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Remember the feds' controversial plan to store all of the country's spent nuclear fuel deep inside Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert some 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas? Well it looks like that proposed resting place for the country's nuclear waste has apparently been, well, laid to rest.

When President Obama unveiled his budget last month, he essentially eliminated funding to prepare the site as the nation's nuke graveyard. The scant funds still to be allotted, according to the Las Vegas Sun, will just be enough to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)—the body responsible for managing civilian nuke power—to hold planned hearings on licensing the facility’s construction.

Even if the NRC gives the green light to Yucca, the dual opposition of Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) likely spell doom for the site. “What happens once we say 'yes' or 'no' is out of our hands,” NRC spokesperson Eliot Brenner told The New York Times. A spokesperson for Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently erased any lingering doubts about the site's future, recently telling Science that her boss has made clear that “Nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period.”

Perhaps recognizing this, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the Washington, D.C.–based trade organization representing the nuclear industry, has not made a big fuss and has instead called for more study of the matter and an independent commission to advise the president. “The results of an independent commission’s strategic assessment of the overall approach to used fuel and defense waste management can provide direction,” Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of NEI, wrote in an op-ed February 27 in The Energy Daily. 

The political hot potato has been little more than a money pit since 1987 when Congress and the Department of Energy selected it as the permanent storage facility for up to 70,000 metric tons of waste produced by the nation's nuclear power plants. Taxpayers have subsequently poured nearly $11 billion into the project, including early planning stages—much of it in penalties paid to utilities when the site did not begin accepting shipped waste in 1998 per plan. Closing down the facility before it’s even built, let alone opened may leave the government owing billions of dollars more to utilities who have helped fund its proposed construction, according to The New York Times.

As detailed in ScientificAmerican.com’s recent special report on nuclear power, over its nearly 50-year history, U.S. commercial nuclear reactors have produced some 64,000 metric tons of fuel rods that presently sit in pools of water on-site, cooling for decades, or are sealed up in cement dry casks. While this temporary solution should hold for several decades, finding a long-term plan for storing nuclear power’s dangerous leftovers falls to the energy secretary, who testified before a congressional panel during his confirmation hearing that finding a replacement for Yucca or somehow making it work will take up “a significant part of my time and energy.”

Dry cask storage. Image Credit: NRC

5 Comments

1. 1. Theodore 06:30 PM 3/9/09

   Why dig in rock? Just build warehouses on the surface and stick it in there. It's simple, quick and cheap.

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2. 2. NuclearHydrocarbons 01:55 AM 3/10/09

   The initial heat flux of the global inventory of spent nuclear fuel has the energy capacity to produce 3.5 billion barrels of America's oil shale or 6 billion barrels of Canada's bitumen annually.
   
   Each day this heat is exhausted to the atmosphere, contributing in its own right to global warming, the equivalent of 16,438,356 barrels of oil is lost permanently and the U.S. exports another $657,534,247 overseas to pay for its oil?
   

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3. 3. plaintruth 12:17 PM 3/10/09

   For a President who wants to make decisions based on science. This sure looks like a political decision and not based on science.

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4. 4. lewis 11:39 PM 3/10/09

   I wish WWW3 was not a future reality, but all signs point to it. In such a war the 65,000 tons of rods out in the open would likely be a target. I do not think a future hard core communist leader able to push the red button would refain from this tactic. Leaving substancal additional fallout across Usa and Europe.. This unthinkable but nevertheless nessary reasoning is the main reason for putting it undergound! As majority of nevadians agee yucca mtn. should go forth. If Harry is worried about his state 10,000 years from now, I would think about the next 5 to 150 years insted. Starting over in someone esle's back yard is the height of wasting many years and many billions already spent. Logic dictates a state with low rainfall and low population. After 998 nukes already having been setoff in the same area whats the difference of a few millirads reaching the suface? Vs. 100 nuclear units in many states that will eventually be extra dosed with quadtillions x quadtrillions of millirads! How selfish can he get! Why does he not insted focus on the best up and running antibalistic symtem, and getting russia to take their dirty nukes offline and replace them with clean nukes, considering that some of usa/eurpean fallout willend up landing on the survivors in russia. Or harry could run a campain to get people in nuclear armed nations to repent and not converge on the middleast and Yisreal with all it's nukes. Or replace all the need for oil from this hotbed with nuclear power, and other non-polluting energy generating enities like Hoover Dam (formly Boulder dam) that my grandfather help build and run in the 30's, built in record breaking time, not like how projets get dragged out nowdays by niby,s and their pollical coharts insetting the stage for future events to be worse. form the frying pan to a radioactive hell for the survivors!

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5. 5. consforscience 02:58 PM 3/14/09

   On the heels of President Obama's attempt to budget Yucca Mountain out of existence, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has proposed a new nine member commission to tackle the country's nuclear waste challenges.
   
   And you will never guess who gets to appoint three members of this commission including its chairman. No points if you said Harry Reid.
   
   So the political fix is in before the science is considered. Welcome to the new era of "post-political science."
   
   http://conservativesforscience.blogspot.com/

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