Yucca Mountain project may be dying
The infamous Yucca Mountain project to stash 77,000 tons of nuclear waste inside an old volcano northwest of Las Vegas may be moribund, slowly dying of inanition as funding is cut.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving project.
Five years after then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended on Feb. 14, 2002 to President George W. Bush that Yucca Mountain be used for storage of radioactive rods, the Department of Energy has scaled back its spending on the project. It probably represents a tacit recognition that storage in Nevada of radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants is a doomed project.
The DOE in early February sent Congress a budget requesting $494.5 million for the proposed nuclear waste repository in the federal fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. It was the smallest Yucca Mountain request since fiscal 2002, and $50 million less than the amount budgeted last year for 2007.
In an editorial titled “Waste dump loses support,” the Las Vegas Sun on Feb. 8 waxed eloquently on the predictably languishing project:
“Burial of high-level nuclear waste is not the answer, whether at Yucca Mountain or anywhere else. It is simply too dangerous. It would require carting the highly radioactive nuclear waste around the country, causing increased risk of nuclear accidents on the nation’s highways. Burial would also make the waste susceptible to earthquakes, and hasten what appears to be the inevitable—that the waste will eventually leech into the ground water.”
One of the little-publicized truths of the Yucca Mountain boondoggle is that nobody has developed a cask that will hold the radioactive nuclear rods for 1,000 years, let alone 10,000 years as has been suggested as being necessary. Once the casks were laid to rest in the mortiferous mausoleum of the mountain, and began to leak, you can’t send in guys dressed in lead space suits to fix the problem. And once the radioactivity leeched into the ground water, it would seep into Death Valley, thereby provoking a giant interstate battle between Nevada and California.
Good riddance to a bad project.
Comments
One of the little-publicized truths is that nobody needs to develop a cask to store used nuclear fuel for 1000 years. Since over 95% of the energy in used fuel can be recycled and reclaimed, the longest amount of time these containers would need to last is about 300 years, not 1000 or 10,000.
The obstacles to actually doing this are purely political, not technical.
Posted by: Michael Stuart | February 9, 2007 04:12 AM
Ummm... how exactly would the solid fuel rods and uranium pellets, stored in stainless steel-like containers, "leak?"
Wrap your brain around what has to happen.
Water vapor that's in the air inside Yucca Mountain has to somehow rust the stainless steel, crack it open, then crack open the fuel rods, then dissolve the ceramic pellets (ever try to dissolve a toilet with drips of water?).
Let's assume that mind-boggling leap of physics takes place.
Then that water needs to somehow condense into a puddle and start working its way through 1,000 feet of solid rock, to the groundwater below.
OK, let's go ahead and assume that takes place, oh, 80,000 years from now. And let's set aside the concepts of what society will look like then... after the next Ice Age.
The radioactive material, 99 percent of which decayed to harmlessness 79,700 years ago, now has to work its way 12 miles to the groundwater beneath Amargosa Valley.
Where if the humans living there drink it all up, they'll be exposed to the same radiation as people living in Denver today.
People, check your facts. Reasonable people can disagree about the science behind Yucca Mountain. But please, base your arguments on truth and realistic scenarios.
Not the "what if an asteroid hits" nonsense.
Posted by: Fred deSousa | February 9, 2007 09:44 AM
Well said. Here's hoping that more people in Nevada, and nationwide, begin to realize that the nuke dump is dying a death of 1,000 cuts.
And that's a good thing -- for Nevada and the nation.
George McCabe
Posted by: George McCabe | February 9, 2007 11:25 AM