Leenaree: Sorry, but you need to check your facts. Used nuclear fuel has been shipped on a routine basis in both the US and the world and has a perfect safety record. People often make the mistake of assuming that the material hasn't been shipped since there is no repository. The reality is that there have been over 3000 shipments in the US and 20000 in the world. Examples of shipments include used naval fuel from ports to Idaho where it is stored. Shipments of leased fuel from reactors to the GE facility in Morris, Illinois. I can list other shipping campaigns that verify the fact that not only has the material been shipped, but it is done safely and often.

The only thing that is disgraceful is that the Sun is so predictable in that it always, without exception, finds fault with the science of Yucca and always, again without exception, buys into the whatever Bob Loux and his office says. How can a thousand plus of the top scientist in the world always be wrong and Loux always right?

In my opinion it is not responsible to comment on something like the radiation standard without first carefully reading it. The standard is over 130 pages long. Did the editors take the time to truly understand what it says? Do the editors and reports truly understand what the underlying issues are? What the National Academy of Science input was? Only they can honestly answer these questions, but I'm fairly certain the public not only knows the answer, but also has a strong held view on the credibility of the various players.

Has anyone ever noticed that if DOE (or the EPA or any other federal agency involved with Yucca) does something in a short period of time the opponents argue that DOE is rushing and doing shoddy work and if they take a long time to do something -- well then DOE is incompetent or wasteful or hiding something. The list of contradictions goes on and on and the reality of the situation is painfully obvious to all observers.

Back to the standard. Do the editors realize have any concept of just how conservative the standard is -- that the person being exposed to is assumed to be living 12 miles from the site, 24/7, eating and drinking only food products derived from the immediate area? And still can only be exposed in a full year to roughly 1/10th of the radiation of a single CAT scan.

Please -- can we finally stop the name calling and rhetoric and truly let science decide?

What's the rush? You can't have it both ways. You chide the project for delay (caused in part by professional intervenors) and then turn around and attack the project for moving too fast on the license application??? A healthy dose of context is needed. Most of the Yucca science was done during the Clinton admin. That is also when Yucca was determined to be safe. For political reasons Clinton left the formal announcement and approval to the Bush folks. If the license application was rushed, which it wasn't, the application will not survive the intense review process that will occur over the next 4 or so years. The integrity of the NRC regulatory process is open for review. How exactly did the Sun editors determine that the application was submitted prematurely. Have they read the license application? Do they understand the regulatory process? Have they participated in a nuclear facility licensing process?

Has the Sun stepped back to put the exposure regulations they so frequently talk about in context??? NRC regulations only allow a member of the public to be exposed to 15mr or 5% of a typical persons annual exposure to natural radiation. A member of my family recently received a medical dose equal to 400,000 times as much as the Yucca exposure limit to successfully treat a tumor.

THIS COUNTRY AND WORLD CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO MAKE ARGUMENTS AND DECISIONS BASED ON INCORRECT INFORMATION, FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN, AND SUPERFICIAL POLITICALLY CHARGED HYPERBOLE.

Excellent comment Future 2012. I strongly encourage all Nevadans to learn about the licensing process -- it is everything that Nevada and politicians have asked for -- a transparent and scientific review of the safety case for Yucca Mountain. This process gets the issue out of the political arena and into the technical arena where it belongs and it gives those who disagree with the DOE the opportunity to have their technical and safety concerns heard.

Patricia: I urge you to tour Yucca -- it will be readily apparent that it in no way shape or form a "dump" or place where material will be "buried." It is an extremely sophisticated engineered facility.

The capacity is nothing more than a legislated number -- the program has been so delayed by intervention that the amount of material being temporarily stored keeps increasing (although it is still below the 70,000 metric tons indicated in the law). At the time Congress planned to authorize a second repository. The bottom line from a technical standpoint -- Yucca can safely handle far more material than the arbitrary amount set in law.

All of this will be rendered moot if we go forward with recycling (as we should and almost certainly will). Recycling will significantly reduce the volume below the amount set in law.

Regarding the downwind comment -- we are not downwind of Yucca. Lincoln County and Utah is and the material is a solid pellet. This is not the above ground weapons testing of the 50's we are talking about. There is no reasonable dispersal method via wind.

Yes material from the nuclear navy and the weapons complex requires disposal. No matter how you feel about those issues the fact of the matter is that the waste exists and it needs to be safely and securely disposed. The nuclear navy provides are most important strategic military assets. Those huge submarines and air craft carriers essentially go to the gas station just once -- thanks to the fact that they are nuclear fueled.

CharlesH: very interesting and thank you. I will look into this further -- I'm a fairly strong believer in the marketplace. Why hasn't this technology been developed on a commercial scale?

Also, existing commercial plants are very competitive with other base load forms of energy when it comes to water consumption. The Palo Verde plant in Arizona is the largest generating energy for well over 4 million people and it relies on gray water -- isn't located near a body of water like most nuclear plants.

Ksand: I'm a very big supporter of solar and wind. Both are important components to the energy mix in the U.S. and hopefully we will quickly get to the point where we have cost effective/environmentally safe storage systems so these sources can become base load electricity.

Mentioning Chernobyl in the same sentence as we are talking about nuclear technology in the U.S. just doesn't cut it -- totally different type of reactor, no containment structure and 100% different safety culture.

We will just have to agree to disagree on whether nuclear deserves to be classified as "clean." I was at the Summit and very much enjoyed the discussion. Nuclear deserved a much bigger platform at the meeting, but such is life. Several speakers including President Clinton, T. Boone Pickens and Mayor Bloomberg pointed out that nuclear is clean -- so I was pacified. Later.

Patricia: I'm a left leaning Democrat who was very active in the anti-nuclear movement in the 70's until I learned more about the technology and changed my views. All of the information I cited is readily available from objective sources on the internet a good start is wikipedia,the National Science Foundation, the Health Physics Society, academic oriented sources.

It is a very personal subject for me -- my wife wouldn't be alive without the very rapid advances in imaging and treatment technologies which are completely dependent on radionuclide's produced by reactors. One in three diagnostic and medical treatments in the U.S. depend on radioisotopes. Tens of thousands of lives are saved each year thanks to this technology. Not to mention the many other beneficial applications in smoke detectors, weld inspection, food safety you name it.

Ksand: I did not suggest in any way that used fuel is "harmless." Rather, I presented facts which strongly make the case that nuclear is "clean." Furthermore, I presented information that also makes the case for nuclear being considered a renewable, although I didn't focus strongly on that element of the case for supporting nuclear. It is essentially renewable, because U.S. public policy and industry is transitioning from the current once through system where the fuel goes into the reactor and is then stored and never used again. To a system that takes advantage of the roughly 96% percent remaining energy in the material some call "waste." By using this material over and over in a closed system we have a virtually endless supply of energy -- particularly when you combine this with the very large known quantity of uranium resources in the world. All sources of energy, including nuclear, have safety and environmental issues which must be considered. By recycling nuclear fuel we will significantly reduce the hazard and amount of waste that must be permanently disposed at Yucca Mountain. An advantage of nuclear is that it doesn't have emissions in the traditional sense -- the emission is totally contained in the solid ceramic pellet. This pellet isn't dangerous when it goes into the reactor, but after it is used as fuel in the reactor for a couple year it is intensely radioactive, but completely contained in the pellet. The record for safely managing used fuel has been impeccable thanks to an extremely robust safety system. Thus, the "waste" has not been released in the environment and there has been no adverse impact on public health from nuclear while it has produced 20% of our electricity and far more in other countries such as France (80%). I call that "clean." You are certainly entitled to disagree, but the facts speak loudly and that is why the founder of Greenpeace and many environmentalist including myself so strongly support nuclear.

What source of energy is the largest source of carbon free energy in the U.S.?

What source of energy accounts for 70% of emission free electricity in the U.S.?

What source of energy prevents emissions equal to that produced by 96% of the 130+ million automobiles in the U.S.?

What source of energy provides 125 times as much electricity to Nevada as solar power (keep in mind that Nevada is #1 Per Capita in the U.S. for solar)?

What source of energy has won praise from the Audubon Society, Ducks Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, and the Wildlife Habitat Council for its e activities which includes providing some of the best habitat for endangered wildlife and plants including the American crocodile,manatee and sturgeon to name a few?

What source of energy currently helps the U.S. avoid emitting 681.2 million metric tons of CO2 or 1,703 times as much as solar?

What source of energy still has over 90% percent of its energy left after it is used to generate power -- an energy source that can still be tapped into using new technology -- and energy source whose "waste" has the equivalent energy value of 9.5 billion barrels of oil or 13.6 times as much oil as is currently stored in the worlds largest oil reserve (the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve)?

What source of energy is now strongly supported by the founder of Greenpeace due to the fact that it is a clean source of electricity?

NUCLEAR

What about the waste?
What about the dump?

The "waste" isn't. In fact it is a huge stock of unused energy in the U.S. France, England and Japan use forms of a technology developed in the U.S. to recycle the waste.

The "dump" isn't. In fact it is an amazing engineered facility where solid ceramic pellets will be stored in a facility 1000 feet below the surface of the earth, 1000 feet above a closed hydrologic basin that ends in Death Valley.

What about transportation? Yucca Mountain is 90 miles from Vegas and the material will be transported around the northern side of the Nevada Test Site/Nellis complex and there have been 25,000 shipments of this material without a release of the contents.

Calling Nuclear "Clean" is accurate, hardly "asinine" as one writer condescendingly say's in virtually every mean spirited comment he/she makes.

Thebs: Your MO is fairly obvious -- you need to have the last word and you resort to degrading the comments of others. Too bad. If you put a little more effort into your google search it would verify that you used as a reference for your main argument a resume that was almost a decade old. I searched a little farther and learned that Chase Hutto (the man) not only has excellent credentials, but has served in other important capacities including at the National Security Council as Director of International Energy, as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy on technology issues and as a Deputy Assistant to the Vice President with responsibility for domestic energy policy. Those experiences seem to mesh well with the job he is currently being considered for. Now that I have presented specifics concerning related, high level positions he has held I suspect that you will argue that those too were just bad appointments. ADMIT IT YOU DIDN"T HAVE A CLUE ABOUT HIS BACKGROUND you just don't like his politics based on a quick little internet search. I'm not overwhelmed by his politics either. Thebes I'm fairly certain this is hopeless, but I suggest that you open your mind, don't be so mean spirited and try to work with others. The sad thing is we probably agree on most policy issues -- I just don't think that everyone on the other side has ill intentions, is evil, etc.. And yes you are correct there is too much cronyism in the federal government -- it just isn't unique to the Bush administration. Later.