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A nuclear boondoggle
Yucca Mountain project costs now estimated at a whopping $90 billion
Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.
If it hasn’t been clear that the cost of building a nuclear waste dump 90 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain far outweighs any benefit, a congressional hearing Tuesday made it crystal clear.
Ward Sproat, the Energy Department official overseeing the project, told members of Congress that the startup cost of building and initially operating it will be about $90 billion. That’s a significant increase over the last estimate, which put the cost at $58 billion.
Given the Energy Department’s history of failing to meet expectations, it is safe to assume the real cost of the project would be much higher, particularly considering that the federal government still has yet to finalize many of its plans.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., faced down a passel of nuclear industry hired guns at the hearing and told her colleagues to “keep in mind Yucca Mountain’s bloated price tag, history of chronic delays, failed quality assurance program, and the long list of scientific and technological shortcomings that plague the project.”
The Energy Department has spent $9 billion over more than 20 years trying to prove that Yucca Mountain will work, yet study after study has found the site to be completely unsuitable for holding nuclear waste.
Still the Bush administration and nuclear industry sycophants in Congress continue to push for Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry says the dump is necessary to ensure the future of nuclear energy, yet waste has been safely stored at nuclear power plants for decades and can certainly stay there for years to come. And that would undoubtedly be cheaper and far less dangerous than hauling the waste across the country and burying it in a porous volcanic ridge.
Unfortunately, the Energy Department seems hellbent on proceeding with a plan that would make hundreds of American communities thoroughfares for deadly radioactive waste.
Congress should put a stop to this pricey boondoggle once and for all.
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Do you trust John McCain to honor his pledge to use the very best scientific data in deciding on the ultimate fate of nuclear wastes and the Yucca project? I never trusted George Bush I or II and I do not feel anymore confident about John McCain. He can be bought just like the others...
The Nuclear industry will use whatever money it takes to insure that the highyly poisonous and radioactive nuclear products are buried in the Yucca project whether it is safe or not.. What does safe mean to them anyway?
Your editorial fails to note that the lack of adequate funding by Congress for the last 7 years is one of the main reasons for the delay in opening the repository and its ultimately higher cost. Rather than stop the project, full funding could accelerate the opening by many years, reduce the total cost and provide jobs to 3000 to 5000 Nevadans and other Americans. The unacceptable alternative is to wait 100 years with on-site storage to a time when the world's shortage of resources will make disposal even more costly.
For a fraction of the cost of Yucca we could have developed liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR)power plants. We still can! Variations of the LFTR can burn up uranium waste. No need to store it for 200,000 yrs.
For those of you concerned about nuclear safety and waste products there is a much better alternative. Thorium based (rather than uranium based) nuclear power. This technology was demonstrate in the 50's and 60's but was abandoned because it was much harder to produce weapons grade material (compared to uranium). The military considerations favored the uranium fuel cycle.
More specifically LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) compared to uranium reactors burn fuel 100x more efficiently without reprocessing, result in ~100x less waste and are inherently safer and should cost less to build.
In addition, since LFTR is a high temp low pressure process it can use water or air cooling. Thus Ut/Nv etc, where water is scarce, could replace it's coal fired plants with low cost, clean thorium power plants. Much more cost effective and reliable than the wind and solar plants that California is building. (fyi, California's electricity currently costs 2x Utah's and they are on a path to keep it that way.)
Comparison: Uranium vs Thorium Based Nuclear Power
Uranium LWR : Thorium LFTR
Fuel Reserves (relative) __________________ 1 : 100
Fuel Mining Waste Volume (relative) ____ 1000 : 1
Fuel Burning Efficiency _______________ ~1% : >95%
Radioactive Waste Volume (relative) ______ 40 : 1
Radioactive Waste Isolation Period __10000yrs : 80% 10yrs, 20% 300yrs
Plant Cost (relative) _____________________ 1 : <1
Plant Thermal Efficiency _____________ ~33% : ~50%
Cooling Requirements _______________ Water : Water or Air
Plant Safety _______________________ Good : Very Good
Weapons Grade Material Production ____ Yes : No(very hard)
Burn Existing Nuclear Waste ___________ No : Yes
Development Status _______ Commercial Now : Demonstrated
for more info see
www.energyfromthorium.com/
www.energyfromthorium.com/ppt/thoriumVsU...
charlesH (BS Physics)
Orem, Utah
Does anyone else want to wait and actually read the cost estimate report before they lambast it?
For example, the last report that showed the total life cycle cost estimate was published in 2001 using year 2000 "constant dollars" and was for a requirement to dispose of 83,800 metric tons of commercial spent fuel and some additional quantities of DOE radioactive waste. Most people know the statutory limit for Yucca Mountain is 70,000 metric tons, so the 2001 estimate assumed that limit would be lifted or that a 2nd repository would be built at a comparable unit cost (this is for analysis purposes and does not delve into the practicalities of either path.)
The report everyone is reacting to will have a different base year for constant dollars (which will amount to inflation in the intervening years.) What we do not know is what amount of material requiring disposal in the new report will be. Expect it to be greater than 83,800 MT of spent fuel since more reactors are now expected to have their license extended than was the case in 2001.
If we wait for the report itself, we can get a better cost estimate for the 70,000 MT repository proposed for Yucca. My hunch is it will be less than $90 billion.