YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Nevadans fear new push

[NVMojo]

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are bracing for new Bush administration efforts to speed work at Yucca Mountain, this time against a backdrop of renewed government interest in nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Department of Energy officials declined Thursday to discuss initiatives that would increase federal spending on reprocessing and possible U.S. offers to recycle radioactive waste from foreign countries.

More details are expected to surface when the Bush administration releases its proposed fiscal 2007 budget on Feb. 6. Some have speculated that Bush might mention nuclear waste in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

more...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jan-27-Fri-2006/news/5569709.html

[bluestateguy]

1. They have nobody to blame but themselves

They voted the wrong way, twice, and now I have moved on to other issues. This is their problem now.

[NVMojo]

2. wrong, the election was stolen in Nevada ...

[MercutioATC]

3. O.K.....I know I'm gonna regret this, but how was it "stolen"?

[skids]

5. My guess is he's referring to the Sproul registration drives.

...a massive nationwide RNC-financed voter registration drive that tore up dems forms instead of submitting them. It was big news, at least in the blogosphere, back before the election:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/13/32821/029

[NVMojo]

6. I posted a ton of research on this awhile back under the Elections section

if you can't find it, let me know.

[Erika]

4. W told them in 2000 he'd look at other places than Yucca

So they voted for him and he stuck it to them. They stuck it to themselves twice. If they all end up with a radiation glow, they can thank W and their own stupidity.

[jpak]

7. Yucca Mountain - The Nation's Shame

In the late 1980's, the nuclear lobby got the federal government to take custody of their spent fuel.

The reason was simple - it would cost them too much money to fund a commercial spent fuel repository themselves.

And nobody wanted it in their back yard - not the utilities that produced it, not Republicans, and not Democrats.

The decision to site the national repository in Nevada was an act of shameful cowardice and bully politics - states that hosted nuclear power plants foisted their waste on a state that was politically weak and did not host a nuclear power plant itself.

A state that also suffered grievously during the days of atmospheric nuclear tests.

Yucca Mountain was supposed to be carefully studied to ensure it was geologically sound before it was to be selected as the nation's spent fuel dump.

But political expediency trumped "sound science" and the decision has been made to develop it - geology be damned - and serious allegations of scientific fraud abound.

The cost of construction spirals upward with each passing year - a few billion more for drip shields and a few billion more to build the railroad leading up to the site...

But wait - there's more...

The total cost of building and operating Yucca Mountain is now ~$65 billion, the Nuclear Waste Fund (funded by a 0.1 cent per kWh surcharge on nuclear electricity) will cover less than half of the cost of project.

Who will pay the rest????????

But wait - there's more...

Because of the delay in construction, nuclear utilities are currently suing the federal government because they haven't disposed of the spent fuel that THEY produced and They made a profit on.

Claims pending against the nation's taxpayers are now more than $56 billion.

But who's counting anyway....

:puke: