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twitterSUN EDITORIAL:
Life after Yucca Mountain
Report: Energy Department on verge of abandoning nuke dump application
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.
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"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."
Obama and Reid are refusing to allow a fair review of the Yucca Mountain Science.
We now will be left with no means but to leave the spent fuel, naval fuel high level defense waste, etc, at 100s of sites around the country for the 1 million years that Yucca was designed for.
Obama and Reid have NO plan for the waste other to let it sit around.
Obama and Reid have no plan except for our grand kid to clean up our mess
That is change you can believe it
Is Obama going to give us back our 30 billion dollars back
Let the lawsuits begin.
bravo harry reid...
you are the man...
nevadans are lucky...
got that...
lucky...
to have their senator be the senate majority leader...
go harry go...
nevada loves harry reid!!!
HARRY WILL FIND OUT LATER HOW THIS DECISION WILL AFFECT THIS STATE. IT HAS ALREADY BEGAN.......FIGURE IT OUT!!! WE ARE AT 13% UNEMPLOYMENT NOW. HOUSES ARE SITTING AND PEOPLE ARE LEAVING. WE'LL HAVE A GHOST STATE ON OUR HANDS AND GUESS WHAT, HARRY IS NOT INVITING US TO HIS TABLE FOR DINNER NOR PAYING OUR DAMN BILLS!!!EVERYTHING HARRY DOES IS FOR HARRY - FOUND THAT OUT THE HARD WAY BY VOTING FOR HIM. NOT ANYMORE, NOT ANYMORE!!!!
We don't need the jobs. We don't need the money. Nevada is a proud desert and will die that way.
We'll see. The dumbocrats havn't killed it yet. I think it will come back.
Yucca Mtn wouldn't have created more than a handful of jobs, and they were technical jobs that most people couldn't do.
It's never proven to be safe; in fact, the studies have proven nothing either way. The nuclear waste scattered around the country is probably safer than it would be concentrated in the ground in an unsafe earthquake zone.
The repository & containers are supposed to work for ten thousand years (not a million!) and transporting the waste would place millions of Americans at risk.
The $30 billion dollar quote above, if accurate, could have been better spent creating jobs and enticing real business to the LV economy. Billions have been spent to dump the nation's nuclear waste in the desert a hundred miles from Las Vegas - and you don't think that will create a problem for tourism? Once again, this isn't a democrat or republican thing, this is a human thing that uninformed people use to support their opposition of the other party.
Yucca Mountain hasn't been proven to be anything except a huge hole in which we've dumped billions of dollars.
geeze louise, no solutions just more negative rant about Yucca Mountain.
Maybe the 30 billion dollars could have been better spent, but it would not have been for creating jobs and enticing business to the LV ecomony...
But, if I were a gambler, I would put my money on Yucca Mountain being used as a repository some day in the near future...
louise honey, tell us, really, what your expertise is on this; have you ever worked in a nuclear environment? The tourists aren't coming here anyway, anymore. THEY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO WASTE IN THE CASINOS, WHO BY THE WAY ARE HAVING PROBLEMS OF THEIR OWN.
We'll all enjoy life after Yucca mountain, a lowered standard of living brought to you by expensive, unreliable, 'boutique' energy. Hopefully the children won't mind making less and paying more.
Cleanface Reid said his boyfriend Obama would "zero out" funding for Yucca Mountain LAST YEAR! (look it up, Cleanface made the promise in the Las Vegas Sun) You spineless wimps at the sun editorial desk need to shut up about and stop kissing Harry's rear until the project is SHUT DOWN... that means no license application and zero funding! Get facts Sun!
Amazing, the Sun left comments open on an article that mentions Reid.
And Louise, get your spin right. Obama has already told us that we don't need or want the low-paying jobs that have gone overseas. Obama has assured us that his energy plans will create new, well-paying jobs for everyone. You clearly have missed His Message.
Let's put Yucca Mountain to good use. Put the legislature, Whorehouse Harry Greid, Dida Tits, and that real ugly one who's name I can't remember into Yucca Mountain and seal the damned thing up. We spent a lot of taxpayer dollars into it and while it isn't nuclear, Nevada has some real waste to dispose of.
Louise, you have no idea what you are talking about. Nuclear power has been used in this country for years and there has never been a death attributed to it. Compare that to oil or coal which kill people who work in that industry all the time. The Nave for years has used nuclear power without a fatality. For your information, the nuclear fuel used now is manufactured in processing plants, I believe there are three or four, and then transported to the nuclear power plants using public roads and railroads. Bet you didn't know that. There is nothing safer than to have all the waste in one place where it can be properly secured. Yucca is miles in the desert and if terrorist tried to get in, Nellis and several other bases are nearby to provide backup. A terrorist cannot go into Yucca mountain anyway because the waste generates enough heat to keep the storage tunnels at 350 degrees. It takes robotics to get the waste out of there. Yucca mountain is the safest place we have to store that stuff. Hary Greid is trying to manulipate the electorate with his lies. Don't buy it.
Louise,
Yucca Mountain would have created about 5000 jobs for over 20 years, plus another 1000 jobs for the next 70 years.
In addition, by the NWPA Nevada could have asked for and received health care centers every 50 miles along new 4 lane interstate highways leading in from all four corners of the state.
Finally, Yucca Mountain could have become the foremost nuclear research center in the world for the next 100 years with billions in research.
Oh, but Reid and Greeenspun are against it because it might divert high school non-graduates from the casinos. What a joke.
Nevada is doomed to a slow uneducated jobless death as the world moves on with worthwhile endeavors, rather than all too commmon gambling in the middle of an unreachable and expensive desert.
The end of the Yucca Mountain project just spells vast riches for any state that does accept the much needed repository to store the nation's defense and civilian nuclear wastes, of which Nevada receives a large benefit from in stable economics and fewer wars, and which will ultimately pay to someone else a whole lot of money.
The new definition of "gullible" is anyone in favor of Reid and against the repository.