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twitterGOP plan would increase nuclear waste destined for Yucca
Harry Reid: Energy plan would not provide real solutions to problems
BLOOMBERG NEWS FILE
The U.S. Energy Department plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, an extinct volcano about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 | 4:53 p.m.
Sun Coverage
A new energy plan unveiled today by House Republicans streamlines expanding nuclear power plants and the amount of spent nuclear fuel destined for a proposed Yucca Mountain repository.
The bill calls for building 100 nuclear power plants within the United States in the next 20 years and combines higher limits on nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain with plans for more repositories and reprocessing.
The Nevada congressional delegation, which has opposed a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, reacted negatively to the American Energy Act, another plan introduced by Republicans within a month.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that President Barack Obama has already approved a blue ribbon task force to find alternative solutions without a Yucca Mountain repository. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has already started the research into alternatives.
"It's unfortunate that the House Republicans did not come up with real solutions to the nation's energy problems," Reid said.
"It's just not going to happen," said Reid's spokesman Jon Summers of the Yucca Mountain repository approved by President George W. Bush and a Republican-led Congress.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she would continue to highlight both the cost and the danger that Yucca Mountain poses in hopes of building opposition in the House. A Democratic energy-climate change package underway does not include any language that would double the capacity of the dump, she said.
"House Republicans just cannot help themselves when it comes to their support for Yucca Mountain and its $100 billion price tag," Berkley said. "Now they have renewed efforts to 'supersize' Yucca Mountain as part of their energy package, a move that would more than double the amount of deadly radioactive garbage to be dumped in Nevada."
Berkley also said that the GOP bill would be financed by a monthly tax on power bills.
The Energy Department raised the issue of expanding Yucca Mountain's capacity from 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste and spent reactor fuel in the 1990s.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who has opposed Yucca Mountain, said that she was emphasizing clean energy for jobs creation and energy security for the nation.
Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., stated that he has asked House Republican leaders to remove Yucca Mountain from any new energy bills.
"There is wide-spread agreement that our nation needs a comprehensive energy plan that promotes conservation, renewable energy development and access to our own natural resources," Heller said. "We need energy legislation that will create jobs and ensure long-term energy security for our country. This can be achieved without dumping our nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is just another example of big government wasting taxpayers' dollars and is not a necessary component to our nation's long-term energy needs."
The proposed act would concentrate on developing nuclear reactors and includes renewable energy such as solar, geothermal and wind.
On what would happen to increasing nuclear waste, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said that reprocessing as well as further construction of nuclear waste dumping sites, such as Yucca Mountain, would be necessary.
"If an American used nuclear power their entire life, they would produce enough nuclear waste to fill a soda can," Upton said. "If we reprocess that it would be enough waste to fill a 50-cent piece."
The GOP bill would also open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and energy development.
Discussion: 13 comments so far…
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We have NO CHOICE; America must expand/replace our ageing nuclear power generation fleet.
We must utilize our processes, concentrate our waste, to fill Yucca as planned before it's too late.
Harley-
No, we have no choice... We can't afford the danger of nuclear power! Not only is it carcenogenic, but it's not even really clean. Come on, how do we get the energy to split those atoms to create nuclear power?
Gimme a break. We don't need any new nuclear power, and we don't need to endanger Clark County by storing toxic nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Let's get some real energy security and save our planet. Stop building at Yucca and start building more solar and wind power.
I love YUCCA for Nevada. It means jobs and Federal money.
Ms. Manning,
News writing is supposed to be the truth, not biased distortions. If you want to give opinions, it should be presented on the editorial pages. Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress, not President Bush. And lots of Democratic Senators voted to proceed with Yucca Mountain in 2002.
Further, you fail to correct Rep. Heller in that Yucca Mountain is 80% paid for by nuclear power users. The $500 million per year in penalties because it hasn't opened IS coming from taxpayers and only taxpayers. Why are our representatives not on the hook for paying this back when it is Nevada's senior senator who has stopped the project?
Lastly, why doesn't the press question our representatives on what renewable energy will cost Nevadans? A guess is that electricity will climb to about 20 cents/kwhr from the present 11 cents. If Nevadans knew this, they would certainly not be in favor of solar or wind energy as it will severely affect their standard of living due to hundreds of dollars a year in extra expense. Even brand new nuclear power plants are only 15 cents/kwhr. Perhaps several of these should be built instead to power Las Vegas and Reno.
In summary, the press needs to go back to being the press and not a political arm of the Democrats or Republicans. Report the news and do investigative research to enlighten the public. This is the reason for the First Amendment, not the present state of distorted reporting to support the rich newspaper owner views.
atdleft,
You do realize that the waste is now sitting in vats above ground. That it belches into the atmosphere. That it does this because of the way it is currently stored at pacific northwest national laboratory. The concept of Yucca mountain is no more dangerous than leaving it where it is currently. Nevada has taken millions of dollars to do research at Yucca mountain based on the concept that we would be the nations storage facility. This is not based simply on the need to dump waste. It is a national security issue as well. It is arrogant of Nevada congressional delegates and senators to now say, "not in my backyard" after taking the money. If we didn't want it in the first place, why did we take all the money to do the studies to show it is an acceptable site to store nuclear waste. For my money we should charge the federal government out the nose to store the waste, use the money to support education, etc... So when you talk about the danger of nuclear power make sure you give both sides to the nuclear argument rather than the shrill fear mongering, "We can't afford the danger of nuclear power!" Currently in the US 20% of energy is produced using nuclear fuel. 80% of the energy in France is produced using nuclear fuel. To say that it is not produced safely is not supported. How much solar is produced? How far are we from cost effective, truly efficient, solar energy? Can't both be used as an alternative to fossil fuels? I and many others in the state of Nevada think that both are needed rather than one or the other approach you are calling for.
If we had a national mandate to replace coal generation with natural gas and nuclear energy, and replaced our commuter cars with electric cars, we would drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and also reduce CO2 emissions. See my website www.energyplanusa.com for common sense energy discussion and links to in-depth articles.
Yucca Mountain was a political solution to a scientific problem. It does not make sense to ship nuclear waste to Nevada when 96 of the 104 reactors are east of the Rockies. Nor does it make sense to store nuclear waste above the surrounding water table in the most recently formed and changing crust on earth. We should consider expanding the existing WIPP disposal site in New Mexico. It is several thousand feet under the earth in a salt deposit that's had no geological activity for a zillion years (or there abouts).
There is an alternative to Yucca Mountain: check out www.permanentradwastesolutions.com. Also look up patent #7525112 which was granted on this process April 28, 2009. This is safe, economical, and permanent. This will make nuclear power truly green.
I voted for Obama, not for Harry Reed who seems to think he runs the US government. Barak, please stop being on a leash to Harry Reed! Reed is dead wrong about the Yucca project. He is depriving Nevada of many jobs in advanced energy technologies which will get the USA back on track to face and overcome the looming energy crisis. We need a tera-watt (trillion watts) of prime "mother" electricity for: heavy industry (manufacturing ships, autos, planes, bridges, etc); power for vast fleets of future electric plug-in automobiles; and production of oil-replacing green synfuels (hydrogen, ammonia) and bio-fuels. Without that, Las Vegas will become a ghost-town. Only coal and uranium can affordably deliver terawatts of electricity. However coal worsens global warming and must be preserved as raw material to make organics when oil and gas are gone. Nuclear power can deliver terawatts of power without pollution of the biosphere; Yucca is needed in that scenario. Solar and wind are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations but they need expensive energy storage systems when there is no sunshine or wind. For terawatts of wind and solar energy, enormous land and sea areas are needed, requiring gigantic operations for maintenance and repair of storm damage, spoiling scenic land- and sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems. Contrary to false anti-nuclear propaganda, uranium and thorium can affordably sustain all energy needs worldwide for 3000 years using proven advanced reactor technology, at a cost three times less than from "renewables". Modern reactors are absolutely safe and can not explode; they can only melt down in a worst-case scenario. Clean nuclear power is the only practical solution to simultaneously (1) overcome oil/gas depletion, (2) ameliorate global warming, and (3) avoid dependence on foreign oil/gas.
Jeff Eerkens, PhD
Nuclear Science & Eng'ng Institute,
U of Missouri, Columbia
Sorry, I misspelt Harry Reid's last name which is Reid of course.
Shef/Jeff,
If Nevada does not benefit from nuclear power, why should we store the waste? Why did Congress make it a LAW that only Yucca could be studied for a repository? Put yourself in our shoes. Maybe you should fight for those important jobs for Missouri where meth labs are a major employer.
The Permanent Radwaste Solutions idea is quite ingenious in its details, but no matter how you describe it, is is subseabed disposal, which has been considered before. Subdeabed disposal is under the London Dumping Convention, explicitly. It says that engineered disposal under the seabed is allowed as long as all nations adjoinging a basin agree, and Australia has already objected to the use of every basin they adjoin. So goodbye subduction zones.
This idea has been around for a long time, and would work if nature was as predictable as the process-description implies. But nature is not that predictable. I believe the rock that San Francisco sits on was meant to be subducted, but sometimes where the one plate slides under the other there are giant pieces of rock that break off and go the other way.
Conceptually, it is a great idea. Practically? I have serious doubts. Politically, internationally speaking? A non-starter.
Openrange,
Nevada certainly benefits from nuclear power! Per the EPA, the Southwest electrical grid of which Las Vegas is part receives over 16% of its electricity from nuclear power. The remainder of Nevada uses over 3% nuclear power.
Further, Nevada is defended by nuclear weapons and the nuclear navy. The waste from these is over 1/3 of what would have gone into Yucca Mountain.
Stop believing the Sun and Reid. Nevada is not some innocent bystander to the rest of the country using nuclear energy. This is the United States of America, not the selfish individual NMBY USA. Yucca Mountain was chosen out of the top 5 sites in the 1980s because of the dry climate, 100 miles from any city and beside 1000 nuclear bomb explosions. This is a logical place to put waste. Maybe not all of it, but certainly everything west of the Mississippi which includes all of the defense wastes as well as a portion of the civilian waste.
If Nevada wants no part of nuclear defense or nuclear power, then so be it. Cut off the electricity and let foreign invaders take over Nevada if they want to. If not, then why are Reid and the Sun so adamant that Nevada not take care of its own nuclear waste? For politics pure and simple.
Rep. Berkley refers to the $100 billion to build Yucca Mountain. That is not totally accurate. The July 2008 Total Systems Life Cycle Cost report from DOE estimates $96.2 billion to build a repository at Yucca for 122,100 metric tons of waste. But, present law limits the capacity to 70,000 metric tons. DOE assumed for purposes of analysis that Congress would either lift the limit or that a second repository would have comparable costs. Nowhere in the TSLCC is there a cost estimate for a 70,000 ton repository.