Obama: Build more nuke plants & close Yucca mountain

[jimmy olsen]

What the hell is this bullshit?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/02/obama_irresponsible_on_nuclear.html

Obama irresponsible on nuclear power

In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama promised to build "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" in America. He quickly backed that up: In his proposed budget, out this week, he asks Congress to triple the amount of money in an Energy Department loan guarantee program for new power stations. "We are working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry," Energy Secretary Stephen Chu exclaimed Tuesday.

Sounds nice. Nuclear power is proven and pretty clean relative to, say, coal. But it still produces waste, and the administration's plan for that is... to close the nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

That idea, also in Obama's budget, acknowledges political reality. Nevada's NIBMY's have a lock on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Yet it's bad policy -- nuclear waste currently sits in surface-level storage units strewn across the country. And it's more than a little jarring, not to mention irresponsible, for the president to push a large expansion of nuclear energy while eliminating the best way to clean up dangerous byproducts and not providing an alternative.

[Jaron]

  mountain

[citizen k]

mountain

[Caliga]

The post-Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal program will consist of:

a. building a secret tunnel from El Paso under the border to Juarez.
b. building a secret pumping station in El Paso.
c. pumping the nuclear waste to Mexico.

[Duque de Bragança]

The post-Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal program will consist of:

a. building a secret tunnel from El Paso under the border to Juarez.
b. building a secret pumping station in El Paso.
c. pumping the nuclear waste to Mexico.

Didn't Russia offer itself, for a price, a few years ago as a price for dumping nuclear waste?

[KRonn]

This has been the case for a while now. Politicians, including Obama prior to this, talk of nuke power but won't use Yucca mtn, and I'm not aware of any other suitable proposed site. But then, any site would get resistance, even though we claim to want and need nuclear power.

I read a news item, a while back, that the US does have many small nuclear facilities of some kind, corporations, universities, medical research, but not enough places to store the waste. Some facilities get waivers from the govt to store waste on site. Now that is worrying.

I've said before that I'd take a site in my town or in state nearby, as long as they're safe sites, which I think they are. Have to have them somewhere. For that matter, build something in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Or a site off shore Mass. But we're having a tough time just getting wind turbines erected off the coast, though it appears that may actually be nearing approval, finally.
Same as nuclear power plants, which we have one in Plymouth Mass, another just over the border in New Hampshire (Seabrook, which anti-nukers fought tooth and nail to try and prevent it getting built).

[The Larch]

Isn't there already a site in operation in New Mexico?

[Faeelin]

Isn't there already a site in operation in New Mexico?

It only accepts military waste, though.

I'm not surprised. Yucca's been a disaster from day 1, and has no support in Nevada.

[Eddie Teach]

We should dump the waste in ANWR.

[grumbler]

I'm not surprised. Yucca's been a disaster from day 1, and has no support in Nevada.

Yep.  The idea that nuclear waste could be stored was never viable.  People would much rather panic over a boogyman now than do more than worry over a global warming trend that will take decades, even when the later is going to do damage and the former is not.

[Viking]

People against Yucca? NIMBYs I can understand, but being against it on principle? What fucking stupid idiots that must be. The only alternative to secure storage is A) not using electricity or B) (what is done today) store the stuff in the power plants that made the waste.

[grumbler]

People against Yucca? NIMBYs I can understand, but being against it on principle? What fucking stupid idiots that must be. The only alternative to secure storage is A) not using electricity or B) (what is done today) store the stuff in the power plants that made the waste.

And B) is not an alternative. 

[grumbler]

We should dump the waste in ANWR.

That would also help by eliminating most of the arguments against drilling for oil there.

YES!  WE!  CAN!

[The Brain]

Yucca seems to be a technical clusterfuck anyway so dropping it may be sensible, I don't know.

Why didn't they secure the approval of the locals at a very early stage? Or did they and then lost it?

[Viking]

Yucca seems to be a technical clusterfuck anyway so dropping it may be sensible, I don't know.

Why didn't they secure the approval of the locals at a very early stage? Or did they and then lost it?

Do you want a storage site for nuclear waste in your county?

• Yes
• No
• Jaron