Posted by Tina
Not long after he was elected President Obama vowed to stop funding for the completion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada. This smacks of payback to Harry Reid who has lobbied to end the project for years. It was also a hat tip of some sort to the green lobby and anti-nukesters. I remember posting about this soon after the election and at the time I wondered why there wasn’t a bigger uproar made about it. Billions of dollars in investment is nothing to toss in the toilet willy nilly! Maybe folk had bigger problems looming…like losing a job or a home. By now we have an economy that continues to be stressed making the move seem even more ludicrous. Do we really want to add financial burdens and debt on the backs of taxpayers who are already feeling the pinch of a slow jobless economy? What will be the long term effects of leaving the waste material lying around in temporary storage while we wait for courts, commissions, and new building projects? Is this insane or what?
The Department of Energy webpage states the Presidents vision:
The President has made clear that Yucca Mountain is not an option for waste storage. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, led by Congressman Lee Hamilton and General Brent Scowcroft, will conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, and will provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the Nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. ** On March 3, 2010, the Department of Energy filed a motion with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw the license application for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain with prejudice. The President’s fiscal year 2011 budget request eliminates funding for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. The Office of Nuclear Energy will lead used fuel activities previously performed by OCRWM.
The Yucca Mountain project site was chosen after 20 years of study. The facility was designed to safely contain 77,000 metric tons of waste for 1 million years. The project has already cost Americans 10 billion dollars. Now, kiddies, we’ve got a big nuclear waste/legal/financial problem. As reported in Barons:
Obama’s funding decision has created a huge waste-disposal headache for the nuclear industry, which now keeps old, highly radioactive fuel rods on site in temporary storage containers. Years ago, DOE signed contracts with the utilities to take the waste off their hands and store it at Yucca Mountain. Breach of contract suits filed by 72 utilities seek $50 billion in damages. ** DOE, which already has lost over $1 billion in an initial round of trials, could limit the total damages to $12 billion if it begins accepting waste somewhere beginning 2020, which is unlikely. The President’s solution to cancelling Yucca Mountain was to appoint a commission to study alternatives. Obama favors regional disposal sites.
As if we didn’t have enough financial and energy challenges! This guy comes along and takes a workable,nearly completed solution and rips nit to shreds citing pie in the sky alternatives that could take years and even more funding to complete! Le grand plan as articulated by Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
“There are new solutions. There are new technologies. And so we have appointed a blue-ribbon commission to look at, with a crystal ball, what would happen 10, 20, 50 years from today. Based on reasonable choices of what would happen, what would be better strategies in how to deal with the back end of the fuel cycle, including final disposition of waste.”
OH goooooddie…another blue ribbon commission! The sheer genious of this man! With a stroke of the presidential pen he’s created a nuclear waste nightmare, an unnecessary legal battle, and another series of financial burdens for taxpayers!!
Oh well…a billion here, a billion there…who cares…as long as we get to do cool new stuff! I guess that’s the kind of perk we should have expected from all that hope and change.