Yucca Mountain



In a fantasy world, there will be a source of electricity which is clean, abundant and produces a very toxic byproduct whose poisonous effects will last as long as 24,000 years. Wait a minute - that is not a fantasy world - that is our world and I am talking about nuclear power.

In the United States, we currently have sixty-five nuclear power plants producing a total of 0.806 Tera Watt Hours of electricity. This is about 20% of the total amount of electrical energy produced in the United States. That is the good news.

Each one of these plants create a terrible externality of production - highly toxic, radioactive spent uranium power rods. That is the very bad news. What makes this really bad is with all the brain power we have in our country, we have not yet come up with a permanent solution to this problem. Actually, we have - I mean we did.

It all started in 1982. Congress passes the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requiring the establishment of a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste storage and isolation. The legislation stipulates the significance of geologic and hydrologic conditions in selecting a repository site and mandates the consideration of at least five sites in two or more types of geologic media. Without going into much of the legislative back and forth which followed, I will suffice to say that Yucca Mountain was ultimately chosen as the site for this toxic storage.

It really is a good location. Yucca Mountain is a mountain in Nevada, near the border with California, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Located in the Great Basin, Yucca Mountain is east of Amargosa Desert, south of the Nevada Test and Training Range and in the Nevada Test Site. It was to be the site for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Some key facts to consider:

• In 2002, after years of exhaustive research on many candidate sites, President Bush and Congress selected and approved Yucca Mountain as the site of a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel. It was to be finished and go online in 2020.
• The Yucca Mountain site was selected because of its attributes: remote, arid and geologically stable. Used nuclear fuel will be isolated 1,000 feet below dry rock, yet 1,000 feet above the water table.
• Exhaustive studies have been conducted at the site under very stringent standards, and there is a strong scientific basis for going forward with the site. However, science does not stand still. Studies will continue throughout the life of the Yucca Mountain project.

So far, so good. Sounds like we did our homework on this critical issue and we finally can get those very toxic rods out of temporary storage at the power plants into something much more stable and safe. Here are some more facts:

• As of 2009, we have spent $7.7 billion dollars on the evaluations and preparation of the Yucca site facility.
• Electricity consumers have contributed $30 billion for the disposal of civilian spent fuel.
• Courts have affirmed the federal government’s obligation to dispose of spent fuel. If Yucca Mountain is not online by 2020, taxpayers will face up to $11 billion in liability costs as the Department of Energy will begin accepting used fuel and nuclear waste. Also, after 2020 if Yucca Mountain is still not online, it will cost an additional $500 million with each passing year of delay in depositing spent fuels in permanent storage.
• The nuclear industry has nearly 60,000 metric tons of civilian used fuel awaiting disposal in addition to 20,500 metric tons of defense waste stored at Department of Energy facilities.
• The storage facilities at the power plant sites were always meant to be temporary. When a rod first comes out of the reactor it is very hot - too hot to transport. These rods are stored in huge vats filled with water to cool them down. Once the temperature is cool enough to transport (it can take up to three years), the rods were to be moved to a more permanent location.

Sound complicated? It is very complicated, even before we found the new fly in the ointment. In 2009, our newly minted Administration with our newly minted Energy Department Chief, Dr. Stephen Chu (remember him?), decided that Yucca Mountain is not the way to go. Never mind we have been studying this issue since 1983 and have spent not only the $7.7 billion on Yucca Mountain, but also an additional $6.3 billion on other sites before they were eliminated. The project was shelved with nowhere to go and no plan in progress.

If one did not know better, one would think this is being done on purpose. In Saul Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals (which some say is required reading at Community Organizer schools), it advocates that the system be "overwhelmed" to allow it to fail and then rebuilt "the right way". Looking at just our circuitous energy policy alone (or lack thereof), very critical issues such as Yucca Mountain can easily get lost in the dust. As Mr. Alinsky predicted, we are currently on the path to failure.

We are in the process of killing the coal industry, we brought long term storage for nuclear fuel to a halt, and our energy requirements are projected to go up 20% in the next 20 years. In addition, we are burning 25% of our corn crop to keep the price of our gasoline artificially low. Get the picture? If this is an energy policy, I dare say a fifth grader could do better.

So here we sit, not only with no new nuclear plants being planned or constructed, the sixty-five operating plants are forced to use their own temporary storage containment for permanent storage. Sixty-five tempting targets for someone who desires to do grave damage to our country, not to mention the variety of natural catastrophes which could breach containment. THIS IS MADNESS! Reauthorize Yucca Mountain immediately! Make the date of 2020 happen! Do not allow any more frivolous lawsuits on this matter!

I am convinced that a hundred years from now, the only thing left from our nuclear program will be Yucca Mountain. Hopefully, we will have discovered new sources of energy which are sustainable, renewable and create little if any externalities of production. I also believe we will discover ways to accelerate the decay of spent fuel as to take the half life down from millenniums to decades. However for today, we need our nukes, we need them bad, and we need them now. We need a plan to keep this source of power safe and viable. We need clear thinking planners, not ideologues. In other words, once again we need to start thinking like Americans, exhibiting American Exceptionalism.