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.
Is Yucca Mountain being used for nuclear waste?
Yucca Mountain is a proposed spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository that might be used to dispose of both types of radioactive waste. If built, a tunnel complex would be built around 1000 feet below the summit of Yucca Mountain and roughly 1000 feet above the aquifer beneath the repository. The primary concept of geologic disposal is to store radioactive materials in neatly packaged tubes deep down. The Yucca Mountain facility would achieve this by isolating the waste from the surrounding environment using a combination of natural and artificial barriers.
Unless a second repository opens during its operating lifetime, it is statutorily limited to storing 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.
What is the history of Yucca Mountain?
In 1978, the federal government began investigating Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada as a potential long-term storage for nuclear waste and radioactive waste created by nuclear power generation and national defense projects. Yucca Mountain was identified as the primary location for nuclear waste storage by Congress in 1987, and the Energy Department began preliminary drilling operations at the site in 1994. The operation was halted in 2004 by the state of Nevada, citing safety concerns, and the project was further challenged by the Obama administration. The project’s future is questionable. What are the environmental, social, and political benefits and drawbacks of a centralized nuclear waste storage facility?
What is the controversy about Yucca Mountain?
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.
Is Yucca Mountain still being used?
The president and Congress authorized Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the repository’s location in 2002. The DOE, on the other hand, shut down the Yucca Mountain project in 2010, citing no technical or safety concerns.
What is the current status of Yucca Mountain?
The most recent full press reports about the status of Yucca Mountain can be found here.
Background: The intended repository at Yucca Mountain’s status is still unknown as of 2019.
To give you some context, Yucca Mountain was identified as the site for storing the nation’s spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 2002.
President George W. Bush approved the location after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham suggested it. The decision was vetoed by then-Governor Kenny Guinn of Nevada, as allowed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), but the veto was later reversed by Congress.
The Department of Energy has selected 10 areas in six states for consideration as potential repository sites prior to 1987, as required under the NWPA. President Ronald Reagan approved three sites for full site characterization after extensive research. Hanford, Washington, Deaf Smith County, Texas, and Yucca Mountain, Nevada were the three locations.
Congress revised the NWPA in 1987, directing the DOE to investigate solely Yucca Mountain. The Act did state that “site characterization investigations” would be halted if Yucca Mountain was deemed to be inappropriate. The amended bill was dubbed the “Screw Nevada Bill” after its passage. (More information on how and why Yucca Mountain was picked)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) are in charge of regulating and disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) oversees the development and operation of commercial nuclear power facilities as well as spent fuel repositories (e.g., Yucca Mountain). The NRC also oversees spent nuclear fuel storage and transportation. DOE is responsible for site exploration, building, and operation of a federal geologic repository under the NWPA as amended (e.g., Yucca Mountain). The DOE is also required by law to apply to the NRC for a license to construct the repository, which must be approved before any work can commence. The DOE applied to the NRC for a license for Yucca Mountain in 2008. The Bush administration’s Energy Department submitted an 8,600-page license application, which NRC approved for examination and license approval.
Existing Regulatory Status: The Obama Administration halted financing for the Yucca Mountain repository in 2011 through an amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act. As a result of this action, the US now lacks a long-term storage facility for civilian spent reactor fuel and defense-generated High Level Waste.
Due to financing and other constraints, the DOE and the NRC both paused their efforts to license the Yucca Mountain repository; this action prompted various parties to file lawsuits in an attempt to compel the NRC to resume the licensing process. In 2011, the states of South Carolina and Washington, as well as the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and others, filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, requesting a writ of mandamus ordering the NRC to reopen the Yucca Mountain licensing process.
The petitioners’ wishes were granted by the court (giving the writ of mandamus), and on November 18, 2013, the NRC ordered the licensing proceeding to be reopened and directed its staff to finish the Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Report (SER). The SER comprises the NRC’s examination of the DOE license application, which was done to ensure Yucca Mountain’s compliance with NRC licensing standards. The NRC had finished all five volumes of the SER by January 2015. While the NRC staff has determined that DOE’s license applications are “appropriate,” it is proposing that the NRC deny the repository’s construction because DOE does not own or have authority over the land or water where the repository would be built. A addendum to DOE’s Yucca Mountain environmental impact statement was just completed, demonstrating that DOE lacks the requisite water rights to support the project. The area around the repository site is also under the control of numerous federal agencies, including DOE, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Defense, and transferring the lands to DOE will require an act of Congress.
In terms of water rights, DOE would have to get them from the state of Nevada.
Nevada has declined to appropriate the water, and legal action to overturn that decision has been halted.
In any case, the NRC has not made a final decision on the repository license application, but once environmental reviews are completed, land and water issues are resolved, and a series of lengthy and complex hearings on third-party challenges are heard, the agency could easily vote on DOE’s application to build the repository.
Federal funding for the DOE’s repository program is currently non-existent; no federal expenditures have been granted to support NRC licensing and/or DOE site investigations at Yucca Mountain as of January 2016. However, it’s worth mentioning that the US Department of Energy (DOE) has spent an estimated $8 billion on investigating the location and building the exploratory tunnel beneath Yucca Mountain to date. Furthermore, according to DOE estimates, the cost of building and operating a repository at Yucca Mountain may approach $97 billion.
On-the-Ground Achievements: The Yucca Mountain site is now abandoned, with only a boarded-up exploratory tunnel remaining; there are no waste disposal tunnels, receiving and handling facilities, or waste containers and transportation casks yet to be built.
Furthermore, there is no railroad to the location, and constructing one across Nevada might cost more than $3 billion. At Yucca Mountain now, the only thing that exists is a single 5-mile exploratory tunnel.
The Land and Its People
Yucca Mountain, which is part of the Western Shoshone Nation, has long been a source of great spiritual energy for the Shoshone and Paiute peoples. Snake Mountain is a site with rock rings that carry prayers to the Great Spirit and messages back to the people to the Western Shoshone. Snake Mountain would one day be awakened and burst open, pouring poison, according to the late Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney. This prophesy could foreshadow a tragedy caused by volcanic activity and nuclear waste leaking. The mountain has the graves of Shoshone ancestors, and the water in the vicinity is sacred to many desert peoples.
The 60 million acres of Western Shoshone land in Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and California, including Yucca Mountain, were never deeded to the United States. The Shoshone signed the Ruby Valley Treaty with the government in 1863, recognizing most of the region now used by the US military for nuclear weapons testing and the proposed waste storage site as Shoshone land. However, the United States now owns 80 to 90% of it, leaving the Shoshone with little control over what occurs on their ancestral lands. Legislators are still trying to persuade the Shoshone to accept cash compensation for this property, which many see as a method to end aboriginal title and prevent future land claims, paving the way for more nuclear weapons testing, waste storage, and resource extraction.
Yucca Mountain has been the only site examined for 77,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste since 1987, when government scientists began studying it as a possible repository for nuclear waste in the late 1970s. While the Yucca Mountain Project is being contested, the amount of nuclear waste that needs to be buried has already exceeded the repository’s capacity. Meanwhile, radioactive waste is stored in steel-lined pools or casks at power reactors across the country, which produce 2,000 tons of high-level waste each year. For 10,000 years, the waste is fatal, and for 250,000 years, it is harmful.
There has been constant squabbling over legislation authorizing site approval and waste transport to Yucca Mountain for years, with congressional votes being razor-thin. The trash dump was formally recommended for building by the George W. Bush administration in 2002. Nevada’s governor vetoed Bush’s recommendation, as allowed by federal law dictating the location of America’s nuclear waste storage, but Congress overruled him. On July 23, 2002, President Bush signed legislation designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s principal depository for nuclear waste. The state of Nevada’s Republican governor and attorney general then filed a lawsuit against Bush and the federal government to stop the project. During the Bush administration, the project’s progress was stalled by intense resistance from lawmakers and residents, as well as accumulating scientific research regarding environmental dangers.
Current Threat and Preservation Efforts
The Yucca Mountain Project proposes encasing highly radioactive nuclear waste in steel containers and burying it deep underground. Because the canisters will only survive 1,000 years at most, the mountain’s dryness will be required to prevent leakage and migration – a premise that many environmentalists and scientists believe is wrong and dangerous. Radioactive particles will be carried into the water table by surface water seeping into the mountain, rendering it poisonous. Currently, this water table provides water to local communities and farming regions that provide food for the entire country.
Internal department e-mails refer to the manipulation of data on how swiftly water flows through Yucca Mountain, according to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in 2005. This disclosure prompted a government probe, and congressional outrage prompted the Department of Energy to restructure the project and lay off 500 workers. The Yucca location would have been disqualified years ago if the exact nature of the subsurface water flow had been understood, according to Robert Hager, an attorney for the Western Shoshone.
Because there are multiple local fault lines and a volcano nearby, earthquakes are more likely to fracture the repository and spill significantly more water into the garbage. There are also serious worries about the safety of transporting radioactive waste across vast distances through numerous states in the United States, especially in light of recent terrorist threats. The proposal became increasingly implausible throughout the Bush years, as environmental concerns developed and citizens from other states became more skeptical.
In his 2010 budget request, President Barack Obama stated that the federal government would begin examining other options, and the Energy Department told Congress in February 2010 that it planned to divert $115 million from the Yucca Mountain program budget to attempts to shut down the project. The government then filed a move with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 3 to withdraw the Yucca Mountain project’s licensing application. The motion was filed “with prejudice,” which means that the site could never be used again.
Later that month, a bipartisan coalition of House Democrats and Republicans from nuclear waste-storage districts in Washington, South Carolina, and Michigan presented a resolution to prevent the administration from terminating the program. Members of a House energy subcommittee also criticized the Energy Department’s decision, arguing it violated congressional directives in the 2010 budget’s energy expenditure bill. “We do have the power within the law to conduct the reprogramming activities we have planned,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu wrote in a letter. “Make no mistake, the department will be closing down the Yucca Mountain project this year,” DOE press secretary Stephanie Mueller said.
In January 2010, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the formation of a “Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future” to make suggestions for establishing a safe, long-term solution to the problem of what to do with the waste that would have gone to Yucca Mountain. The commission will conduct a complete assessment of policies for managing the nuclear fuel cycle’s back end, as well as provide guidance on issues such as storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and military used nuclear fuel and waste. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft are co-chairing the 15-member committee, which is expected to issue an interim report in 18 months and a full report in two years.
Beyond the Yucca Mountain Project’s safety and environmental issues, the Shoshone should be able to control what happens there due to treaty rights and their historical and spiritual ties to the area. Native Americans have already been denied access to their rock prayer rings due to government activity that has disrupted burial sites. The Yucca Mountain debate is rarely recognised as being about native sovereignty and the need to care for the land in a spiritually responsible and environmentally good manner. Even if the repository at Yucca Mountain is defeated, the homelands of the Shoshone and other indigenous peoples are constantly being considered for the storage of hazardous radioactive waste.
One example is a proposed “temporary” nuclear waste dump on Goshute-Shoshone property near the Nevada border in Skull Valley, Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Private Fuel Storage permission to build the plant in February 2006, but the Department of the Interior denied the company’s lease later that year due to an incomplete Environmental Impact Statement. PFS and the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute tribal government, which supports the project, have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Department of the Interior.
While Nevada’s congressional delegation appears to have protected their state from the Yucca Mountain Project’s environmental disaster, they collaborated with the Bush administration to enact a forced payment to the Western Shoshone in order to legitimize US government control over land rich in gold and geothermal energy. The $145 million settlement of the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill on July 7, 2004, was welcomed by some in the Shoshone community who believed they should accept the money because they had no hope of regaining the land, but was opposed by many others who believed the price of their ancestral lands was too high. The gold mining corporations Newmont and Cortez Gold will be able to continue and extend their activities in Shoshone territory as a result of this legislation. (See our Mount Tenabo report.)
The Western Shoshone must be recognized as the rightful landowners and involved in any negotiations concerning prospective mining and nuclear waste storage. Rather than forcing the Shoshone to accept a financial settlement, the government should consult and negotiate in good faith with them about their treaty rights to ancestral lands, providing them the choice to reclaim portion of the land.
What You Can Do
Continue to tell your lawmakers in Congress that you reject nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain and that you support the Obama administration’s attempts to shut down the program and identify other waste disposal options.
The Western Shoshone Defense Project, which defends Western Shoshone land rights, the Shundahai Network, a grassroots coalition of nuclear disarmament activists and Western Shoshone, and Trespassing, a documentary film about fights against nuclear waste on indigenous land in Nevada and California, are all good places to start learning more about Yucca Mountain, the Western Shoshone, and nuclear waste on indigenous land.
Sources
Dipka Bhambhani, Bhambhani, Bhambhani, Bhambhani “In its budget, the Department of Energy wants to ‘terminate’ the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.” May 11, 2009, 3. Inside Energy with Federal Lands.
Keay Davidson, Keay Davidson, Keay Davidson, Keay “Deadly nuclear rods are stacking up throughout the state; a Nevada burial site project is in jeopardy.” The Chronicle of San Francisco published an article on the 24th of July, 2006.
DOE is the United States Department of Energy. The Yucca Mountain Project is managed by the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
Suzanne Struglinski, Fattah, and Geoffrey Struglinski “Pressure was employed to stop the nuclear discharge, according to the lawsuit.” The Deseret Morning News published an article on July 19, 2007.
Brian Hansen is a writer. “With Yucca Mountain decommissioned, the Bingaman bill seeks a new nuclear waste option.” May 11, 2009, 6. Inside Energy with Federal Lands.
Lisa Mascaro, Lisa Mascaro, Lisa Mascaro, Lisa Mascaro “The President’s course raises the question: Is it dead?” Despite his assurances, the licensing process continues.” The Las Vegas Sun published an article on the 24th of May, 2009.
Department of Energy of the United States of America. “Secretary Chu Forms Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future,” according to the press release. The 29th of January, 2010 was the date of a press release.
“Future Dim for Nuclear Waste Repository,” by Matthew L. Wald. The New York Times published an article on March 6th, 2009.
Why was Yucca Mountain created?
The Yucca Mountain project aims to meet the requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 by creating a national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. USA Repository Services (USA-RS), a wholly owned subsidiary of URS Corporation (now part of AECOM), is the project’s management and operating contractor as of April 1, 2009, with supporting principal subcontractors Shaw Corporation (now part of McDermott International Inc.) and Areva Federal Services LLC (now Orano federal services business).
Following the layoff of 800 employees on March 31, 2009, roughly 100 personnel remained on the project until all technical staff were laid off by the end of FY 2010 due to the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management receiving no funds in the 2011 budget. Sandia National Laboratories was in charge of post-closure analysis and ensuring that the NWPA was followed. The Exploratory Studies Facility’s main tunnel is U-shaped, measuring 5 miles (8.0 kilometers) long and 25 feet (7.6 meters) broad.
Aside from the main tunnel, there are other cathedral-like alcoves. In these alcoves, the majority of the scientific experiments were carried out. Because they required approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the emplacement drifts (smaller-diameter tunnels branching off the main tunnel) where waste would have been kept were not built. The statutory limit for the repository is 77,000 metric tons (85,000 short tons).
It would have taken 40 miles (64 kilometers) of tunnels to store that much garbage. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act further limits the repository’s capacity to 63,000 metric tons of initial heavy metal in commercial spent fuel (62,000 long tons; 69,000 short tons). If the spent fuel rods are not recycled, the 104 commercial reactors in the United States will produce this amount of spent fuel by 2014. The United States currently lacks a civil reprocessing plant.
Why was Yucca Mountain chosen?
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.
How Safe Is Yucca Mountain?
According to a new analysis, the current suggested site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, is safe to use. The United States now has around 65,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, which is predicted to increase by 2055.
What are the cons of Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain generates a lot of debate let’s face it, if it didn’t, a four-part blog series wouldn’t be necessary. Part of the dispute stems from concerns about the impact of spent fuel disposal on the environment and the health of people living and working in the vicinity as well as along traffic routes. So, to wrap up this series, I’d like to take a look at some of these worries to see which ones are valid and which are exaggerated. A website created by the State of Nevada in 1998 is a good place to find a lot of these concerns.
This is correct, but it has no bearing on the matter of Yucca Mountain’s safe disposal because no one will ever come into contact with the spent fuel. As I explained in my last piece, the spent fuel will be stored in heavy-duty casks that are meant to reduce radiation to less than 10 mR/hr at a distance of 2 meters from the cask. The fact that the fuel is highly radioactive doesn’t matter as long as it stays inside the casks no one can be hurt by radiation to which they are not exposed. In terms of the wasted fuel still inside the casks, keep in mind that the casks are tough; they’re built to withstand strikes from rapid locomotives, and they won’t even be exposed to that risk after they’re buried. Finally, while the fuel remains radioactive for millennia, the radiation levels decline rapidly over time; after a few decades (much shorter than the design lifetime for the waste site or the casks), radiation dose rates are a fraction of what they were.
True, but not to the extent that it appears. Yes, plutonium is present in spent fuel because it is formed when uranium-238 atoms capture neutrons during nuclear fission. Yes, plutonium is a highly poisonous heavy metal. However, plutonium is far from the most deadly element known to man; a toxicologist with whom I used to work could identify a dozen compounds that are far more dangerous (including shellfish toxins and fungal toxins). In fact, plutonium was given to humans to help researchers figure out how it behaves and moves within the body, and those who received it lived to tell the tale (and yes, many of these tests would be considered unethical today, and they have sparked a lot of debate but that doesn’t change the fact that those who were tested were unharmed).
Consider what must happen in order for the plutonium in the fuel to reach a person who could be injured by it. To reach the spent fuel containers, groundwater would have to seep down hundreds of feet of rock. Then it would have to corrode the metal and soak through the concrete layers to get through the casks. It would have to dissolve the fuel ingredients, including the highly intractable plutonium, once within the barrels, and then escape. Finally, it would have to transport the dissolved plutonium several hundred feet through further rock to the water table, where it would have to be transported however many miles to the nearest human with a well drilled into the aquifer. Possible? Yes. Is it plausible, especially in millennia-scale time? Not at all.
Casks can fail due to geologic phenomena such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, hastening the release of radiation into the environment.
Let’s start with the easy one. Volcanic eruptions have occurred in the American Southwest during the last several thousand years, and Yucca Mountain is formed of volcanic rocks. So it’s reasonable to expect more of these eruptions in the next few tens of thousands of years. However, there are two types of eruptions: those that produce lava and those that do not. The American Southwest has a history of ashfalls rather than lava eruptions; a lava eruption would just serve to encase the used fuel even deeper, while the ash is too chilly to melt the spent fuel casks. The casks are more likely to be damaged if they are submerged in lava, although the lava itself is unlikely to spread as far as the Las Vegas suburbs. To expose people to high amounts of radiation, the lava would have to submerge the casks long enough to melt them, then continue to flow, carrying the fission products with it and continue far enough to expose people. Lava flows have covered hundreds of miles in the past, but not in millions of years. While it’s possible that volcanic eruptions could leak radioactivity into the environment, the debris or lava is more likely to bury the waste even deeper than it is to discharge it into the environment.
Earthquakes are a little more problematic; there are concerns that an earthquake will open up new fractures, speeding up the flow of water from the surface to the casks and from the casks to the water table. Another risk is that an earthquake could burst the casks, allowing radiation to escape. Both of these scenarios are feasible; we know that earthquakes may fracture rock and affect groundwater flows, and Yucca Mountain is no exception. We know they can fracture rock, therefore we’re confident they can also fracture old fuel casks. As a result, it’s reasonable to believe that an earthquake could discharge radionuclides from spent fuel casks. But we must also consider the possibility that an earthquake will develop a fissure in the precise rock the exact portion of the rock in which the casks are housed. It’s conceivable, but the chances are stacked against you.
Plutonium might seep from the canisters and build up to a critical mass in the environment, causing an explosion.
This is a personal favorite of mine. Not only must we get the plutonium out of the casks (water leaking into the waste repository, penetrating into the casks, dissolving plutonium, contaminating the environment), but we must also get enough plutonium out of solution in the same place and under the same conditions to form a critical mass. It’s also vital to remember that a critical mass isn’t something that will explode; rather, it’s something that will maintain a fission chain reaction in the correct conditions. It’s difficult enough to get plutonium into the environment as it is, and it’s unlikely to happen. The likelihood of plutonium precipitating out of solution in a critical mass is increased. And putting something together that could go off is nearly impossible.
Putting all of the spent fuel which contains plutonium in one location attracts terrorists and poses a proliferation danger.
Placing all of the spent fuel in one spot undoubtedly increases the amount of plutonium in that one site. On the other hand, we must consider whether having only one place at risk is preferable to the 50+ that exist presently. We can make a good case that guarding and making impenetrable a single place is easier than trying to defend every reactor facility in the country.
In terms of non-proliferation, anyone trying to build a nuclear weapon would have to first get to the spent fuel casks, then either steal some very large and heavy casks or open them up at the waste site and remove the fuel both actions that would be hampered by high radiation levels in the coming decades. Did I mention that the wasted gasoline has to be moved off-site and out of the country? The alleged terrorists (or infiltrators from a potential nuclear power) would then have to remove the fuel, break it up, dissolve it in acid, and chemically treat it to extract the plutonium. The main truth is that neither a terrorist group nor most countries have the resources to pull this off. So…possible? Maybe, in the sense that winning the lotto with a single ticket is a possibility. No, it’s not plausible. This is another another one that fails to materialize.
I could go on and on about why spent nuclear fuel should not be disposed of at Yucca Mountain; there have been several reasons made in support of this position. Some of these arguments, such as the one about plutonium leaking out, building a critical mass, and blowing boom, are either intentionally disingenuous or worst-case wishful thinking; they will very likely not occur in the real world. Others are feasible, such as the potential of an earthquake rupturing the used fuel casks, but the odds are stacked against them. But here’s the bottom line: we’ll be able to come up with a long list of arguments for and against dumping spent nuclear material almost anyplace. We must say one of three things at some point:
- We’re content with the current scenario and will continue to do so indefinitely.
- We’re either going to take it and dispose of the waste in a location where our best science tells us it will be safe under any reasonable set of circumstances, or we’re going to suck it up and dispose of the waste in a location where our best science tells us it will be safe under any reasonable set of circumstances.
- We’re going to abandon nuclear power in favor of finding another way to meet 20% of our electrical needs.
The bottom line is that nuclear energy benefits the entire country – again, nuclear energy accounts for 20% of our electricity generation. There are plenty of areas where the waste from these reactors can be stored safely without endangering the environment or people. We may never find a single location that we can certify as “best,” and the nit-pickers among us will always be able to find arguments no matter how irrational, spurious, or ill-informed that appear to mitigate against any given site. However, the nation will eventually need to identify a location that, while not perfect, is good enough to suit our needs because it meets all realistic trash disposal standards in the actual world.
Whether the country continues to use nuclear energy or not, we will need to find a place to store the spent reactor fuel that has amassed and is now being kept across the country at some point. It makes sense for this region to be dry and sparsely populated, close to major transportation routes, and geologically and hydrogeologically ideal for isolating the hazardous waste while it is still harmful. These places do exist, and one of them is Yucca Mountain. The technical issues of long-term radioactive waste disposal, I believe, are modest the natural nuclear reactor at Oklo has demonstrated that even damp and broken rock can keep radioactive waste for millennia it is the political issues that have proven insurmountable thus far. But don’t be fooled: the ostensibly scientific arguments to Yucca Mountain are only pretexts for the underlying political objections. Our trash disposal solution is being held up by politics rather than science or engineering. And, until these political issues are resolved, we will continue to store our waste in a variety of susceptible sites across the United States.
The article Yucca Mountain: Questions and Concerns first appeared on ScienceWonk, FAS’s blog for expert and thought leaders.