Okay all of you anti-nuke environmentalist Yucca haters, I'm going to say it again:

What Harry Reid endlessly refers to as "the deadliest substance on earth," i.e., plutonium, is indeed deadly. But is it in fact "the deadliest"? How does one quantify it?

The environmentalist fringe is fond of telling us that the current inventory of plutonium, if distributed equally and ingested, is capable of killing 10 billion people. Wow. That sounds deadly indeed. One would think that the amount of plutonium originally destined for Yucca Mountain would be more than enough to kill the entire population of Las Vegas, if not the state of Nevada.

But wait a sec: If official stats are to be believed, we produce enough chlorine gas to kill 400 TRILLION people. We produce enough phosgene to kill 20 TRILLION people. We produce enough barium to kill 100 BILLION people (ten times more than plutonium could kill).

Hey, but isn't barium widely used in medical procedures?

Anyhow, at least we're not exposed to chemicals such as phosgene, and the stuff it's used to make, like methyl isocyanate.

Oh, but wait: Wasn't it methyl isocyanate that leaked out of a plant in Bhopal, killing 6,000 people in 48 hours? Don't some estimates say the eventual death toll was 20,000, with an estimated 250,000 suffering adverse health consequences?

Good thing they don't make that stuff here in good ol' Home Town USA.

What? We produce about 4 million kilograms of methyl isocyanate in the U.S. every year? About 2 million tons of phosgene worldwide every year?

Nah, that couldn't be, or else the same environmentalists who try to scare us about Yucca Mountain would be warning us about the risk of chemical plants right in our own backyard. (Where's your NIMBY now?)

@atdleft:

Holy cow! I just read your breathtakingly absurd belief that nuclear power requires coal- or gas-fired electricity to generate electricity! I can't believe I just wasted time formulating a thoughtful response to one of your other posts. You are truly a lost soul: what I consider the flip side of the Birthers, Truthers, and other Reality Deny-ers whose beliefs and assertions become more and more irrational when confronted by truth.

@pmmart:

I hesitate to address your ill-informed commentary as well, for the same reason I gave to atdleft. Waste of time, like a giraffe trying to communicate with a monkey. Two different species: Rational and fact-bearing versus irrational and myth-bearing.

In any case, you need to read a credible study about reprocessing, for you have surely got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Frank von Hippel wrote a good article on reprocessing for Scientific American, and you might consider looking into the French study done by Mycle Schneider and Yves Marignac.

That "five percent" figure is deeply deceptive, for reasons you may be unable or unwilling to understand. Reprocessing actually increases the volume of radioactive waste by separating out the elements of the spent fuel. It's true that around 90% of the unused uranium is separated out and recovered, along with the small percentage of plutonium produced in the reactor. But the process to accomplish this separation leaves behind the rest of the byproducts in liquid solution, millions and millions of gallons of it (see Hanford).

The difference is, some of this solutionized radioactive waste byproduct can be "reclassified" downward as intermediate-level or low-level waste -- as opposed to our "once through" system, in which spent nuclear fuel is used once and then stored. It remains, in other words, high-level nuclear waste and is subject to the much stricter regulation regarding its handling and storage. In France, by contrast, which uses reprocessing, the byproducts in solution are stored in carbon steel drums at places like Marcoule. In the late 1960s, the French even dumped thousands of these barrels into the sea!

Long story short: radionuclides in solution are far more mobile, and therefore far more dangerous, than radionuclides in solid ceramic pellets. I don't care if you separate out the most dangerous elements (U and Pu) and solidify them for reconditioning into new nuclear fuel. Apart from the risk of having tons of relatively intert, safe-to-handle weapons-grade plutonium lying around, the consequences of dealing with the byproducts in solution are too dire at this point without a viable breeder reactor program.

@atdleft:

You should be deeply ashamed of yourself for suggesting that Helen Caldicott is a credible scientist. Your own credibility just suffered a fatal blow for even using her name in the same sentence as the word "trusted." She may be trusted by the profoundly irrational neo-flat-earther fringe of the environmental movement, but survey after survey of her peers (radiological health physicists who are actually qualified) ranks her scant body of work in the absolute basement of credible research. She is, in short, a bad joke in a discipline where scientific consensus and peer review are everything.

And bear in mind that this in not merely a matter of personal opinion. If you would bother to do a Google search, you would find ample criticism of Caldicott's scholarship, such as it is, which she has devoted entirely to anti-nuke propaganda. Compare, for example, her claims of the effects of low-level ionizing radiation against the results of the BEIR reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, an independent and objective organization with an impeccable scientific reputation.

More generally, try reading some studies that contradict your own views before wasting your time and ours with empty, unsubstantiated rhetoric. I support nuclear power and I support the Yucca Mountain Project, but not only have I taken the time to read extensively on this subject, I have also read much material from the opposition, including Caldicott, Lovins, Sternglass, and many others.

I have EARNED my opinion, in other words, by attempting to test it against opposing views. I may not have done so as rigorously as I could have, and I may approach opposing views with a certain predisposition, but at least I have tried.

@DGM:

You should maybe try reading the article a little more closely. Magwood is astoundingly qualified: DOE NE, Edison Institute, and Westinghouse. Contrast that to, say, Bush's choice for director of FEMA. The Obama Administration, in fact, though I disagree with it on the nuclear energy/Yucca Mountain issue, has been pretty consistent in choosing qualified appointees.

@Nevada Scandalmonger:

You can trundle out TMI and Davis Besse and various other greenie fearmongering all you want, but you will ALWAYS be stopped short by one simple statistic: number of deaths attributable to nuclear power. Even if you factor in non-radiological accidents, nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than any other form, not to mention the vastly greater danger from common CHEMICALS we live with every day without protest or even awareness.

To those who worry that Magwood doesn't share Harry Reid or Nevadans' views on Yucca Mountain:

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Think of what you are wishing for. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was created to be a non-partisan independent oversight agency. Its decisions are based on objective science and adherence to regulations, irrespective of what a particular politician or his constituents might want. The NRC is, in essence, the "High Court" on matters nuclear.

How many of you Democrats (and I am one myself) would want the Congressional Budget Office to be staffed by Republicans hired on the basis of their willingness to analyze proposed budgets through the lens of "Reaganomics"? The Republicans might say, "That would be great," but Democrats would howl and bleat and insist that CBO remain politically neutral. How would we, as citizens, get an unbiased and objective view of government spending if we didn't have an unbiased and objective CBO?

Well, NRC is supposed to function in the same manner, but Harry Reid left his characteristically corrupting fingerprints on the agency when he pressured the Administration to name his former aide and Yucca opponent, Greg Jazcko, as Chairman at NRC.

Again, do the math. Four-thousand acres of eyesore to generate a measly 242 megawatts under optimal conditions (i.e., no clouds or night). Contrast that with the nuclear plant 50 miles outside Phoenix: the Palo Verde station, which generates over 3,000 megawatts and occupies maybe a square mile. Moreover, the Palo Verde station is "always on," rather than intermittent like wind or solar.

Similarly, look into the risks created by solar power installations (an example of which one blogger mentions above); in particular, look at the environmental risks and the potential chemical consequences of "accidents" at solar installations. Beyond that, an economic comparison is worthwhile, too.

And yet, brainwashed Nevadans (except Nye County residents) reject all things nuclear (except, of course, the power it provides, which we import from other states) -- principal among them, the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

Even worse, however, are those who premise their anti-Yucca Mountain arguments on some poorly developed alternative energy fantasy. "We don't need nuclear (which goes double for Yucca Mountain); we have plenty of solar and wind. These will save our environment and get our local economy back on track!"

So saith the Greenies and their coincidental ally, Harry Reid. But anyone who has read the recent report put out by the independent Energy Information Administration (at the request of Reps. Markey and Waxman during development of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) will soon discover that ALL forms of alternative energy, including nuclear, are necessary to get us to our emissions goals without ruinous economic consequences.

It also bears mentioning that many proposals to build new wind and solar plants have been withdrawn recently: due in part to a nervous financing climate, but mainly due to vocal opposition by the NIMBY crowd, who when confronted with a proposed nuclear facility screams bloody murder and says, "We should be building solar and wind," and then, when confronted with solar and wind, shouts "NIMBY!"

Funny how the same limited cast of characters always appears for these stories, myself included.

Birdiedreamin is little more than a condescending windbag who seems to equate snark with substance; he/she embodies the "apocalypse now" for rational political debate, which apparently has been reduced to name-calling and assertions without proof. It would be nice if such tactics could be dismissed without comment, but because they are of a piece with the breathtaking ignorance behind the recent healtcare town hall disruptions, one is left to wonder if reason has finally been vanquished by a kind of pridefully intentional stupidity or "magical thinking" or "faith-based worldview" of the sort that put Galileo in prison for insisting that the earth orbits the sun, rather than the other way around.

In any event, the false binary of "Republican versus Democrat" is equally tiresome. The Yucca Mountain Project has always enjoyed bipartisan majority votes in Congress, which the record clearly demonstrates to anyone who can be bothered to look at it. I happen to be a Democrat who supports the repository, and it is just as easy to find a (Nevada) Republican who opposes it. So leave off the silly argument by party affiliation.

Other points, for the record:

Future: You are right that NRC Staff only accepted 19 of the State's contentions. However, the NRC judges presiding over the hearings disagreed with the Staff's (and DOE's) evaluation and ended up admitting nearly all of Nevada's contentions. These will be adjudicated if NRC is allowed to do its job.

Finally, I find it especially depressing that Cortez-Masto's underling, Marta Adams, would say, "The NRC is not aware it's dead."

The NRC is an independent regulatory agency that is obligated to follow the law. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (as davelv frequently reminds us) is the law of the land and requires NRC to evaluate the Yucca Mountain Project license application and either grant or deny a construction authorization -- based on the scientific, regulatory, and technical merits. End of story. (Unless, of course, you are Harry Reid and are willing to circumvent law through budget manipulation, like de-funding the NRC's statutorily mandated review.)

Robert Moen:

Your line of argument is familiar insofar as it defeats itself by its own logic.

Of course the Yucca Mountain Project is both a political and scientific decision (political in the broadest sense as "involving the polis"). The DOE's former director of the Project said as much, and everyone jumped on him for it.

Where your own logic falls apart is in cherry picking a couple of factors among hundreds and presenting them as somehow "definitive." Do you think you are the first person to offer the idea of WIPP as a potential high-level waste repository? Don't you think that's been studied? Do you know why WIPP is a transuranic waste repository rather than a high-level radioactive waste repository? Have you ever heard the term "salt creep"? Do you understand why NRC has no involvement in WIPP, but that NRC would by law be responsible for licensing any high-level waste/spent nuclear fuel repository? Do you know about the brine over which WIPP is sited, and the consequences of that? Do you have any earthly idea of the protests, legislative battles, and legal wrangling occasioned during the development of WIPP?

And on the geology/seismology/volcanology front: Why is it that people like you always throw out descriptive phrases like "most recently formed and changing crust on earth," and yet you never cite a single study about the probability of, say, an earthquake or volcanic eruption significant enough to cause damage?

Why is it that people from a particular discipline who oppose the repository always harp on only those elements of the repository design they understand? Yucca Mountain doesn't boil down to geology or seismology or any other single discipline. An alternate site that may seem perfect from the standpoint of a geologist will look like garbage from the standpoint of a hydrologist or an engineer. Hence, the many non-Project armchair geologists out there (e.g., Allison Macfarlane) who say, "The repository needs to be in granite, or in salt." Well, you find me a site in granite or salt that also satisfies the myriad other considerations, all specific to disciplines OTHER THAN geology, that go into siting a nuclear waste repository.

And even if you find the "perfect" site from a pan-disciplinary scientific standpoint, what about the legal and regulatory standpoint? Does your site meet requirements for distance from flightpaths and population concentrations? Is it near a water table that supplies a population center, as opposed to on top of one that dead ends in the middle of nowhere?

Before you start rejecting established law and policy and science, and before you make a proposal of your own, try looking at the entire picture. That's what the hundreds of scientists and engineers and regulatory experts did when narrowing down the initial nine potential sites to three and then to one: Yucca Mountain.

Okay, Lisa: Where's the story here?

As you mentioned, we knew from the Administration's 2010 budget, unveiled months ago, that the DOE's budget for Yucca Mountain would be around $196 million.

The bill you are describing (S. 1436), which has just emerged from the Senate Appropriations Committee, merely delivers what the Administration asked for. No surprise there. The allocation is $196 million.

DOE has already made the necessary workforce reductions to get through 2010 with a budget of $196 million. The current staffing level reflects that number. So where's the news, and how is the Yucca Mountain Project any more or less dead than it was months ago when the same sour-faced remarks issued from Our Dear Majority Leader's lips?

He looks like a man with a mouthful of fishmeat who's just discovered a bone in it.

The only real bit of news in your story, Lisa, concerns the NRC budget allocation, which does represent a departure from the Administration's FY2010 budget.

I find this the most newsworthy item to emerge from this week's cloud of idiocy and spin.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to be a non-partisan, independent regulatory agency. Its development, implementation, and enforcement of regulations is supposed to be BY STATUTE, without regard to politics (it's politics -- the legislative process -- that produces those statutes).

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 directs NRC to review the Yucca Mountain license application and either issue or deny a construction authorization license. This review is twofold: One part, conducted by NRC Staff, is technical; the other is legal, conducted by lawyers for the interested parties (Nevada, California, DOE, the nuclear industry, Native American tribes, etc.).

But now, Harry Reid is essentially proposing a CIRCUMVENTION OF THE LAW through budget cuts, which is what he's always done, only this time more flagrantly.

It's bad enough that former Reid science adviser Greg Jaczko has been elevated to the Chairman of the NRC, which represents the ultimate conflict of interest. But to then de-fund the NRC's legally mandated review, all with Jaczko's apparent blessing -- that's the limit indeed.

GM:

Here are some survey questions I would like to have seen in the poll-based study commissioned by Clark County:

(1) Do you find it troubling that policy makers would rely on a poll of 600 people to determine whether or not nuclear waste should be stored primarily in a remote, largely uninhabited location or should remain within 60 miles of over 160 million fellow Americans and near every major body of water in the country? (Note: Not a single one of the 160 million Americans who live within 60 miles of an existing nuclear facility was surveyed in the abovementioned poll.)

(2) Would you be willing, in exchange for rejecting a proposed nuclear waste repository in your state, to surrender that portion of your electricity generated by nuclear power? For example, in the state of Nevada, approximately 16% of electricity comes from nuclear power generated outside the state (for example, at the Palo Verde nuclear plant 40 miles outside of Phoenix, AZ). If you were a Nevadan, would you be willing to relinquish this portion of the electricity supply, whatever the consequences (i.e., in terms of shortages, brownouts, rate increases, etc.)?

(3) On what do you base your disapproval of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain: (a) scientific evidence, (b) political convictions, (c) what I've heard from politicians and local media, (d) personal opinions with respect to nuclear energy.

Here are some economic facts that Yucca Mountain opponents never seem to mention, even while they enthuse wildly and celebrate the alleged demise of their favorite cartoon villain, the proposed repository for high-level nuclear waste.

First, as made clear in testimony before the House budget committee on July 16th, Harry Reid's "victory" over Big Government's plan to build an "unsafe" and "unsound" nuclear repository 90 miles outside of Las Vegas will be a costly victory indeed -- for all Americans.

Because the decision to build a repository at Yucca Mountain is settled law (the Nuclear Waste Policy Act), and because that settled law includes a contract with nuclear utilities for the DOE to take nuclear waste off of their hands, the government stands in breach of contract (since 1998) and must pay damages to said utilities.

According to the Justice Department official testifying before the House committee, the nuclear utilities have brought over 70 suits as a result of this breach. To date, $565 million has been paid out by the government to settle these suits, 51 of which are still pending. Of those 51, thirteen cases have passed through the judgment phase and additional settlements are forthcoming. Which means, at this point in time, the government is on the hook for $1.3 billion in damages.

Moving forward, DOE has estimated that the final tally for settlement costs will reach approximately $12 billion -- if the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain opens by 2020 and permits the government to fulfill its contractual obligation with the nuclear utilities.

In the meantime, the Department of Justice has expended vast sums of money just to litigate the 20 or so cases that have come before the courts: $24 million in attorney costs, $91 million for expert testimony, and $39 million in litigation support costs. And until a remedy is found that settles the breach of contract issue, the Justice Department expects that the liability will only increase -- that is, that the legal costs and damages will be comparable or likely exceed what we've already witnessed, into the foreseeable future.

The Yucca Mountain scenario, of course, has been taken "off the table" by the Obama administration and DOE Secretary Stephen Chu, so that estimate will likely rise. (The nuclear industry itself had estimated that the final settlement amount would be closer to $50 billion.)

So, to recap: $565 million paid in settlements for the 1998-2007 period, with an additional $150 million paid in litigation expenses. And we can expect to pay this amount and likely much more for each ensuing decade that passes without a solution to the nuclear waste problem.

And here's the real kicker: This burden is shouldered by taxpayers like you and me. Every dime for settlements and legal costs comes out of the Justice Fund, which the government uses to pay for its liabilities and funds with our taxpayer dollars.