Obama & Yucca Mountain

[Faeelin]

A while back, I mentioned how I was debating jobs for the summer, and ended up doing research for a professor. I thought this article would be worth bringing up for discussion here. It's kind of dated, but still interesting.

The summation: A president who ostensibly wants to combat global warming is shutting down Yucca Mountain, leaving America's nuclear waste storage in limbo and jepeordizing the 20% of America's power that comes from nuclear waste which is emissions free.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=24743

[MadImmortalMan]

He can't fight Congress on this even if he wants it. And the Majority leader in the Senate will lose his job if he changes his position or lets Obama talk him into letting it happen. That's the third rail of Nevada politics.

[Faeelin]

He can't fight Congress on this even if he wants it. And the Majority leader in the Senate will lose his job if he changes his position or lets Obama talk him into letting it happen. That's the third rail of Nevada politics.

Eh. While I understand, it is still summat depressing that the president who campaigned on a platform of combatting global warming is going to help destroy nuclear power.

[sbr]

I am very uneducated on the subject but Yucca Mountain was NEVER going to happen.  It had been in the planning stages for 20 years, it seems a bit of a stretch to say Obama is shutting it down, would be a bit like the NYC Coroner declaring Jimmy Hoffa dead (if he hasn't been already).

[grumbler]

I am very uneducated on the subject but Yucca Mountain was NEVER going to happen.  It had been in the planning stages for 20 years, it seems a bit of a stretch to say Obama is shutting it down...

Actually, that isn't much of a stretch given that his own administration claims it.

You are right in the assumption that this was unlikely to happen.  The problem with solving the fossil fuel problem is that every solution is worse for somebody who can sabotage it, and so they will.  In fact, I dare say the best means of combating global warming is to simply releasing all the hot air that is being emitted about the problem, and hope the consequences of continuing to ignore it are not as bad as some of the projections.

Since the solutions to global warming will occur in someone's back yard, they are not implementable.  Pity, but that is human nature, after all.

[KRonn]

No surprise about Yucca Mtn. So we won't get nuclear power much more implemented as a way to replace fossil fuel dependencies on foreign sources. All the talk, but no walk. And not blaming Pres Obama - he's just one of the current players in this soap opera.

So various small nuclear reactors around the nation, labs, research sites, or what ever, will still be storing waste on their sites, or elsewhere with variances from the Atomic Energy Dept. Continuing to be a less safe and secure method?

[Berkut]

He can't fight Congress on this even if he wants it.

Why can't he? Isn't that what leadership is about - fighting for something that is important, even if it makes other people mad? Is Obama the representative for Nevada?

[The Minsky Moment]

Why don't we just pay anotheer 200M to Palau?

[Berkut]

Why don't we just pay anotheer 200M to Palau?

I think they have already done their part, don't you?

What about Cuba? Once we send the prisoners to Palau, could we turn Gitmo into a nuclear waste disposal site? It is ours after all...

[saskganesh]

there's apparently not enough uranium the supply all the world's proposed reactors. while nuclear power may not be a dead end, it's really just a cul de sac.

[saskganesh]

He can't fight Congress on this even if he wants it.

Why can't he? Isn't that what leadership is about - fighting for something that is important, even if it makes other people mad? Is Obama the representative for Nevada?

this local representative seems happy:

{quote] Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who has been the most prominent anti-Yucca figure over a two-decade campaign wrote on his website that he "couldn't be happier for the people of Nevada" after more than two decades of effort. [/quote]

[Berkut]

Ahhh, so it is Harry Reid calling the shots. Makes sense now.

The article does provide a good blueprint for moving forward - just open it up to who actually wants it and the money associated with it.

Maybe downtown Detroit could use some federal dollars? Lord knows there are plenty of places to stash some nuclear waste there - that Packard plant would be perfect.

[derspiess]

Obama = wuss.

Nukular power is the way to go if he were really serious about his energy rhetoric.

[Valmy]

The summation: A president who ostensibly wants to combat global warming is shutting down Yucca Mountain, leaving America's nuclear waste storage in limbo and jepeordizing the 20% of America's power that comes from nuclear waste which is emissions free.

God damn it!

Nukular power is the way to go if he were really serious about his energy rhetoric.

Yes and yes. 

[Barrister]

Ahhh, so it is Harry Reid calling the shots. Makes sense now.

The article does provide a good blueprint for moving forward - just open it up to who actually wants it and the money associated with it.

Maybe downtown Detroit could use some federal dollars? Lord knows there are plenty of places to stash some nuclear waste there - that Packard plant would be perfect.

The problem is you need very specific geology to be able to safely store nuclear waste on the timeframe involved, being 100,000 years or more.

Sidebar: In the mid 90s I had a fantastic 6 month job with Canada's nuclear company working with a bunch of scientists who were doing computer modelling of Canada's proposed underground nuclear storage vault.  I helped to clean up and present some of their data in their final report, which hit Ottawa like a lead balloon a few months after I left, and Canada has not approved any final storage solution as of today.

But anyways, some of the criteria determined by AECL was that any storage site had to be geologically solid (harder than you think - most rock formations have fractures), must be virtually impervious to water (that's the big way for radiation to get out - water soluble radionuclides being washed out), must be in as remote a location as possible to try and guarantee to human interference with the site in an era long after human's have forgotten about it, and have no chance of tectonic or volcanic activity.

A few sites in the mountain west are about all that applies in the US.