Nevada Nuke Waste Site Takes Step Forward

Bush Administration Files Formal Application For Controversial Dump At Yucca Mountain

(AP)  The Bush administration moved a step closer to building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada on Tuesday, filing a formal application for a construction license.

The Energy Department sent the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will have three years to review it, and scheduled a news conference for later in the day on the application submission.

NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said the application was received by the agency along with boxes of supporting documents. A truck delivered the documents to the NRC's office in Rockville, Md. The application itself covers 17 volumes.

The NRC's primary job will be to determine whether the proposed repository's design will protect public health, safety and the environment for up to a million years.

President Bush gave the go-ahead for the Yucca waste repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, six years ago. It is being designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste, mostly used reactor fuel from nuclear power plants.

About $6 billion has been spent in research and engineering at the Nevada site, including construction of a tunnel deep into the volcanic rock where the canisters of used reactor fuel are to be placed.

But the Yucca project has seen years of turmoil as projected completion dates have been pushed back repeatedly and the project's license application - a critical step in the process - delayed. Department officials now say they hope to have the underground site completed by about 2020.

The application prepared for the NRC still lacks a key element: a final public radiation exposure standard that has yet to be completed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The standard will be added later when the EPA completes it.

In a notification sent to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., the department called the license application "an important milestone for all Americans" and noted that a 1982 law on nuclear waste required the federal government to consolidate used reactor fuel being stored at commercial power plants.

Similar notifications were sent to other lawmakers.

Berkley and other Nevada politicians have been adamant in trying to block construction of the Yucca Mountain dump, arguing that the Energy Department has yet to prove that the waste can be kept there safely.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has made sure the Energy Department doesn't get the money it wants for the program. Reid has called the Yucca project "a dying beast" and said he hoped the budget cuts "will drive the final nail into its coffin."

This year Congress provided $386.5 million for the program, $108 million less than the Bush administration had wanted as it geared up for submitting its application for a construction license. In 2007 the project received $444 million.

The federal government under the 1982 law is contractually required to accept the spent fuel from commercial power plants. It was supposed to have a central repository available for fuel shipments by 1998.

Reid and other Nevada officials say the waste ought to stay where it is until the best long-term solution for dealing with it can be determined.

[nodemotwit]

To nodemotwit: Quit thinking rationally. It hurts most peoples heads.
Posted by downsteamjim

Sad but often true.

Back in the 40''s and early 50''s we seemed to have many more congressional ''statesmen'', people who truly wanted to selflessly serve the best interests of the country, and they were genuinely embarrassed in the rare case when one of their own acted in a self-serving manner, be it graft, self-enrichment,
etc.

Today we have a minority of true statesmen/women serving in congress.
Today our representatives get caught w/$90K bribes in their freezer, and are genuinely offended that anyone would even dare suggest that they should resign.
Today they bump their congressional salaries like clock work, further and further into the upper class.
Today they rig the laws so they can take millions in unspent political donations with them when they leave congress, using same to become lobbyists and bribe their now-former colleagues with (Ta-Da) recycled contributions, often earning 2x-4x their former congressional salaries from their special interest clients.

So today, the only way to get something ''rational'' implemented by this government is to acknowledge that somewhere, under the table, some select group of special-interest slime balls are getting their palms greased in some manner.

Sad but also often true.

[downsteamjim]

To nodemotwit: Quit thinking rationally. It hurts most peoples heads.

[nodemotwit]

Nevadans could take a different tack and LEAD the US by building next-gen Fast-Neutron nuclear reactors, which they can power with the nuke waste that is being given to them for Free.

Fast-neutron nuclear reactors:
** Will extract the very significant amount (ie: 99%)
of the un-used energy (ie: 95%) that was left in the
waste from old-technology fission reactors.
(That is correct: Old-technology fission reactors,
still used in the US, even today, waste 95% of the
energy in the original fuel.)

** Will convert the old-technology fission reactor waste, which needs +25,000 yrs to reach safe levels not requiring special storage, into a product that will not even need storage after a ~250 years.
(That is correct: After ~250 years Fast-neutron reactor waste will decay to the level of the ore from which it came,
which is also why:
* * ...so just put it back from wherever it was
* * mined
mentioned below will not work.

So cheap electricity to power their homes and electric forms of transport.
Electricity they can sell to other states.
Zero carbon emissions.
And they rid the world of the toxic *** produced by these fission dinosaurs, converting it into a 100X less-lethal form of waste.
And even produce 100X less waste
(meaning 1-ton/yr vs 100-tons/yr for a 1-gigawatt plant),
quantity-wise.

A forward thinking federal government could help fund the 1st plant...

www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf

[donbl1]

So, now we have $4/gallon gasoline and everyone is upset.

''Course, we have restrictions on nuclear power, drilling and refineries.

I suspect we will see a very well done political ad on the situation this election and the Democrats will not come off well.

[downsteamjim]

We could mix is with cocaine and solve two problems at once.

[lambor59]

...

re:Idea ,send all nuke waste to Crawford ,Texas.The dummie will think it''''s cool to glow in the dark.

Sound good to me.

P/S. Dumb old G.Bush would not object to this idea anyway, for he had no idea what it''s like. Dumb old thug.

[beehive21-2009]

Idea ,send all nuke waste to Crawford ,Texas.The dummie will think it''s cool to glow in the dark.

[eggy1620]

The stuff came from the ground to begin with, so just put it back from wherever it was mined. No central storage facility needed.

[downsteamjim]

Leaving nuclear waste scatter about the U.S. is the best way to insure environmental problems. Of course, an environmental disaster at one of the scatter sites is exactly what environmentalist want.

[rf35]

If the Nevadans don''t want the storage facility, just send the waste there anyway and set it out on the ground.