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The earthquakes that rocked Nevada last week could also shake up the debate on Yucca Mountain. Rep. Dina Titus pointed to the tremors as proof that the facility north of Las Vegas is not a good place to store nuclear waste. “We’ve known there are fault lines in that area and that’s been part of our argument," she said, "but this very visibly proves the point. They try to argue that there are no showstoppers. You can accommodate anything, but I believe our argument when things are flying off shelves and the earth is cracking open is much more persuasive.”...

For some people, Nevada Rep. Susie Lee said, the opportunity to drive on repaved highways, cross repaired bridges and fly out of modernized airports isn’t worth the political implications of a major infrastructure bill. “I’ve been told, ‘You don’t want to give Donald Trump a win on this,’” Lee, a Democrat, told an audience this morning at the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas. But even though the passage of a major bill would give Trump a stump point for the 2020 election, Lee said, the need for infrastructure spending outweighs partisan politics. “This isn’t a Republican-Democrat thing. This is an...

Energy Secretary Rick Perry challenged Nevada’s claim his department secretly shipped plutonium into the state. Perry said Energy Department officials notified Nevada officials in August, before weapons-grade plutonium was shipped. Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak maintained that Perry didn’t properly notify Nevada of the plutonium shipment. Tensions flared between Nevada Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak and the Trump administration amid an ongoing fight over the Energy Department (DOE) allegedly secretly shipping weapons-grade plutonium into the Silver State. Energy Secretary Rick Perry responded to those allegations in a letter to Sisolak sent Friday, which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Perry’s...

The U.S Department of Energy has disclosed it shipped a large amount of weapon-grade plutonium to Nevada without the state’s knowledge. used to be test site still has craters Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons In November, Nevada filed a request in a Reno federal court for an injunction to block a shipment of plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site, which is often referred to by its former name, the Nevada Test Site. Turns out, the shipment had already happened.

Let's stretch our imaginations for a moment and assume that the left is right that global warming will bring apocalyptic warming by the end of the century and that the only way to save the planet from extinction is to stop using fossil fuels right now. That will be a spectacular disruption to world economic prosperity, because cheap fossil fuels account for about two-thirds of all electric power generation and at least 80 percent of transportation fuel. But if we did stop using fossil fuels, what would make the most sense as a mass-scale substitute to coal, natural gas and...

A House committee voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to advance a bill meant to move along the stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. The legislation would set a time limit for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to approve the project and makes a necessary land transfer for the project. It also allows the Department of Energy (DOE) to permit an interim nuclear waste storage site before Yucca has its licensing process completed. If the legislation becomes law, it would bring Yucca closer to reality, 30 years after Congress decided — over the objections of the state of Nevada — to...

Lawmakers faced off in a Wednesday hearing on proposed legislation to approve a nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Many lawmakers at the hearing were concerned about the federal government defaulting on its legal obligations to dispose of used nuclear fuel. Even House Democrats acknowledged the sheer scale of this problem. “Courts have determined that DOE has breached contractual obligations under this statute,” New York Democrat Paul Tonko, ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “DOE estimated that if it could begin to accept waste in the next 10 years, liabilities would total $29 billion dollars.”...

The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board implored President Donald Trump Tuesday to clean up the nuclear waste storage debacle left by former President Barack Obama. Obama helped former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to derail plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Without Yucca, nuclear power plants don’t have a permanent location to store spent fuel and left the federal government with $50 billion in legal liabilities. “Many people in Nevada didn’t want the waste, no matter how safe or isolated the storage facility may be,” the editorial board wrote. “It was the ultimate NIMBY [Not In My Backyard]...

Opponents of the newly revived federal plan to store nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain are preparing for battle with the Trump administration as the political winds seem to be shifting in favor of the project. Powerful figures in Nevada — led by Republican Sen. Dean Heller and including freshman Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, and Gov. Brian Sandoval — have vowed to fight the White House at every turn as it tries to breathe new life into Yucca Mountain with the first injection of federal funds into what surely would be a multi-billion dollar undertaking. But none of...

The Obama White House made an unfortunate and ungracious choice in launching a preemptive attack on Rick Perry's nomination this week. Spokesman Josh Earnest did his best deadpan as he disparaged the choice as one based on politics and not merit. But what about President Obama's appointments of Ken Salazar, Kathleen Sebelius, Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano? They were all lawyers without specific expertise in the issue areas of the departments they led. But each, having experience as elected Democratic statewide officials, knew enough about their respective issue areas that their status as non-experts never really mattered. Perry spent 14...

Harry Reid...[t]he soon-to-be-former Democratic Senate leader issued a statement Friday... “The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America... White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear—especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.” Crazy Harry went downhill from there, and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin... was appalled enough to issue a public rebuke: “Senator Harry Reid’s statement today...is wrong! It is an absolute...

President Obama says otherwise, but he seems to have a propensity for slapping the nuclear industry across the face. When the Obama administration came into power, one of its first actions was to end work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. In so doing, it delivered a shuddering blow to the U.S. nuclear industry, trashing the project when it was nearly ready to open. The cost to taxpayers was about $15 billion. Now the administration is going through the motions to suspend another costly nuclear waste investment when it is about 67 percent com

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid announced his retirement Friday after serving nearly three decades. But was Reid’s retirement precipitated by fears he was losing one of Nevada’s longest political battles: preventing the nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain?The use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository has been hotly debated for the last 25 years or so, with Sen. Reid promising Nevada residents he would never allow waste to be stored at the site.For years, Reid has been able to successfully keep the federal government from storing nuclear waste at Yucca. Nuclear waste storage at Yucca was first approved...

Yucca Mountain, located about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, Nev. (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) (CNSNews.com) – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has released the final two volumes of a five-volume safety report that concludes that Nevada’s Yucca Mountain meets all of its technical and safety requirements for the disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste. “With reasonable assurance, subject to proposed conditions, DOE’s [Department of Energy] application meets the NRC’s regulatory requirements” for the disposal of “high-level nuclear waste,” the regulatory agency announced Thursday. However, “completion of the safety evaluation report does not represent an agency decision on whether to...

Nuclear Waste: While Keystone XL remains a focus, the long-stalled repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nev., deemed safe in a recent report, is also good for the environment and for our energy future. The ghosts of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima continue to haunt and hinder the nuclear energy industry. Yet a report released Oct. 16 may revive both the spent fuel repository and the nuclear energy industry with it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report, mostly finished in 2010 but delayed by Yucca Mountain foes such as the Obama administration and soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s eight-year effort to keep a nuclear waste dump out of his home state of Nevada could soon become much more difficult. Since 2007, Reid has used his powerful Senate position to block the federal government from moving more than 70,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, a federally designated nuclear waste repository located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But polls indicate Republicans are poised to win control of the Senate in the November election. If the GOP prevails, Reid will lose not only his gavel but much...

Republicans won several energy and environment concessions in the $1.012 trillion fiscal 2014 spending bill House and Senate lawmakers unveiled late Monday, though attempts to handicap a slew of Environmental Protection Agency regulations did not make it into the final version. The package will maintain spending levels for a review of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, end funding for the federal light bulb standard and soften policies that restrict public financing for construction of coal-fired power plants abroad. The overall deal would fund the government through Sept. 30, preventing another government shutdown. Since current funding expires Wednesday, lawmakers are...

Department of Energy Imagine the following scenario: The President of the United States delivers a speech on nuclear energy. With gasoline prices high and oil being imported from unfriendly countries, the president says that “a more abundant, affordable, and secure energy future” will be a crucial part of getting the nation out of its economic slump. “One of the best potential sources of new electrical energy supplies in the coming decades,” the president notes, “is nuclear power.” But there are obstacles: Nuclear power has become entangled in a morass of regulations that do not enhance safety but that do cause...

Energy: A green administration blocks the safe storage of nuclear waste and refuses even to acknowledge nuclear power has a future. But after the GOP House votes to open a safe site, the nuclear debate has been reopened. Actually "waste" is an inaccurate term for the spent nuclear fuel rods still accumulating at above-ground fuel storage sites around the country, many near major cities. Spent nuclear fuel is a renewable resource that, in generating energy after being reprocessed, emits no greenhouse gasses. But wait, critics shout, what about Fukushima and Chernobyl? Certainly Russian incompetence and Japanese carelessness produced tragic results....

Gregory Jaczko has resigned his chairmanship of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).