Lessons from the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Storage Debate
Reader Comments
Nuclear Energy is needed
The need for energy is a given. Nuclear is just one means of electrical energy generation and has proven itself. The government is pushing green energy great, but will fall short of needs. America needs to manufacture to improve and stabilize the economy and create growth, this requires energy, electricity is the best current available energy source.
The politicians need a plan that includes:
1. Standardize Nuclear generation types and sizes
2. Standardize construction &(permits) to expedite
3. STORAGE, transportation, and reprocessing of spent fuel
4. EDUCATION of the public (and Reid).
Not in my back yard RIED, 8 billion at YUCCA, it is the bending of the facts and scare tactics. A bullet train to Las Vegas is how we spend money wisely?
Yucca has had so much scrutiny I feel it is unwise to fill in the hole and put our head in the sand. Wake up America, just look at Europe and Japan.
The US needs a "Bottom Up" Nuclear Waste Plan
I am a long time lawyer and advisor to WTS, the operator of WIPP,and wrote about this subject this week (3/16) at abqjournal.com.There are many lessons to be learned from the world's only functioning deep geologic nuclear waste depository-WIPP. The most important is that Washington should make no new storage or displosal plans without including states and localities in the site selection process from the very first day. State govenment support is far more difficult to obtain that local approval.Before a presidential commission makes new national nuclear waste disposal policy once again without knowing if it has any viable storage or disposal sites, it should reach out to communities and states to determine where opportunities for storage or disposal really exist. Instead of selecting pottential sites and then trying to "foster local support", states and localities should first be asked what they want and under what conditions.
Smart Article
I research energy issues -- www.energyplanusa.com -- and think this article is the best, most honest that I've recently read. Yucca was a political solution to a scientific problem. RIP Yucca Mountain Waste Depository.
The US does reprocess its uranium waste...
And we continue to shoot it into the deserts of Iraq and other countries in the middle east. Depleted Uranium (DU) is also a major contributor to cancer among Desert Storm veterans.
Continuing the perpetuation of the nuclear-military industrial complex is wrong in countless ways, is inefficient when considering the life cycle emissions and costs, and leads to significant further environmental degradation.
Come to think of it... why Nevada?
Nevada was home to the CONUS nuclear tests and saw its fair share of controversial shots that spread, in the end probably harmless, but still worrying fallout. Is it then suprising after getting steamrolled by the federal government in a nuclear issue that the state would oppose also storing nuclear waste on their lands?
Here in Sweden, the two counties most in favour of having a storage site are those closest to the nuclear power plants Forsmark and Oskarshamn. They have lived wioth nuclear power for a long time now and guided visits to the plants are free. They know what it's about, so they have no worries about a storage site.
It's all about perception. LEt people know what it's about and *then* ask them their opinion.
Closure of Yucca Repository
Removing the U-238/Pu from once-through fuel and using it as fuel for fast reactors has always been the long-term scenario for knowledgable nuclear engineers. It will provide the entire world with enough oil-replacing energy for 3000 years and lower the amount and longevity of fission products a hundred-fold. The anti-nuclears and their lobbyists were the ones who (in the 1980s-1990s) forced the DOE to design Yucca to accept “spent” fuel that still contains 95% usable fisionable or fertile Pu/U, because their goal was to abolish nuclear power. Now that more and more people realize nuclear power is the only practical green solution to rescue the world from economic collapse after 2030 (when we start to run out of oil), the antis are still too stubborn to admit they were wrong and use hype and junk science to justify their earlier follies. They are pushing us right into an economic abyss by plugging solar and wind energy while declaring nuclear energy unnescessary. Wind and solar are fine but only useful to serve small-quantity electricity needs in select remote locations. An honest evaluation of costs shows that solar and wind are three times more expensive than nuclear electricity because of enormous maintenance and energy storage costs. Solar and wind could never economically provide the massive amounts of power needed for (1) running heavy industry, (2) synthesizing portable synfuels to replace oil for long-haul transportation (fuel for airplanes, trucks, ships, etc), and (3) electricity to empower vast fleets of future electric plug-in automobiles used for short-haul locomotion. Only uranium and coal can provide the needed terawatts for this. But coal, besides polluting the biosphere, must be preserved for making plastics and other organics when oil is gone. This leaves uranium fission energy as the only affordable means of surviving the pending energy crisis. Caving in to the misguided beliefs of a few Nevada politicians by the Obama administration will be viewed as a black mark by future generations. The serious energy shortfalls we are facing can only be solved by experienced hands-on energy engineers; not by politicians, lawyers, or theoretical armchair philosophers. Approval of Yucca and encouragement to build more reactors was one thing the Bush administration did right. Perhaps to save face, the Obama administration can retrofit and re-assign the already-built Yucca repository to accept only fissioned uranium products, after valuable U/Pu is first removed from once-through fuel elements for recycle to fast reactors. This has always been the long-term plan of the nuclear power industry and is already being implemented in France, Japan and other countries who have taken over the lead from the erstwhile US-dominated nuclear power industry.
Risks Acceptable
I believe that the Yucca mountain location has been proven to be a one having acceptable risk from both geological and terrorist disruptions.
I know that it could be said thet living in Florida I express a NIMBY attitude but I assure you that I have offered my back yard to my Senators and Congressman. but there is no activity here yet.
The risk is made more acceptable since doing nothing to reduce emissions will surely spell the end of most of the global population. The good life at least.
I would ask all who have similar feelings to write their representatives in Congress and urge them to stop politicalizing the the problem and make the Yucca Mountain Repository happen.
Yucca Mountain
The politicians (read: Harry Reid) would have you think they are experts on everything by the way they pontificate endlessly on those things about which they know only the buzz-words.
Bottom line: Yucca Mountain is safe. It is probably the MOST studied geological formation in the country. The risks are absolutely minimal. The real problem lies with perceptions fostered by ignorant (again, read: Harry Reid) politicians. Reid doesn't have many claims-to-fame, so he has jumped on the anti-Yucca Mountain bandwagon to win some ill-deserved accolades.
Sooner or later, we MUST let the scientists and engineers have their say...not a big-mouthed buffoon like Reid.
Yucca Mountain
Professors Powers and Kosson have an excellent suggestion to establish four interim storage centers, pending the development of a long-term answer for commercial spent nuclear fuel. Another observable concern, expressed in a 2003 joint Harvard and University of Tokyo study on interim storage, is that credible progress needs to be proceeding on the permanent plan, lest people adjoining the "interim" facilities start to be concerned that the facilities might become permanent.
The Department of Energy estimated that it would be 2015 at the earliest if Congress directed DOE to develop an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel now at nine decommissioned reactor storage sites. What if, instead, the Obama Administration rattled some cages at the Dept of Interior and DOE to have them help rather than hinder the development and use of an ALREADY LICENSED storage facility proposed by Private Fuel Storage LLC in Skull Valley, Utah. The State has opposed the facility and was successful in getting DOI agencies to deny access to the site over federal lands.
As a societal question, we have to wonder whether Nevada's fierce and sustained attacks on the repository proposed in their State may have so demonized the facility that other States will adopt the same impulse. Likewise they have portrayed the transportation of nuclear waste as potentially catastrophic even though in over 30 years of safe shipments of nuclear waste in this country there has never been a radiological release. The shipments are made in heavily shielded containers and follow strict federal and State regulatory controls.
