Yucca Mountain: America's Nuclear Dump

Earlier in the year, plans to store America's nuclear waste inside one of America's most challenging engineering feats, Yucca Mountain, were scrapped due to a lack of federal funding.

The Yucca Mountain project, located in Nevada near the nuclear test sites, had been underway since 1987, when Congress had selected the site as America's nuclear waste repository. To ensure the waste was safely stored, over $9 billion was spent on concrete tunnels and chambers designed to keep waste safe for at least a million years.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the project saw a five mile U-shaped tunnel was bored into the side of the extinct volcano, through which to transport the material.

While environmentalists may have approved the decision by the White House, it does present the country with several problems; where does the country now store its nuclear waste, what shall happen to the Yucca Mountain complex and more importantly, if the President is seriously about more nuclear plants to wean the country off oil is he expecting them to be waste-free?

To discuss the two sides of the issue are US Infrastructure Online Editor Timon Singh and former senior advisor on Nuclear Nonproliferation matters at the US Department of Energy, Charity Azadian.

Charity Azadian: "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"

As the familiar saying goes, you can take the Senator (Harry Reid) out of Nevada, but you can't take the Nevada out of the Senator. It is clear that politics is once again trumping science. By allowing politicians, and not the scientific experts, to detail a path forward for Yucca Mountain, this only stalls the progress toward resolving the nation's nuclear waste problem.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 set 31 January 1998, as the deadline for the federal government to begin disposing of used fuel. More than a decade after the deadline, the government has still not settled on a policy for how to do it. The US Department of Energy (DOE) established a Blue Ribbon Commission to explore alternatives to long-term waste storage. The government's ineptitude to begin proper nuclear waste management should be a reason to remove government responsibilities, not remove Yucca from consideration. The Administration's Yucca Mountain policy signals once again that the government cannot be a trusted partner.

Essentially the Administration's policies are schizophrenic. On one hand, President Obama has touted that the Federal Government will guarantee loans for nuclear power plants, and then days later states that he is going to abandon plans for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Furthermore, in staying the course with Obama-litic politics that sway to the wind, Energy Secretary Chu testified before Congress that he supported funding on Yucca Mountain, but then a few days later sent a letter to the committee that he would like to retract parts of his testimony, and that he was essentially confused.

Shocking, appalling, or is it? This type of delusional behavior and lack of integrity in our political leaders is unacceptable. And, by allowing politics to trump science at Yucca Mountain, Chu's announcement threatens to stall progress toward resolving the nation's nuclear waste problem.

So should we listen to the science, except when it's inconvenient to well-connected political leaders? If politicians eager to shut down Yucca Mountain are so confident that the science is on their side, why not allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to finish its license review? After, all, it's the NRC's responsibility to determine the technical feasibility of Yucca - even if it has been studied countless times.