Print
E-mail
Share
delicious
digg
Newsvine
Facebook
Stumble
Technorati
reddit
Fark
twitter
Sun coverage
WASHINGTON -- Is a salt formation in New Mexico the new Yucca Mountain?
A trade industry publication reports today that discussions are underway to promote an existing facility in New Mexico as an alternative to storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel in the desert north of Las Vegas.
The Obama administration has promised to "scale back" funds for the Yucca Mountain project, and the president has vowed it will not open as a waste dump. A report last week indicated the fiscal 2010 funding cut would be severe.
The existing Waste Isolation Pilot Project, which handles lower-level waste in salt formation in New Mexico, has been mentioned as a possible replacement.
“Nuclear industry officials and policymakers are quietly mounting support for constructing a permanent nuclear waste repository inside a large New Mexico salt formation already used for permanent storage of low-level transuranic waste,” Energy Washington Week reports.
The publication reports former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a longtime leader in nuclear issues, recently mentioned the idea.
Washington’s supporters of Yucca Mountain seem unwilling to let the Yucca Mountain project die even as some press for alternatives.
Today, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called Obama’s position on Yucca Mountain “irresponsible.”
Murkowski dismissed the call by Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a Blue Ribbon Commission to consider alternatives.
“I really haven’t focused on the commission as the answer,” Murkowski said this afternoon. “I think that pretty much negates all the work that’s gone on with what we do with nuclear waste for the past 20 years.”
Murkowski said she plans to address nuclear issues in the upcoming committee debate over a broad energy bill. Already, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, indicated he expects to address issues about Yucca Mountain’s future during the committee debate.
Would the New Mexico facility be an option?
“It may be,” Murkowski said.
“The statements coming out of the admission that Yucca is no longer an option I find quite disconcerting and quite honestly irresponsible,” she said.
Transporting the nation’s civilian nuclear waste to WIPP has its own legislative obstacles. Current law now restricts what can be dumped there and would need to be altered.
Send it to New Mexico. They want it. Let them have it. Nevada isn't for sale. New Mexico might be. I am noticing that the Alaska Senator didn't ask for it to be sent to her state. I have noticed that McCain didn't ask for the dump to be put in Arizona. No, they wanted to put it in the 2nd most active area in the U.S. Dumb.
Yucca mountain is the perfect place for our Nations nuclear energy waste. Harry "The war is lost" Reid is out of touch. Nevadians are up to this important task.
"Nevada isn't for sale..."
Yeah, right. The fact that almost *everything* is for sale in Nevada is what keeps this state going. One can even say Nevadans themselves are for sale when one considers the brothels or how $13/wk bought their votes. Oh wait, you can only rent a Nevadan in a brothel.
More jobs for New Mexico, not so much for Nevada...
We have Harry Reid - of course Nevada is for sale.
Since it is safe to ship to and store in NM then Harry was wrong again.
Nevada will lose out on billions of federal dollar and thousands of high paying jobs.
But talk is cheap.
The Yucca LA is still being reviewed by the NRC and no problems are arising.
With Harry Reid gone after 2010.
Yucca will be back.
I think that killing the YMP would be devistating for our economy, vision and it's very irresponsible. I lived in NM when we had the same discussion about the WIPP project.
The waste has to go somewhere and Yucca Mountain is the perfect place. There are entire industries that this will support and bring revenue into the State that would be spent somewhere else. As long as we rely on Gaming to keep us alive we will always boom/bust, our schools will never get better and there will be no stability in our area. Let's push for stable income to our state.
"The waste has to go somewhere and Yucca Mountain is the perfect place."
Doesn't anybody else question the wisdom of producing these highly radioactive byproducts in the first place? After Three Mile Island and the Russian tragedy that still continues to spread and sicken lots of people, we are still doing nukes. How much political power we gave these imbecils!
And it will continue to need protection from terrorists, earthquakes, seepage, leakage, wrecks, quacks. Earth's history is a series of catastrophic events every several million years. How vain of us to even consider safe our insignificant "protection" plans for the nuclear waste storage of stuff with a half-life of thousands of years! What are we now, LUCKY too?
We are a bunch of incredibly foolish souls if we truly believe that ANY storage of waste this toxic could be safe. Show me why we need nuclear power before you show me how you're able to protect me from the waste from it.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power tried to make a non-combat case for using nukies for energy production. Clearly their strategy is based on guilt. It's not safe; it makes nasty waste that stays highly radioactive for thousands of years - way beyond our ability to protect ourselves from its harmful effects; it contributes to the notion that we are entitled to take our juice however we choose to simply because we can, even though nobody is even remotely capable of ensuring any semblance of safety down the road. The long term effects of a problem in storage will mean horrendous destruction of our planet; dirty bombs are available all over the planet because of proliferation of nuclear power. There is no case to endanger Earth this way. Energy conservation and solar power have the capacity to fuel our societies; risking annihilation for "energy too cheap to meter" is old time pie in the sky. It's time to look the nuclear physicist in the eye and say no, not my planet.
If Gaming is the only competitor to Yucca for jobs and stable income in Nevada, then, folks we're in trouble.
"With Harry Reid gone after 2010.
Yucca will be back."
FINALLY ...A reason to vote for Harry!
airweare says we should forgo nuclear power and cites some of the familiar but unsubstantiated reasons. For one, he/she says "nuclear power" wanted to develop commercial peaceful uses of atomic energy after Hiroshima/Nagasaki. It is pretty well documented that President Eisenhower promoted it and that the electric utilities were reluctant as they were pleased with coal and oil.
But if airweare has his way, does he/she prefer coal, which is the other fuel best suited for 24/7 baseload power (assuming no more hydro is likely?) We are seeing the concerns about carbon emissions from coal and other fossil fuels. Coal plants also are the largest source of mercury emissions a 1,000MW coal plant disperses about 27 metric tons of radioactive material a year exposing people to much more low-level radiation than a nuclear plant would.
The fact is that there is risk in all energy production. The strict regulation of nuclear reactors is far greater than at other energy facilities.
airweare, let me sum up your post as clearly as I can; "the sky is falling".
Why on earth do people still think that America shouldn't be allowed to produce clean energy? Ounce for ounce, nuclear energy is the clear leader.
What concerns me the most is the fact that due to environmental reasons we can't use wind farms or install large solar grids; we can't use coal or oil because they pollute; we can't use nuclear because "the sky is falling"; I guess we are going to magically make energy appear and drive our nation.
We will never be energy independent. Their are too many special interest groups to allow that.
Just a couple of quick technical notes. It is unlikely that spent fuel will ever be put into a salt repository, as this article suggests. Salt is an excellent medium for giving essentially permanent isolation (the salt around WIPP is 200 million years old, and 200 million year old DNA can still be found in the salt). But materials placed into salt cannot be safely retrieved because the salt moves to encapsulate the material and becomes mechanically weak due to the heating from the salt.
Because spent fuel has potential future economic value, it would be bad policy to place it into salt for disposal. Conversely, salt could potentially be an ideal disposal medium for some other residual nuclear wastes, that for example might arise from spent fuel recycle. But it would take a major change in current U.S. nuclear waste policy before anything like this might happen.
Here is a novel concept. Most of the so called waste is nuclear fuel that could be recycled back into the reactors.
Reduction in greenhouse gasses. No enrichment mess. Money saved. Yucca mountain not needed. And the good people of Nevada can watch Las Vegas die a slow death from economic collapse. Why not try that instead of spending billions to bury the stuff. Just a thought.