Life after Yucca Mountain

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

We have cheered the Obama administration’s decision to eventually shutter the ill-conceived Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project by starving it of federal funding. Nonetheless, our optimism has been tempered because the Energy Department still has a pending license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a permanent dump for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

What we eagerly await is the day when the Energy Department abandons the application so that the idea of forcing a potentially deadly nuke waste dump, on a state that does not want it, is buried for good.

That day could come as early as next month, according to The Energy Daily, which frequently writes on nuclear power issues. The publication, citing internal Energy Department documents, reported Monday on its Web site that the agency plans to abandon the license request in December as part of its fiscal 2011 budget. The story also noted that the only money the agency is seeking for Yucca Mountain that year is for the purpose of closing the project.

If that is the case, we can hardly wait.

There are still plenty of pro-Yucca Mountain advocates, including some turncoat Nevadans, who cling to the idiotic belief that it is perfectly safe to transport nuclear waste on accident-prone trains through the nation’s densely populated cities — including Las Vegas — to a dump site that is surrounded by earthquake faults. Did we mention the potential for terrorist attacks along the way?

The reality is that major nuclear energy players are recognizing that they should be looking for alternative ways to dispose of nuclear waste. Writing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Westinghouse Electric President and CEO Aris Candris said that “because of political considerations, storage at Yucca Mountain will likely never happen.”

We’re at this point because of hard work and strong advocacy by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has played the key role in convincing the Obama administration that discarding the Yucca Mountain project is the right thing to do.