Yucca Mountain was chosen as the site for the nation’s nuclear waste dump in a process that began in 1982 and ended in 1987 when the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was revised by Congress (NWPA).
The National Nuclear Waste Program Act (NWPA) created a comprehensive policy for permanent geologic disposal of the country’s spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The Act outlined a step-by-step process for the government to look for, investigate, select, and eventually build a nuclear waste site by 1998.
The NWPA authorized the Department of Energy (DOE) to pick three viable geologic disposal sites, study them thoroughly, and suggest the most suitable to the President.
The governor of the site’s state could veto the decision if the President agreed with the suggestion and officially designated the site, but the governor’s veto could be overturned by a simple majority in both chambers of Congress.
All of this was meant to happen before 1998, when the government committed to begin collecting trash from nuclear power plants around the country.
By December 1984, the DOE had narrowed the list of potential repositories to Texas, Washington State, and Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
However, the expected characterisation cost of $60 million per site has already risen to almost a billion dollars.
As a result, Congress opted to focus its research on just one site.
In 1987, Congress revised the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain as the exclusive site for a nuclear waste repository.
The question of whether Yucca Mountain is the optimum location for a nuclear waste dump in the United States is still being debated.
Yucca Mountain, according to the DOE, was chosen because it regularly ranked as the location with the best technical and scientific attributes for serving as a repository.
According to the Department, Yucca Mountain is an ideal location for waste storage since the repository would be:
- Isolated from the rest of the world (Las Vegas, the nearest metropolitan area, is 90 miles away)
The State of Nevada and other groups, on the other hand, feel politics played a significant part in the decision. The Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time of the 1987 NWPA amendments was Jim Wright of Texas, and the House majority leader was Tom Foley of Washington State. Nevada was the smallest and least politically powerful of the three states.
With the 1987 NWPA changes, the State feels Congress compromised fairness for expediency.
Gary Taubes, a science and technology writer, described it this way: “Congress put the DOE in an untenable position by selecting Yucca Mountain as the only option for a nuclear-waste site. In effect, it sent the agency out to prove that Yucca Mountain could work as a repository, rather than doing an objective assessment of whether it could or was the best feasible location.”
(By Dawn Stover) (More History & Commentary Yucca Mountain’s “scientification”)
There’s also a question over whether Yucca Mountain’s geologic features and proposed constructed barriers will provide enough isolation for permanent disposal. A lot of stakeholders feel Yucca Mountain has particular qualities that make long-term isolation of highly radioactive material problematic. The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects is concerned about a number of Yucca Mountain’s geology features, including:
- Numerous earthquake faults (at least 33 in and around the site) as well as volcanic cinder cones are present at the site.
- the presence of routes (many interconnected faults and cracks) that might quickly transport groundwater (and any escaping radioactive chemicals) through the site to the aquifer underneath it and hence to the accessible environment
What makes Yucca Mountain suitable for nuclear waste?
Experts and the nuclear industry seek a long-term, safer dump than the over 100 pools that now hold nuclear waste.
Yucca Mountain was chosen because it is located in a desert setting far away from population centers and is bordered by government territory.
Republicans and some Democrats in Congress want the project reopened, claiming that shutting it down was a waste of billions of dollars already spent on the facility’s construction.
Is Yucca Mountain safe for nuclear waste?
WASHINGTON (CBS News) Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which has been authorized to store spent nuclear material for almost 30 years, remains the safest answer to this national problem.
Nuclear energy is cost-effective, safe, dependable, and emission-free. Nuclear power must be a part of any effort to combat climate change. If you want to confront climate change, retain America as the world’s dominating energy power, and believe in science and the rule of law, you should support Yucca Mountain.
The United States requires a strong nuclear fleet as well as a permanent home for the spent nuclear material that is currently stored in 121 communities across 39 states. This national problem requires a long-term solution.
Yucca Mountain was the subject of a piece on CBS This Morning on how the US has struggled to solve this decades-long problem. According to the co-anchor, “You don’t want to wait until it’s too late and you have to get it somewhere by the weekend.”
Yucca Mountain was chosen by Congress in 1987 as the site for a national permanent nuclear waste storage. A test tunnel was built, but it was never approved.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming is now supporting legislation to reopen the licensing process for Yucca Mountain, which was put on hold by the Obama administration almost a decade ago because to objections from a bipartisan group of Nevada legislators.
“Sen. Barrasso stated, “It is an isolated location with the correct geology that can make the difference for years and generations to come for safe use of nuclear power and storage of nuclear waste.”
Along with Senator Barrasso, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, has been a vocal supporter of the bill. Mr. Shimkus has been at the forefront of the effort to complete Yucca Mountain’s licensing assessment.
H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, was introduced by Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and John Shimkus (R-IL) on May 14, 2019. The bill is comparable to H.R. 3053, which was passed by an overwhelming majority of 340 to 72 in the 115th Congress. The legislation, in detail, is as follows:
- Assists in the resolution of the pending permanent repository license, allowing the formal licensing process to determine whether the Yucca Mountain site can be licensed and built;
- Reforms a faulty financing process to safeguard consumers and ensure that the Department of Energy (DOE) has the money to build and maintain a multigenerational infrastructure project;
- Directs the Department of Energy to press forward with a temporary storage program to consolidate spent nuclear fuel from sites with defunct reactors while the Yucca Mountain repository is being built, and prioritizes the transfer of spent fuel from seismically active areas to interim sites.
- Allows the state of Nevada and local stakeholders to interact with the federal government as the repository’s host state; and
- Provides the quickest approach to removing “defense-waste” from DOE installations, protecting our nation’s national security interests.
What is the significance of Yucca Mountain?
The Yucca Mountain Repository is a planned Department of Energy (DOE) location for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The EPA has established environmental requirements to protect human health and the environment from radioactive material in the repository; the Yucca Mountain repository must meet these standards in order to be permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Yucca Mountain is a volcanic ridge in Nye County, Nevada, about 90 miles southwest of Tonopah, the county seat, and 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The climate is desert-like in this location. Yucca Mountain is made up of layers of volcanic ash from eruptions that occurred over 10 million years ago. Over time, the ash from those volcanic eruptions changed into a type of igneous rock known as “tuff,” which has different properties depending on the setting in which it was created. The migration of the tuff layers produced the crest of Yucca Mountain due to regional geologic factors. Carbonate rock lies beneath the tuff, produced from deposits deposited at the bottom of ancient oceans that once existed in the area.
What is the Yucca Mountain controversy?
The state’s concerns about Yucca Mountain stem from how it was selected in the first place. The country’s nuclear weapons program had left tons of radioactive waste, and spent fuel from nuclear power reactors was piling up when Reagan signed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. The statute required the Energy Department to investigate many locations across the country, but legislators refused to fund the costly and time-consuming technical assessments of all viable sites. As a result, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was revised in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain as the sole permanent storage location.
What makes Nevada so special? Texas, Washington, and Nevada were the three finalists. The speaker of the House at the time represented Texas, while the majority leader represented Washington. The Screw Nevada Bill was the name given to the amendment. “Clearly, the mistake we did in 1987 was forcing it down Nevadans’ throats,” a government official told Nature later.
Nevadans are likewise concerned about their safety. In 2014, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal body in charge of approving nuclear waste storage sites, released a long-awaited report declaring Yucca Mountain safe. However, detractors fear that groundwater in Yucca Mountain may corrode the nuclear waste canisters, resulting in a radioactive spill.
A 10,000-year storage facility will undoubtedly be difficult to plan; if completed, it will have to last longer than any other piece of infrastructure in history. However, after Reid became Senate majority leader and Obama gained president, both of whom are opposed to the project, efforts stalled. Despite Reid’s boasting, they never had enough votes to destroy it completely since Yucca Mountain was inscribed into law. As a result, they came to a halt.
Why was Yucca Mountain Cancelled?
The DOE, on the other hand, shut down the Yucca Mountain project in 2010, citing no technical or safety concerns. Yucca Mountain had already cost $12 billion, and 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel were in temporary storage in 39 states at the time.
Where is the best place to store nuclear waste?
Low-level garbage disposal is simple and may be done practically anyplace in a safe manner. Used fuel is typically stored for at least five years under water and subsequently in dry storage. The best solution for eventual disposal of the most radioactive waste produced is deep geological disposal, according to most experts.
Is there any waste at Yucca Mountain?
Currently, the majority of the waste for which the Yucca Mountain site was built is held at commercial nuclear power stations across the country; a smaller amount of waste is stored at DOE facilities. Currently, spent nuclear fuel is stored in specially built, water-filled pools and above-ground dry storage facilities at nuclear power stations; however, some of these storage spaces are nearing capacity. These locations were intended for temporary storage but have been used as long-term storage while a repository is built. The wastes produced by the Department of Energy are mostly the result of processing spent nuclear fuel for military purposes.
This material may change when new information about the Yucca Mountain project becomes available; the EPA will continue to update the Frequent Questions about Radiation Protection as new information becomes available.
Please see the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) webpage, Operating Nuclear Power Reactors, for a list of all currently operational nuclear power reactors (by Location or Name).
What attributes make the Yucca Mountain site a good location for the federal radioactive waste repository what attributes make it a poor location?
The Yucca Mountain site is a good location for the federal radioactive waste repository because it has a sparsely populated Federal land, a low water table, long paths to clearly identified discharge points, high ion absorption potential (including the presence of zeolite minerals), low rainfall, and infiltration rates.
Is the Yucca Mountain site licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
On June 3, 2008, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received an application from the Department of Energy for a license to build Yucca Mountain, Nevada’s first geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.