Posted on 03/04/2009 11:00:21 AM PST by Sergeant Tim
More than two decades after Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected to be the national nuclear waste repository, the controversial proposal may finally be put to rest by the Obama administration.
In keeping with a pledge President Obama made during the campaign, the budget released last week cuts off almost all funding for creating a permanent burial site for a large portion of the nation's radioactive nuclear waste at the site in the Nevada desert. Congress selected the location in 1987 and reaffirmed the choice in 2002. About $7.7 billion has been sunk into the project since its inception.
"Yucca Mountain is not an option, and the budget clearly reflects that," Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, said yesterday.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), a staunch opponent of the Yucca project, called the Obama action "our most significant victory to date in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country's toxic wasteland."
Reid, who during primary season helped extract campaign promises from Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to stop Yucca Mountain, added: "President Obama recognizes that the proposed dump threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and millions of Americans. His commitment to stop this terrible project could not be clearer."
Less clear is what will happen next with the nation's growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
"That's a great question," said Geoffrey H. Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What an idiotic headline. Obama is simply punting on this issue.
It is the WaPo’s headline. ‘Nuff said.
Store nuclear waste in in Bill Ayers house in Chicago. No one will notice.
All this does is kill off nuclear power. If France can do it why can’t we?
As it is, nuclear waste is stored in 200 terror friendly sites nationwide.
The time is coming when you turn on your light switch and get to use a flash-light.
Much of the “spent” fuel rods can be re-processed. The French are quite good at it. I thought we were licensing a French firm to build a reprocessing facility in Montana, but I could be mistaken.
Material that cannot be reprocessed should be dumped in the bottom of deep oceanic trenches were the tectonic process will return it to the bowels of the earth. I can imagine the greenies screaming about that, but it makes the most sense.
The safest place to store nuclear fuel until we figure out what to do with it is in the dryest place possible. That means the desert. And within a mountain within the desert is even better.
You have that right! This is nothing more then an attempt to kill off nuclear energy. I am looking into pulling my house off the grid, at least I will have power when everyone else will be freezing in the dark.
Reid didn’t get his payoff!
Generators, if you can get enough fuel with your ration card ...
How about “Portable Backyard Nuclear Reactors”?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/portable-backyard-nuclear-reactors-ready-by-2013.php
well, there goes any hope of expanding nuclear power
cannot build new plants or expand old ones when waste disposal is an unresolved crippling issue
and Yucca is SO close, and the safety issue is another bogus environmental hype
looks like everyone better figure out how to build a windmill on their own property
france reprocesses their fuel, we don’t
And why don’t we reprocess? Because Congress says we can’t.
IIRC — France stores there low level waste in old salt mines.
—bflr—
this makes me want to watch The Beast of Yucca Flats (MST3K version) yet again. “Flag on the moon, how did it get there?”
Excuse my ignorance yet what does ‘blfr’ mean?
and we store our waste on numerous sites all over the country- so the enviros can claim “security” is a risk
no win situation- by design of the enviro-communist movement
it means that it is easier to type 4 letters into a post than to keep a wordpad or other file to save links in to read at a later convenience.....
****Less clear is what will happen next with the nation’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste. ****
That’s easy, He will leave it laying around right where it is until someone else has to deal with it.
—bump for later reading—
The nearest population center to Yucca Mtn. is Las Vegas at ~85-90 miles away (direct line distance). Somehow I think that more Americans would be in danger if the materials were not maintained in a facility designed for the purpose. Never mind the on-going security requirements in dozens of locales.
Thanks.
The safest place to store nuclear fuel until we figure out what to do with it is in the dryest place possible. That means the desert. And within a mountain within the desert is even better.”
HOw many millions of American tax dollars are going to go down the drain if this storage facility isn’t used?
What WILL they use it for?
Somehow I think that more Americans would be in danger if the materials were not maintained in a facility designed for the purpose. Never mind the on-going security requirements in dozens of locales.
EVERY hospital in the US that does any kind of diagnostic work has nuclear waste.
That is hundreds of sites of waste—not dozens.
With “National Health care”, this stockpile of waste will only get larger—very fast.
Recycle it.... the day the Jimmi Carter assumes room temp undo his stupid restrictions and set the breeders free!
How does France handle their Nuclear Waste?
Oh yes he did.. from the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resource Defense Fund and every other left wing eco-hustling lobby in Washington.
Those people carry big bags of cash to buy votes.
What people don’t know is that the utilities have paid DOE billions of dollars for a solution which was Yucca Mountain. We paid that through utility bills. Now the government owes them the money back. Guess where that will come from?
This is being done because the Democrats don’t want us to have nuclear power plants. They would rather our power grid fail, along with our economy and our freedom.
No, in concert with 'cap and trade' they will be able to impoverish anyone who does not rely on the government for energy, who uses 'more than their share', and keep people who choose not to live in their urban hellholes impoverished, chosing between eating and freezing.
It is all about control, about doing the most damage to America in the least amount of time, and they are getting it done.
Not only that; it basically kills off the whole power industry because fossil power is rapidly being gelded by a combination of cap and trade schemes and outright prohibition like, for example, Kathleen Sebelius' veto of a clean coal plant in Kansas and the EPA basically freezing construction of all coal plants until the utilities figure out how to do the impossible, dispose of CO2, the great conveyor of life. This is the most glaring difference between Obama and FDR: FDR, for all of his many faults, believed in and worked for an industrial America; Obama, OTOH, is a full blooded communist who bitterly hates America and Americans and is devoted to destroying America as we know it. Thus, he is doing his level best to destroy the electric power industry, without which we'll be turned into a third world shit hole.
Electric power is the life blood of modern civilization. You need to look no further than Kenya to understand that.
Obama sees his mission is to fulfill Rev Wright’s teachings — why do you think he sat there for 20 years listening.
Oh, yeah, that is brilliant. Just where is Bozo going to dump this shit if not there? Liberals are so frickin’ retarded it is hard to believe they are not all institutionalized!
20 miles north of Denio Junction Nevada in the SE corner of Oregon off highway 205. There is NO ONE THERE.
Drove through there once. Made west Texas look like Manhatten.
The stretch of highway 20 from Brothers, Oregon to Burns Oregon is another good place. NOTHING OUT THERE.
” I have the PERFECT place for nuclear waste storage.
20 miles north of Denio Junction Nevada in the SE corner of Oregon off highway 205. There is NO ONE THERE.
Drove through there once. Made west Texas look like Manhatten.
The stretch of highway 20 from Brothers, Oregon to Burns Oregon is another good place. NOTHING OUT THERE.
Haaa.... You left out beautiful downtown Wagontire ;^) “
____
LOL...my goodness, I didn’t think there was anyone besides me who knew where Denio or Wagontire is!
Believe it or not, there is even more remote areas north at ‘Christmas Valley’.
“They would rather our power grid fail, along with our economy and our freedom.
No, in concert with ‘cap and trade’ they will be able to impoverish anyone who does not rely on the government for energy, who uses ‘more than their share’, and keep people who choose not to live in their urban hellholes impoverished, chosing between eating and freezing.
It is all about control, about doing the most damage to America in the least amount of time, and they are getting it done.”
What you said is like what I said.
High level "waste" should be reprocessed and used to generate electricity. Low level waste should be deposited in Yucca Mountain. DemocRat anti-nuke ninnies should be pilloried.
Why wait for that miserable jackass Carter to expire?
That is actually the best solution. It is no more dangerous as waste than it was as fuel.
Waste Isolation Pilot Program near Carlsbad, NM.
They currently store low level nuclear waste in salt mines.
The sighting for the repository should be put up to auction by the Federal Government. The State with the lowest bid gets the repository. Nevada, with a lot of work already done on Yucca Mountain, should have a $7 billion head start.
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