Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has achieved his long-held plan of doing away with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Following conversations with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the White House, Senator Reid today announced that the administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off all funding to pursue a license application for the Yucca Mountain Project in the 2011 budget. It had been approved as the nation’s only permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and Department of Defense high-level radioactive waste.
“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain Project. I look forward to continuing my work with the President and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste.”
[…]
The proposed site for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is on federal land at the edge of the Nevada Nuclear Test site. The volcanic area has fractured, and critics expressed concerns that water moving through the fractures into the facility could corrode the containers holding the waste, releasing radioactivity into the environment.
Don’t know what you’re smoking, the science behind it was sound. As a Las Vegas resident, it would have been great to have this, especially if it were not a dump, but a depository where yearly storage fees were paid to Nevada. With all the budget cuts we’re facing it sure could help.
Just another case of NIMBY and politics once again.
Windmills near Ted Kennedy’s mansion supposedly create environmental and navigational problems.
Water for farmers in California is cut back due to a 2-inch delta smelt fish.
House construction stopped in Arizona due to the tiny American pika.
Midwest land development being bottlenecked by the black-tailed prairie dog.
But 20 years of study showing the safety of Yucca mountain and Harry Reid fights it until he can stop it politically.
So riddle me this… where will we put the nuclear waste that was going to be sent to Yucca Mountain?
The waste is mixed with concrete and sealed in steel containers. Even if there were leaks it would take thousands of years for any significant radiation to get out.
The site has never been “proven dangerous.” Its an extinct volcanic caldera and one of the most stable geological formations on Earth.
Over 900 nuclear weapons were tested at the Nevada test site near Yucca Mountain. The opposition to the new disposal site is a NIMBY issue.
It’s not dead until Congress kills it, and they voted this month to continue funding the site.
#1: You’re kidding, right? You live here and don’t know what happened?
In finding an article to point to, it turns out one of scientists who falsified reports has been rehired a few years ago.
Here’s another about the problems and politics. If it really WAS safe, why did they need to lie about it to keep funding going?
Certainly, there was some NIMBY as jebenson2 states, but then there came the scientific proof that it was a terrible choice. Science did that despite attempts to hide it.
The water table is going to rise 800 feet in the middle of the frackin desert?
If that ever happens, we will have far bigger concerns than these casks.
Uncle Dave – you don’t really expect nutballs to read anything written by a non-nutball? Do you?
The predictable defenders of junk science and pork are quoting from anything but peer-reviewed science.
In the first place, it requires a few calories of intellectual exercise to read some of this stuff. In the second place, it’s always easier for this lot to blame the people who turned up the problems – than their buddies who caused it.
One of the original geologists who worked on Yucca Mtn lives in my neck of the prairie, now. Since he’s over and done with “proving” that was safe in the first place – he’s now busy “proving” that one of the local tribes doesn’t have primary rights to the water coming from their land. It really belongs to the Anglos who live next door.
Ahh, don’t worry. There is another blue-ribbon committee in the works. Isn’t government decision making just wonderful.
Secretary Steven Chu has stated “What we’re going to be doing is saying, let’s step back. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue.”
“We’re looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinide waste. These are fast neutron reactors.”
Like I said earlier. NIMBY
Don’t send the waste to a desolate mountain deep in the desert. Let’s send it somewhere else and burn it. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’m sure the greenies and tree-huggers will love Obama’s new idea.
Oh – and #5 – I live in comparable high desert and the water table under my home has risen 100 feet in the past 10 years.
I realize geologic time and structure means nothing in American politics; but, try something more than “common sense”.
There’s a perfectly sound geologic reason for what’s happened in my own community – and I don’t waste the time anymore trying to ‘splain it to local politicos.
Besides, we’d probably end up with a few NIMBY’s wanting to move in because we now have more water than any other part of the region.
Just curious: how many $millions or $billions was spent on the Yucca Mountain project – simply going through the feasibility process?
If Harry Reid has been against this plan all along, why did he permit the huge waste of money? Or did he think that shoveling money into the plan was a good idea, just as long as it was never implemented?
And then there are dweebs like #7 who think the processes inside a nuclear reactor should be compared to a campfire.
Har!
It seems like we can safely dispose of nuclear waste but we don’t really want to.
I’m not a fan of nuclear power and I HATE nuclear weapons but it seems like we anti-nuke guys are hurting the situation by fighting every attempt to dispose of the waste.
(However, it seems like the biggest opponents to Yucca Mountain where the “not in my backyard” crowd rather than the anti-nuke crowd.)
#8 Moss, I don’t buy your comment that the water table has risen 100 feet in 10 years.
The bathtub ring on Lake Mead just keeps getting bigger and bigger as the water continues to lower.
http://bit.ly/4Jtu1
#10 Moss – hey watch who you are calling a dweeb!
I’ll have you know that dweeb is one of the Messiah’s chosen ones: the Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
#12 – if you were paying for the replacement pump at the bottom of a well string, you’d know about it in a jot.
I’ve done so twice in the past quarter-century – and the water table has risen probably more than that, by now. It’s been several years since the last time.
But, don’t let measurable reality get in the way of your politics. Or consumption vs. input as in the case of Lake Mead.
Now that a generation of Hippie Bolsheviks are occupying Washington, D.C,, we can only expect more of their Anti-Science, Anti-Civilization decision making. With the collapse of the American Empire,the NEW DARK AGES have arrived earlier we all expected.
#10 – Do you know what you get when you rub two Republican voters together?
A congressman who looks in the bathroom for Boy Scouts.
Yayyyyy! Now we can leave this dangerous material in the hundreds of different places where it is sitting now. I’m sure thats much safer than placing it under a mountain in the middle of the desert.
Great now we can keep our nuclear waste in our own back yards. We can bury what California produces with Michael Jackson and the Elephant Man at Neverland and in Jane Fonda’s back yard and in the back yards of every green activist that causes more nuclear waste due to their black wind energy that uses nuclear power.
So, which state has the dumbest senators? That’s where we need to build the next repository.
#19 Please. California has enough troubles.
You know what would be CHEAPER than this thing? A magnetic rail gun and launcher similar ‘cast’ enclosures into space out of our orbit. SOUNDS silly science fiction, but it’s actually pretty easy. No rockets to fail, they don’t have NEAR the safety record required for this kind of thing. But a MRG is just a ‘bullet’, once it reaches speed it’s all done. You have a safety ‘switch’ at the end to divert cargo if escape speed hasn’t been reached.
NOTHING dealing with this waste, NOTHING will be perfect. But we can get rid of it. And unless someone’s worried about ‘polluting’ the sun with radiation, it seems like a good disposal idea.
#21
Hey, I think that’s the first really great idea I’ve read in a blog comment! Have there been any studies to estimate how much it would cost to get working?
>> homehive said, on July 31st, 2009 at 6:02 am
>> Now that a generation of Hippie Bolsheviks are occupying Washington, D.C,, we can only expect more of their Anti-Science, Anti-Civilization decision making.
Yeah, “hippie bolsheviks” PERFECTLY describes this administration! 😉
Holy smokes, man, you SUCK at political analysis.
It was the “faith based” BUSH ADMINISTRATION that trashed the hell out of real science.
Not me, you,
I’ve been long infatuated with the so-called “Babylon Gun” being developed by Gerard Bull until his murder, often attributed to Mossad.
While I am a pacifist and hate weapons, the Bull story is amazing and may have yielded non-rocket launch technology.
As for nuclear waste, I think a low-tech solution is the ticket.
Can we encase the crap in ultra-reinforced concrete and store them at the bottom of an ocean trench?
They could be monitored for leakage and be retrieved for repair if necessary.
The technology is already mature — mostly really great concrete and reliable remote sensors.
If I remember my class on plate tectonics correctly, the crap will eventually be recycled back deep into the earth after a million years or so.
Everyone needs to read the book “Beyond Fossil Fools” by Shuster.
If we used fast neutron reactors, he claims, nuclear waste would be reduced by over 90%. It’s pretty clear looking at the data, if we don’t want to be dependent on radical islam and we want to be able to breath, nuclear is going to be a big part of the story. A typical coal plant puts out 100x more radioactive materials (from the burning of the coal and adjacent material deep in the earth) than a nuclear plant, giagawatt for gigawatt. The book is enlightening.
Great! Now we can keep dumping in SRS in South Carolina where there are no real facilities to handle it save for giant swimming pools.
And its right near an active fault line.
This kills the nuclear industry and keeps us on coal for another 50+ years.
This debate is heating up nicely…
What do ya do when ya build a house?… Put in a waste desposal system and a bathroom…
Seems like this should of been sorted a long time ago, before the First Nuclear Pwr Plant went on Line.. and besides what else can you do in Nevada?… besides gamble or work for the Military…
Seems the facility would generate a new revenue stream. We have to put this unwanted material some place… Under a mountain seems like a good idea to me..
We cant just sell it on Ebay?… that is what I do with my unwanted material?.. 🙁
Hey Mikey,… you wanna try it…
Hire the mob. They’ll dump it in Somalia.
Congratulations Dave, thanks to people like you, nuclear waste is stored in fragile water pools at reactors near large urban areas instead of safely under the barren wastelands of Nevada.
Great going NIMBY.
#29, Sweeney,
Why blame Dave? He didn’t put the waste in any fragile swimming pools. Blame the short sighted private sector that built their nuclear plants without thinking through where they would dump the waste.