This lovely pastoral "back to nature" account just goes to show you how out of whack many Nevadans' priorities are: The author and his old friends, vacationing amidst the natural beauty of Alaska, talk of all the important issues of our time while sitting around a lovely campfire, and the one subject that seems to produce an awkward silence is...

Yucca Mountain???

Come on, give me a break.

The author, like so many Nevadans, is like a passenger on the Titanic who complains that the deck chairs are uncomfortable as the vessel slowly sinks into the watery deep.

Even worse, he sets up a false analogy between Alaska being "co-opted" by environmentalists for a "Nature Playground" and Yucca Mountain being similarly co-opted for a nuclear waste repository.

In the first place, even the author's intended contrast isn't accurate: He would have us think that the withdrawal of land in Alaska for "natural enjoyment" is dramatically different than withdrawal of land in Nevada for a "dangerous" repository. The former, the author implies, is clearly a worthy pursuit, while the latter is clearly not.

But all of that is based in the premise that Yucca Mountain will indeed be dangerous, which scientific study after scientific study has proven is not the case. In fact, Alaska is probably subject to vastly greater environmental risks merely from the presence of the oil industry there, as witnessed the Exxon Valdez accident.

Yucca, by contrast, is over 90 miles away from Vegas (not "close to Vegas," as the author suggests), and the greatest calculated dose risk at the boundary of the site, at its peak, is comparable to an x-ray exam. And by the way, that peak happens thousands of years from now.

Get some perspective, Dude. Your fear of Yucca Mountain was given to you by Harry Reid and the rest of the Nevada political establishment. It is a phantom and has nothing in common with the very real and daily environmental risks experienced by Alaskans (not to mention personal risks that literally come with the territory).

You made yourself look like a schmuck by trying to argue with your friends that Nevadans are subject to any risk comparable to Alaskans simply by the presence of a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain.

That, my friend, was the reason for the awkward silence: Your friends were embarrassed for you.

Hey, teamster:

Really??? Gee, as someone who has lived in Nevada for 28 years, in every decade since the 1960s. and has also worked on the Yucca Mountain Project, I NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN UNLESS YOU TOLD ME THAT MOST NEVADANS OPPOSE THE PROJECT.

Jeez, c'mon. "Hey, teamster: The earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun!"

I do, however, owe poly6006 and everyone else an apology for mistakenly suggesting that the thread/article was devoted to Yucca. I was reading three windows at once and thought I was pasting comments into another thread. I also wholly agree with poly6006's comment about Angle.

That said, I remain completely unpersuaded by poly6006's wholly unsubstantiated (and demonstrably false) assertion that a repository at Yucca Mountain is "in no way, shape, or form good for Nevada." It is demonstrably false in the sense that the Project added jobs and dollars to the State economy, so in that respect it was clearly good for Nevada. Construction of the repository, and its dedicated rail line, would have created thousands of more high-paying jobs and added even more to the State economy.

These are indisputable facts (though I admit, it's based on quibbling with poly6006's statement), and there is another mountain, this one composed of scientific evidence, that would support the conclusion that Yucca Mountain does not represent a significant risk even to the inhabitants who live close to it, let alone 100 miles away in Las Vegas.

And please don't trundle out the talking points about transportation risks and groundwater risks and potential earthquakes and blah, blah, blah. All of that stuff has been refuted, and indeed will be refuted again if the NRC licensing proceeding ever resumes.

Cheers.

And by the way, for anyone interested in the actual TOPIC of this article, my gut at this point tells me the following. Could be dead wrong, but here it is:

NRC Chairman Jaczsko, owing to his loyalty to the man who put him where he is today (Harry Reid, his former boss), and also owing to the many inappropriate "advocacy" statements he has made in support of a 300-400 year time frame for safe onsite storage of spent nuclear fuel, will most likely vote to overturn the ruling handed down by CAB-04. In short, he will vote in favor of allowing DOE to withdraw its Yucca Mountain license application.

NRC Commissioner Sviniki, who in recent times sided with former Chairman Dale Klein over the incessant and petulant objections of current Chairman Jaczsko, will most likely vote to uphold the CAB-04 decision.

New Commissioner Magwood is former DOE, but for certain reasons (e.g., statements he made during his confirmation hearings questioning the status of the NRC's Waste Confidence Rule), I feel like he is going to vote to uphold the CAB-04 decision.

New Commissioner Ostendorf is kind of a blank slate, but I suspect that motions seeking his recusal will make him leery of siding with Jaczsko, so Ostendorf, though in my mind a toss-up, may just vote to uphold the CAB-04 ruling.

So there you have it: a 3-1 vote to uphold the CAB-04 ruling. The only thing more interesting (though vexing) would be a tie vote, with the fifth (tie-breaking) commissioner (Apostalakis) having already recused himself.

Then again, the Commission surprised me months ago by overturning the CAB-04 decision to suspend the proceedings until after the Court of Appeals rules on DOE's attempt to withdraw, so who the heck knows?

@mwh710:

What Future was quoting -- agree with his political views or not -- is taken from the decision handed down by the Construction Authorization Board (CAB-04, to be precise) presiding over the adjudicatory review of the DOE Yucca Mountain license application.

The members of this panel, all respected administrative judges, concluded that the DOE (and by extension, its puppet-masters Harry Reid and President Obama) in fact DOES NOT HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY to unilaterally withdraw its license application from consideration.

This, unfortunately for those who share your views, is a FACT. Now, you can take the next illogical step of impugning the integrity of these judges, which is what most people do when a decision doesn't go their way (as opposed to maybe respecting the publicly acknowledged wisdom and integrity of such judges as the NRC's Ryerson, Moore, and Wardwell).

But the decision is nevertheless a matter of record. Should the NRC commissioners themselves overturn the decision rendered by the CAB-04 judges, then YMP opponents will naturally have occasion for glee. However, the commissioners are not judges, and nor do they come from legal backgrounds; rather, they are political appointees, the current NRC Chairman (Gregory Jaczsko) being a former aide to Harry Reid.

If, on the other hand, the commissioners uphold the CAB-04 decision, Reid will have serious egg on his face. The only thing better would involve the following: The NRC commissioners overturn the judges' decision, and the Court of Appeals immediately takes up its pending Yucca Mountain cases and ORDERS the NRC and DOE to resume the licensing process.

In that way, the politicians (Reid, Obama) and political appointees (the NRC commissioners, Breslow, Chu) will have been handed the harshest of rebukes.

And by the way, for all the electioneering posters on this thread, wrangling over Angle versus Reid... get a room! This is about Yucca Mountain, an actual issue, not about the nauseating and endless hyperbole contest otherwise known as the 2010 Nevada Senate Race.

I read a comment in the RJ the other day that basically suggested that other states (where nuclear waste is stored) could boycott Nevada for fighting to shut down the Yucca Mountain Project.

Arizona, after all, is being threatened with boycotts from California and other states for passing a law that targets illegal aliens. Because the other states disapprove of the law, even though it doesn't seem to affect them directly, they apparently will "punish" Arizona via economic means -- i.e., a boycott.

Washington and South Carolina, both of which have gone to court to fight the attempted closure of Yucca Mountain, are among the states that will find nuclear waste "stranded" indefinitely in their home turf largely owing to Nevada's efforts to stop the project.

Which leads one to wonder whether or not these states might institute boycotts similar to the ones directed at Arizona. That would be an interesting twist to this melodrama over Yucca Mountain, and I suspect it would produce more "collateral damage" beyond the immediate layoffs and other economic impacts caused by this latest news.

Even though I've lived in Nevada for decades, I sort of agreed with the comment I saw in the RJ: If I were a resident of Washington or South Carolina especially, I would totally support a boycott of Nevada -- simply because, if the shoe were on the other foot and there was nuclear waste stored here in Nevada that the government had promised to move to another state, and that state were preventing it, I would fight tooth and nail to stop the other state.

I suppose, then, that truly committed opponents of the Yucca Mountain Project would follow Arizona's lead if Nevada were hit with boycotts from other states, and basically say, "Go ahead, we'll stand on principle and take the economic hit."

An example of Masto's lies:

"Even the U.S. Energy Department has acknowledged that the geology at Yucca contributes almost nothing to waste isolation and protection."

THAT IS A LIE.

Here's the truth:

The surface features and geology above the repository prevent or substantially reduce seepage into the drifts by damping episodic flow and diverting flow around drift openings through a combination of capillarity and thermal processes. Hence, the natural features of the site above the repository are expected to limit seepage to a few percent of the total percolation flux.

Similarly, the natural features below the repository prevent or substantially reduce releases by slow advective transport, matrix diffusion, and radionuclide sorption processes. These features also substantially reduce releases through a combination of low groundwater flow rates, matrix diffusion, sorption, and filtration of colloids.

All of this information is readily available on NRC's website and in the Yucca Mountain license application.

Mr. van Luik:

I've said it before in these blogs, as I've attempted in my own small way to defend the proposed repository:

This state doesn't deserve you, though I suspect that you would not agree with me on that point, which is to your credit.

Here's the true unspoken fact that Nevadans should know as they gloat and cheer for the coming demise of the Yucca Mountain Project:

We Nevadans would be lucky indeed to have more people like Mr. van Luik working for important projects in this state. We would all be safer and better off with people of his caliber doing such work.

Instead, we are driving him and many others like him out of the state; many scientists and engineers have told me -- anecdotally, I admit -- that Nevada has acquired a "reputation" for being anti-science, and therefore they would never consider moving here, even though the landscape provides excellent research opportunities for geologists and seismologists especially.

Oh, well. There's always gambling, real estate development, and service industry jobs. That will keep Colin and other pseudo state's rights cheerleaders happy.

I, meanwhile, will quietly wish Mr. van Luik best of luck in his next project, and be happy for him that he has "escaped" Nevada, even if he is too generous to accept that characterization.

To the letter writer:

If 100 miles away translates into "in our backyard," then we also have been living with about 1,000 atomic detonations "in our backyard," both above and below ground.

In other words, as the proposed repository is located on the Nevada Test Site, then to suggest that we are in danger because of our proximity to it is to concede that we should all be dead by now due to atomic testing.

It is an absurd, suggestion, in other words.

Also, by your reasoning, the 160 million Americans who live within 60 miles of a facility that stores nuclear waste are in even greater peril. In this case, you happen to be correct, but only accidentally and as a consequence of your ignorance.

Those 160 million other Americans (none of whom are Nevadans) are fortunately safe for the near-term, because the TEMPORARY storage of nuclear waste has been ruled by the NRC to be adequate to ensure public safety and health. However, many studies have shown that the current system of on-site storage, as advocated recklessly by Harry Reid, would result in an ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE in about 100 years if there should be a loss of institutional controls (ongoing inspection, maintenance, and security).

A permanent solution such as the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain would ensure the safety of those 160 million other Americans.

Finally, you suggest that Harry Reid's power in the Senate translates into benefits for Nevadans, and yet you offer no evidence of those benefits beyond Reid's efforts to stop Yucca Mountain.

To begin with, Reid hasn't yet stopped Yucca, and the way the court proceedings are going, there is a growing chance that he may not succeed in stopping it, despite all of his claims that it is "finally dead."

So no matter your stance on the subject (for or against Yucca Mountain), the fact remains that Reid has not delivered on his promise.

Given that indisputable fact, what promises has Reid delivered on?

And beyond that, why should any American be glad that any senator holds disproportionate power? Why should we be glad that any single senator, from any state, is able to block amendments from getting into a bill, or able to prevent issues from being debated on the floor, or able to hold up the nominations of needed government officials?

@teamster:

You are a brave person indeed to respond to davelv after the scientific and facts-bashed thrashing he just handed you.

It's funny that your response is essentially two extremely vague talking points without any substance whatsoever, with one of them misspelled ("safty"?).

It's also funny that you invoke the extremely naive talking point involving "recycling" of spent nuclear fuel. First of all, just because 90% of the energy in uranium remains available in spent nuclear fuel, that doesn't translate into a 90% reduction in waste volume. What you get with reprocessing, in fact, is more volume of waste, but at different levels. The process generates multiple waste streams, from low level to high, and produces a lot of nasty by-products in liquid form. In the end, you actually end up with MORE volume of waste (though lots of it is no longer classified as high-level waste). And even so, you still have a good portion of high-level waste THAT STILL MUST BE DISPOSED OF in a geologic repository.

I'm not necessarily against reprocessing, but many credible scientists have argued persuasively against it on technical and economic grounds (see Frank von Hippel of Princeton, for example).

So, as usual, you are DEAD WRONG in trying to suggest that reprocessing "eliminates dumping dangerous waste into a large hole in the ground." What do you think is buried at the WIPP site in NM? It's transuranic waste, the middle category between high-level and low-level stuff.

Finally, your talking point borrowed from Secretary Chu and Harry Reid is preposterous. The science behind Yucca Mountain is no "OLD science." Nor is the approach outdated. It has always evolved in accordance with the larger scientific community, especially with respect to the use of computer modeling. In its current form, in fact, the proposed repository is a state of the art facility from a scientific and engineering perspective.

So, once again, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Like most opponents of the repository, you are trying to substitute mindless repetition of talking points (poorly understood in the first place and completely contradicted by the facts) for actual reality.

First, a salute to the venerable Mr. van Luik.

Second, a razzing to the Sun's characteristically weak editorial writers, who resort time and again to the same old canards.

The "truck shipment" argument is foolish and falls apart the instant Mr. van Luik's points are acknowledged. The dedicated rail line, apart from being a serious economic boon for the state, would virtually eliminate the "truck shipment" canard, reducing both the number of annual shipments and the alleged threat.

As to that threat, many studies have already been done simulating a "terrorist strike" on a transportation cask using an RPG-like weapon. Those studies pretty much agree that the consequences, though serious, are nowhere near as dangerous as the Sun editors want their readers to believe.

Those casks are the epitome of "robust." An RPG-like weapon can penetrate a cask in some instances, but the fuel inside is SOLID. It would not explode or be dispersed beyond the immediate vicinity of the cask.

In fact, those studies that look at the potential damage from terrorist strikes against on-site storage pools at nuclear plants are more alarming than any of the studies that look at terrorist strikes against a waste shipment. All of which suggests, in terms of relative risk, that the Sun editors are once again DEAD WRONG in implying that the waste "would be safer left where it is." Moving the waste currently piling up in pools (look at the practice of "re-racking" to get more pool storage capacity) to Yucca Mountain would significantly reduce the amount of waste in pools and therefore reduce the risk from a terrorist attack on a fuel pool.

And where did the Sun editors get that figure of 50,000 tons of additional waste above and beyond the 77,000 tons slated for Yucca Mountain?

First of all, the current U.S. waste inventory is probably closer to 65,000 tons. The Sun's figure of 50,000 additional tons may reflect the eventual inventory if all of the current nuclear plants are in service to the end of their operational lifetimes (including, one assumes, license extensions).

So this additional tonnage doesn't exist yet, and the fact that it will someday means nothing with respect to "stranding" fuel on-site. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act has ALWAYS contemplated the construction of a second repository at another site (and beyond that, a third or a fourth). It is disingenuous in the extreme for the Sun editors to suggest that Yucca was intended to be, or will be if built, the only centralized repository in the land.