Yucca Mountain killed by Senate

[kristopher]

Fulfilling Barack Obama's campaign promise to close Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada, the Senate has passed a measure that will prevent further construction.

The long-planned Department of Energy storage repository to hold 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and radioactive waste is located about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain has been the subject of legal challenges and concerns over transporting dangerous waste to the facility practically since the DOE began studying the site as a potential repository in 1977. Political pressures from Nevada's congressional delegation have repeatedly delayed completion of the project, since being approved as a nuclear dump site by Ronald Reagan in 1987. When Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, a longtime opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, Yucca's eventual derailing seemed likely. Roughly $13.5 billion has been spent on Yucca to date. The House has passed a similar bill. Once reconciled with the Senate version, it will go to President Obama for his signature.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/30/yucca-mountain-nuclear-waste-facility-terminated/

[DCKit]

1. Unfortunate, since it all still has to go somewhere.

Not pro-nuke, by any means, and I'll rec the thread for more eyes, but Yucca has always been the best option (from a very limited menu of workable options).

[rhett o rick]

2. Agree. This is very short sited. Voting this down won't make the problem go away.

It makes it much worse. Yucca was the best choice and we already spent billions. The public is ignorant of the current danger of the current storage methods of the tons of nuclear waste. By killing Yucca we are making the temporary, inadequate storage of tons of nuclear waste into our permanent storage plan. Very dangerous.

[kestrel91316]

4. Yeah, I get your point. But as a native Nevadan, I really have a bone

to pick with the whole "NV is just a totally barren desert, so who cares if we contaminate ie with nuclear waste?" mindset. It's sort of like the mindset about the Vegas water grab from rural northern NV - it's just a damned desert, so who cares if we suck the aquifer dry to keep our golf courses green and build more of them?

[phantom power]

5. My understanding was that they chose Yucca because it was dry...

and geologically stable. Not "barren," per se.

[DCKit]

6. A whole 'nother issue, but I agree on both - all options suck....

but that water grab by LV is just ridiculous and wrong. There isn't enough "FU" in the world for those who believe they have some right to water they don't own - or even live close to.

[roody]

3. Cheers for the ancestral owners of the land.

[madokie]

7. This place should never have been considered to begin with

So many wrongs with this site not to mention that it wouldn't hold all that there is now let alone what comes next. We need to quit wasting money and time on the nuclear option for producing our electricity. We have better options

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Will reactors close or stay running?

Will this casue an indefinate security presence requirement at all currently operating reactors? If so wouldn't that make it more likely to continue generation? Assuming that if the radioactive waste could be transported to a central facility the security requirement would be eliminated.

On the plus side this is another reason to Not develop any new reactor sites.

[kristopher]

9. I don't think you can relate the two in that way

The plant would have a need for security whether the waste is stored on site or not.