First, the basics. As far as I understand it (and I may be wrong, I haven't followed this as closely as some), Yucca Mountain was named as the United States' National Nuclear Repository by a 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.(1) This act made the DOE responsible for finding a site, building, and operating an underground disposal facility called a geologic repository. Yucca Mountain has been being studied since 1978 as a potential nuclear repository, and since that time over 10 billion dollars has been spent on the testing for this site, making it the most tested and studied piece of real estate in the world.
The findings? Well, first, it is expected that the dose of radiation someone would get outside of this repository once it is in use would be exceptionally low. In October 2007, the DOE issued a draft of an Environmental Impact Statement in which it shows that for the first 10,000 years mean public dose would be 0.24 mrem/year and that thereafter to 1,000,000 years the median public dose would be 0.98 mrem/year, both of which are substantially below the proposed EPA limit (15 mrem in the first 10,000 years, and 100 mrem between 10,000 years and 1 million).(2) These doses are also far lower than the 3 mrem someone receives in one roundtrip flight from Nevada to Washington D.C. due to cosmic radiation. To put this into even more perspective...1000mrem is 1 rem. 1 rem is considered to be a noticeable amount of radiation. However, its commonly agreed that it would take about 100 rem to make someone sick. So we're talking about less than 1 mrem per year of dosage outside of this repository. Meaning, that its less than negligible.
Second, the geological makeup of Yucca Mountain is believed, by some, to be ideal for nuclear waste storage. The formation that makes up Yucca Mountain was created by several large eruptions from a caldera volcano and is composed of alternating layers of welded tuff, non-welded tuff, and semi-welded tuff (tuff being rockmade from the ash from volcanic flow). Tuff has special physical, chemical and thermal characteristics that some experts believe make it a suitable material to entomb radioactive waste for the hundreds of thousands of years required for the waste to become safe through radioactive decay. This all sounds pretty good to me too.
Finally, the location of Yucca Mountain seems to be a pretty logical choice for a nuclear repository. Yucca Mountain is located in a desert on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada. The Nevada Test Site, of course, is the government's location for underground detonation testing of nuclear weapons. This land is unusable for anything but nuclear related work already! What better place to put nuclear waste than next to a place that the government has already been blowing up nuclear bombs for years already??? It's 80 miles away from Las Vegas, NV, and not really close to anything. It's literally in the middle of nowhere.
There have been many, many, many other findings, but these are the important ones...at least to a layman like me. So, this begs the question...why are people (namely Democrats) so intent on shutting this project down?
Obama recently nominated Bill Magwood to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mr. Magwood, in the past, has been a pro-Yucca mountain supporter. This has caused outrage in the Anti-nuclear community. The Administration's response? White House spokesman Adam Abrams said, “Bill Magwood recognizes the Obama administration’s clearly stated policy that Yucca Mountain is not an option for storage of nuclear waste. He is committed to the administration’s goal of developing a responsible, long-term solution to our nuclear waste storage needs.” (3) So, why is the Obama Administration's policy that Yucca Mountain is not an option for nuclear storage? What scientific reason do they have for this? Well, none that I can find. This is just the stated position. Obama doesn't need a reason for why he wants to can a 10 billion dollar project that would help this country produce more clean energy and become energy independent. Obama spoke, it became fact.
So what do they plan to do instead? Well, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe you can figure out what the Secretary of Energy is saying, because it all sounds like jibberish and avoidance of the question to me:
Secretary Steven Chu has stated "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue. We're looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinide waste. These are fast neutron reactors. There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can burn down the long-lived actinides. ...
"Some of the waste is already vitrified. There is, in my mind, no economical reason why you would ever think of pulling it back into a potential fuel cycle. So one could well imagine—again, it depends on what the blue-ribbon panel says—one could well imagine that for a certain classification for a certain type of waste, you don't want to have access to it anymore, so that means you could use different sites than Yucca Mountain, such as salt domes. Once you put it in there, the salt oozes around it. These are geologically stable for a 50 to 100 million year time scale. The trouble with those type of places for repositories is you don't have access to it anymore. But say for certain types of waste you don't want to have access to it anymore—that's good. It's a very natural containment. ...whereas there would be other waste where you say it has some inherent value, let's keep it around for a hundred years, two hundred years, because there's a high likelihood we'll come back to it and want to recover that.
"So the real thing is, let's get some really wise heads together and figure out how you want to deal with the interim and long-term storage. Yucca was supposed to be everything to everybody, and I think, knowing what we know today, there's going to have to be several regional areas." (4)
Oh, I get it. We need to get some "wise heads" together and find a place that will work scientifically. And maybe instead of one place in the middle of nowhere that people are still complaining about, we should try to get multiple repositories in multiple places so multiple people and NIMBYs can all complain at once? Wait, I'm confused again. Dad??? Help?
So we have this place that works scientifically, isn't near anything important, and won't cause harm to anyone who wanders near it anyways. Let's see what the senior senator from the state has to say on the issue. Following the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a long time opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, putting him in a position to greatly affect the future of the project. Reid has said that he would continue to work to block completion of the project, and is quoted as having said: "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen." (5) Wow, that's constructive. I'm starting to think this is all political game playing.
So, now I rant. As far as I can tell, Yucca Mountain is the perfect spot for a nuclear repository. But because it benefits democrats politically, and they are in power right now, they're going to shut it down and waste time and billions upon billions of dollars to come up with other alternatives to nuclear waste storage and disposal. Which is complete horseshit. Its one thing when you're debating political issues over whether or not to tax and spend on programs, or to kill unborn babies or not...those are economic and moral theories...they both have merit. But when you start ignoring years upon years of scientific data to grab a few cheap votes from uneducated voters, you've crossed a line in my book. You are no longer looking out for the wellbeing of the country. And I thought that was what being a public servant in the national government is all about? Helping the country?
Nuclear has been a bad word for years. The Democrats have railed against it because the oil and coal companies don't want the competition, and the wind and solar people want more money. Now that the democrats have also taken up the cause of the environmental left, and coal and oil are pretty effing bad for the environment, nuclear is starting to look better and better to people. But the Dems have been anti-nuclear for years? What to do? Oh, I know, lets say we're open to nuclear power, but only if we have a strategy for the waste, and then can all reasonable strategies for the waste! It's brilliant. We'll be able to keep debating it, and our buddies in the environmental/ anti-nuclear lobbies will have jobs for years! And if the country is subject to the whims of oil producing companies for the next few decades, so be it!
Maybe I'm missing something, but shutting down the Yucca Mountain repository seems like a monumentally stupid idea if this country actually wants to become energy independent, conciencious about the environment, and provide enough power for its citizens at reasonable costs for the future. Nuclear power makes sense, and we need a place to put the waste if we are to pursue it. If I've left out something important, please let me know. But from all the literature I can find, Yucca Mountain seems like an ideal place to stick this stuff.
References:
1. Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments of 1987. 101 Statutes at large 1330-227, 42 U.S. Code 10101 et seq.
2. "Draft Supplemental Yucca Mountain Repository EIS". U.S. DOE. January 2008. http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/seis/index.shtml.
3. "Boos as Obama taps Yucca supporter". Las Vegas Sun. October 21, 2009. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/21/boos-obama-taps-yucca-supporter/
4. The secretary of energy talks with Technology Review about the future of nuclear power post Yucca Mountain
5. Lando, Ben (December 4, 2006). "Analysis: Reid's Yucca and nuke waste plan". United Press International. http://www.upi.com/Energy/view.php?StoryID=20061204-033735-1872r.
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