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Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 | 1:11 p.m.
Sun coverage
WASHINGTON -- A government report released today said developing Yucca Mountain would cost twice as much as other options for storing nuclear waste, but that both interim or on-site storage alternatives would face long-term costs and potential political pitfalls.
The report comes the day after a longtime advocate of nuclear power said during a speech in Washington that the Yucca Mountain project is dead.
Nevada’s lawmakers said the developments are more evidence that the proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles north of Las Vegas will not be built.
“This $100 billion dinosaur’s days are numbered,” Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said in a statement. “It’s long past time those who produced this nuclear garbage take responsibility for finding a real solution to this issue.”
Former Sen. Pete Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who had been chairman of two powerful committees handling Yucca Mountain issues, said during a talk Tuesday at the National Press Club that it was time to consider alternatives to Yucca Mountain.
"We need to be realistic here," Domenici said, according to an account in ClimateWire, which is also published on the New York Times Web site. “Yucca Mountain, once chosen as the site for permanent disposal of nuclear waste, is dead."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he has received assurances from the Obama administration that the Yucca Mountain project will be zeroed out in next year’s federal budget, which is expected by February.
The Government Accountability Office report released today had been requested by Reid, Republican Sen. John Ensign and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who is chair of the Environment and Public Works committee.
The report surveys the higher costs of Yucca Mountain compared to storing nuclear waste where it now sits at existing nuclear power plants or at a pair of interim storage facilities. Operating Yucca Mountain at double its planned capacity would cost between $41 billion and $67 billion, compared to $13 billion to $34 billion for on-site storage handling similar quantities of waste or $15 billion to $29 billion for interim storage.
However, the report notes that even if waste were stored at an on-site or interim storage facility, it would still be needed to be relocated eventually to a geologic storage facility, which would create additional costs. The report also noted political challenges of siting a storage facility and relocating the waste through communities.
Still, Nevada’s lawmakers welcomed the report as highlighting what they have long claimed – that temporary storage would be cheaper than Yucca Mountain.
“This report confirms what most Nevadans already know, that the President made the right decision to stop the Yucca Mountain Project and focus on finding alternatives to dealing with nuclear waste,” Reid said in a statement.
So where is the permanent onsite facility located if not Yucca? And at what cost to develop? As soon as "o" is voted out of office this project will be back on track. The stuff has to go somewhere. The money train will arrive after the chosen one leaves!
Wow, I thought I've seen it all. Allowing waste to pile up at their present location's is cheeper than using a centeral location to store. Wake up people, Yucca was the best place to store this stuff. This is the safest place on earth, (read the studies). Well built and remote as hell. Thanks for killing another 1000 jobs Harry. Your days in office are drawing to a close sir. Thank god your moving out of state after you loose the election, like Bill and Hillary did.
PS Harry, tell the truth about how little if anything you had to do with City Center. That was between Dubi and MGM, everyone knows it.
Interim/present storage is cheaper, really? How long is the iterim/present storage for 10yr? 100yr? Yucca Mountain is being built for 1,000,000 years!! That's 10,000 times longer for only 2 times the cost. Sounds like a bargin to me.
To BobbyG.
Great article in the Atlantic. It gives you the feeling that the see no evil speak no evil hear no evil is SOP. I have been told that some of the generating stations have waste piled up to the roof. What would happen if someone flew a plane loadad with C-4 into the Dome, say a Lear 35 at top speed?????This would be easy,Come out of Mexico and do a wide arc west of the Baja. Drop to 100'above sea level 100 miles out.Their transponder would be off. I hope the Marines down there have their A.A systems turned on.
This is a what if people. I believe it warrents some thought.
sjr8208 got it right. Let's wait until unemployment reaches 27% then we'll pave the entire state as a make work project with Osama's printed stimulus fake money. That would be with our American pesos's. How about shipping that waste to the Capitol building....it'll fit right in there with Congress. To the wood chipper with Reid.....world class, deceptive, lying, little man. The state deserves better.
Sure, interim storage is cheaper for 100 years than infinite disposal. This is a no brainer but means nothing unless the total cost is calculated. Kinda like saying universal health care only costs $800 billion for the first 10 years when the next 10 years cost $3 to $5 trillion.
Makes you wonder what type of mathematicians work at the GAO, and what ethics do they have to release such a distorted half truth report at the request of Reid and Ensign.
Also makes you wonder what other projects are misleadingly described by the GAO.
Ms. Berkley, your quote in this article that "It's long past time those who produced this nuclear garbage take responsibility for finding a real solution to this issue." appears to invoke Nevada's responsibility to dispose of it. About 50% of the garbage of which you speak is from 60+ years of defense nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel from Naval ships, both of which have defended the state of Nevada, provided stability to the world, and allowed tourists to visit Nevada and spend money gambling. Additonally, Las Vegas presently receives about 16% of its electricity from nuclear power. I am glad that you finally recognize that Nevada owns a good portion of the country's nuclear waste and must participate in its disposal.
As to Mr. Domenici's comment that Yucca Mountain is dead, this is a self-serving statement to promote the development of nuclear reprocessing in New Mexico, his home state. He obviously is not afraid of tens of billions of dollars in nuclear technology unlike Nevada's leaders.
Several commenters have already noted the obvious: if one puts on blinders stopping the cost comparison at 100 years it is cheaper not to go to disposal but just store. After that it is likely to cost less to have disposed than to continue to store and then ultimately dispose.
Recycling/reprocessing is something that ought to be done, but if the capacity to do so comes online in an amazingly short 20 years and has the capacity for dealing with the waste arising annually at that time, there is no incentive to double that very expensive capacity and also allow the backlog of older waste to be reprocessed. It is likely never going to be reprocessed and disposal in a site like Yucca would at least allow it to be retrieved for hundreds of years if the reprocessing capacity does become capable of taking care of what by then would be very old waste.
About the Atlantic article recommended by a commenter: I happened to be at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris at the very time when Australia exercised its right under the London Dumping Convention (LDC) and asked research to stop on subseabed disposal. For it to be legal under the LDC, it must be agreed to by all countries bordering a particular ocean basin and Australia registered its protest over the consideration of the Pacific, which had the great, stable abyssal plains made of thousands of feet of wind-blown Gobi Desert dust that we were studying at that time. Another idea illegal under the LDC for the same reason is the use of subduction zones in the Pacific, another conceptually great idea that is technically very difficult to implement. By definition these types of repositories would be multinational, which is not a bad idea at all.
In fact we ought to show the world a proper example of larger nuclear nations helping its smaller nuclear neighbors for whom a repository just does not make financial sense. If we use Yucca Mtn for our 104+ reactors' spent fuel then we ought to offer to take Mexico's waste from its two reactors (for a reasonable amount of cash) to keep them from having to make the huge investment involved in building a repository for just two power reactors [maybe three reactors later this century]).
What deceptive reporting! Here's the link to the GAO Report, if you want to know what it ACTUALLY says: http://gao.gov/products/GAO-10-48
As others have indicated, this misleading comparison is based on storage costs, not including permanent disposal costs. Since a permanent disposal solution is needed regardless our approach to storage in the next 100 years or so, to compare just the storage costs hides the total costs.
For those who want to know what the GAO actually said, here's their bottom line for the three approaches they compared.
"GAO's analysis of DOE's cost projections found that a repository [i.e., Yucca] to dispose of 153,000 metric tons would cost from $41 billion to $67 billion (in 2009 present value) over a 143-year period until the repository is closed."
"Using cost data from experts, GAO estimated the 2009 present value cost of centralized storage of 153,000 metric tons at the end of 100 years to range from $15 billion to $29 billion but increasing to between $23 billion and $81 billion with final geologic disposal."
"Using cost data from experts, GAO estimated the 2009 present value cost of on-site storage of 153,000 metric tons at the end of 100 years to range from $13 billion to $34 billion but increasing to between $20 billion to $97 billion with final geologic disposal."
So the GAO report actually concluded that Yucca is ACTUALLY CHEAPER. Note also that there are national security advantages for proceeding with YM that aren't accounted for in dollars.
That's what the GAO report actually says. Read it, because the Sun (or our Nevada politicians) won't tell you the truth about what it said.