Nevada demands end to Yucca Mountain project

[jpak]

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080604/NEWS/210586528

Nevada Wednesday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject the Department of Energy application to license Yucca Mountain, calling for an end to the 25-year-old effort to put the radioactive dump in southern Nevada.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said the application commits numerous violations of the requirements starting with the fact DoE doesn’t even have a valid radiation safety standard.

“The license application cannot be reviewed or docketed without an EPA radiation standard, the fundamental public health and safety benchmark,” she said. And the license application, filed Tuesday, she said was legally required to be filed by September 2002.

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[Ian David]

1. I'm all in favor of storing nuclear waste as close to Harry Reid as possible.

There's always a chance he'll mutate and grow something approaching a pair of balls.

[chknltl]

2. KnR, My Thanks to AG Masto and the state of Nevada!

http://ag.state.nv.us/yucca/yucca.htm

I googled Catherine Cortez Masto and found the above link to her and her state's position regarding the Yucca Mountain project. The things one can learn through Google! I frankly knew nothing regarding this project, reading this convinced me that the state of Nevada has damn good reasons for being against the project. Below are 4 of the 5 reasons from that link:

"Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is dedicated to continuing the fight against the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The state’s official position is that Yucca Mountain is a singularly bad site to house the nation’s high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel for several reasons:

GEOLOGY and LOCATION: There are many unresolved scientific issues relative to the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. These issues include hydrology, inadequacy of the proposed waste package, repository design and volcanism. The Yucca site is seismically and volcanically active, porous and incapable of geologically containing the waste. Yucca's aquifer drains to the Amargosa Valley, one of Nevada's most productive agricultural regions, is adjacent to a busy and growing Nellis Air Force Base, and is only 90 miles from our largest metropolitan area, Las Vegas.

LIMITED SPACE: Yucca isn’t big enough to store all of the nation’s nuclear waste. More than 46,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste are already stored at more than 77 reactor sites across the country. That number increases by more than 2,000 tons each year. Yucca’s statutory design capacity is only 77,000 metric tons. By the time Yucca would be filled to capacity in 2036, there will still be at least the same amount of spent fuel still stored at the reaction sites, even if no new plants are built.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Contrary to DOE arguments, building the Yucca Mountain repository will not make America safer. Instead, it will give terrorists more attractive and vulnerable targets. The DOE expects more than 100,000 shipments of spent fuel to be transported to Yucca Mountain – thus creating 100,000 mobile targets. Furthermore, the DOE plans to store high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel above ground at the Yucca site for at least 100 years. This creates the largest new spent fuel storage target in the world."

(Only slightly more at link)

[chknltl]

3. UPDATE: Obama could kill Yucca Mtn Project!!!

DOE files final Yucca dump application; Obama, if elected, could kill project

Background: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) submitted its final application on June 3, 2008 to license the proposed Yucca Mountain repository for high-level radioactive waste, situated in Nevada, 90 miles from Las Vegas. The dump, if opened, would predominantly house waste from the country’s civilian nuclear power plants in addition to some nuclear weapons waste. However, Democratic presidential candidate and now presumed nominee, Barack Obama, has publicly vowed to kill the Yucca dump if elected. Republican presumptive nominee, John McCain, told a Reno, NV audience last week that he supports the Yucca dump and has consistently voted in favor of Yucca. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission now has three to four years to review the proposal before giving it the final green light.

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/Climate_Change.html2/19/2008

:woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo:
Further comentary from link by Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear:

“The DOE statement on Tuesday that Yucca Mountain will ‘solve’ this country’s radioactive waste problem is just the latest delusion of a desperate agency that has failed to prove for more than 20 years that the flawed and leaky Yucca Mountain site is feasible. The DOE is already squandering one to two million dollars a day trying to make Yucca a reality. But a more probable – and desirable – outcome is that the Yucca dump will never open. Indeed, it could – and should – be killed swiftly by one stroke of the presidential pen, an outcome that looks likely if Barack Obama wins the November election.

“Radioactive wastes stored at atomic reactors across the country remain vulnerable to catastrophic accidents or attacks. But putting them on our roads, rails and waterways to Yucca Mountain only further risks attack or accident in major population centers whose consequences could be tantamount to a Mobile Chernobyl.

“At the very least, we must immediately begin to fortify radioactive waste at the reactor sites. But, most importantly, we must stop making more waste. This is the most obvious first step in attempting to solve our mounting radioactive waste problem and is made more imperative by the fact that the legal capacity at Yucca Mountain could only accommodate the first 63,000 metric tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, a target that will be met by 2010. If nuclear waste continues to be generated, the push will be on to find a second dumpsite, most likely in the eastern half of the U.S. where most of the country’s 104 reactors operate. This will simply provoke another protracted and futile political battle and a further needless squandering of billions of taxpayer dollars.”

YES WE CAN!!!