in the road in front of the trucks and protest it?

    As a matter of fact Japan ships their spent rods all the way to France for reprocessing.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 06, 2009 at 1648 hrs


  11. The sheer volume of radioactive material stockpiled at all of our nation’s nuclear reactors would require more trips than our current rail infrastructure could accommodate.

    Posted by Ordinary Jill on March 07, 2009 at 1554 hrs


  12. The sheer volume of radioactive material stockpiled at all of our nation’s nuclear reactors would require more trips than our current rail infrastructure could accommodate.

    That is complete nonsense.  The rail freight infrastructure in this country is more than capable of hauling the relatively small quantity of material (about 55k metric tons in total) we’re talking about.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 07, 2009 at 1837 hrs


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