The Washington Post editorial board today again lent its voice to the ongoing Yucca Mountain saga. The newspaper argues the Obama administration should abandon its plans to come up with a new nuclear waste strategy and stick with the original plan to build Yucca Mountain, especially in light of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s independent review that concluded the repository would be safe and technically sound.
The Post asserts, “In a rational world, the NRC’s report would result in Nevadans backing down, Congress restoring funding and the Obama administration pushing Yucca along. This could fit neatly into the administration’s plan for nuclear waste, which foresees moving waste off reactor sites to interim storage facilities, then to a permanent repository when it’s ready. There’s no technical reason that the permanent repository shouldn’t be Yucca Mountain.”
Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-IL) agrees with the plan to go back to Yucca Mountain and is helping to lead the effort to restore funding and restart the project. Upon conclusion of NRC’s technical review, he commented, “With the SER now complete, we’re one step closer to keeping the federal government’s promise to build a permanent repository for nuclear waste. We now know from this independent government review that Yucca Mountain is safe and can meet the technical standards … Completing the SER is a milestone achievement, but there is still a long road ahead. I am eager to work with my colleagues in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle this Congress to ensure the NRC, DOE, and the State of Nevada have all the resources and incentives they need to keep moving forward on this national asset.
February 8, 2015
EDITORIAL: Back to Yucca Mountain
THE COUNTRY’S nuclear power plants have produced massive amounts of reliable electricity for decades while emitting negligible amounts of carbon dioxide. The big drawback is the more than 70,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel U.S. nuclear facilities have piled up — with 2,000 more tons added to the total every year. A report the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released in late January underscores that this problem is solvable — if only Congress and the White House would stick to a plan.
For decades, the plan was to open a permanent, geologically isolated storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., in which canisters of dry waste would be stored behind layers of rock and titanium barriers. The federal government spent more than $15 billion researching and developing the site. Until, that is, not-in-my-backyard opposition from Nevada leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D) prevailed. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to pull the plug on the Yucca project. After Mr. Obama took swing-state Nevada in the presidential election, his Energy Department ended funding.
But the regulatory process had already begun, resulting in the NRC report. The country’s nuclear regulators found that the Yucca facility would have been technically sound. They considered the potential for corrosion, cracking, damage from seismic activity and unintentional human intrusion. They gamed out the likelihood of breaches over massive time scales — up to a million years from now. Everything checked out, with a few conditions. The NRC’s experts, for example, would have barred planes from flying directly over the site. They also noted that if the federal government restarted work on Yucca, officials would have to obtain certain land and water rights from the state. …
The NRC report’s conclusions also show that Nevadans’ intense opposition to the Yucca project is unreasonable, unambiguously harmful to the country and should end. In a rational world, the NRC’s report would result in Nevadans backing down, Congress restoring funding and the Obama administration pushing Yucca along. This could fit neatly into the administration’s plan for nuclear waste, which foresees moving waste off reactor sites to interim storage facilities, then to a permanent repository when it’s ready. There’s no technical reason that the permanent repository shouldn’t be Yucca Mountain.
In the world we have, however, Nevadans are entrenched in opposition and the Obama administration is determined to put a long-term storage facility only in a place that would welcome it. It’s not clear where that would be. Meantime, whatever interim storage facility the government comes up with will not be so interim, storing nuclear waste for decades while officials start an unnecessary search for a new permanent site.
Read the editorial online HERE.
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