The Sun has maintained a policy position opposing the Yucca repository for many years and slants its reporting to reinforce its editorial stance. It bases its opposition on the premise that somehow, excellent safety record of transport of waste notwithstanding, an accident involving waste is bound to oocur somewhere within Clark County and will release radiation and cause harm both to people and the economy.This is all based on assumptions from within Nevada, that are different from those used in the government's environmental impact statement.

The contradicitory action (inaction?) by the NRC will leave undecided by the agency that under the law is responsible to determine whether the repository meets safety and other regulatory requirements or not. The Sun would have us believe it does not. The Department of Energy in 2008 the site will be safe. And the NRC staff review that was done prior being terminated by order of the chairman indicated the application was demonstrating compliance, and the Commission has not acted on the merits of the case.

So, we are left with the pronouncement by the Obama Administration that Yucca Mountain is "not a workable option." No evidence of technical basis is provided.

It is irresponsible to perpetuate through repitition the false assertion of how "dangerous it would be to ship nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada." Check the actual safety record to see that there is no basis for such claims. Harry Reid has gone so far as to assert "It would be dangerous and irresponsible to ship the most dangerous substance known to man through cities and small towns and past schools, hospitals and businesses so it can be buried 90 miles outside Las Vegas." Anyone care to compare accident history for such transport and smoking or driving while on a cell phone?

WOXOF is incorrect in his statement that the government has invested $38 billion in Yucca. Depending on how you categorize some of the expenditures, about $9 billion has been spent.

He/she is closer if the statement was that $31 billion in fees and interest have gone into the Nuclear Waste Fund, but besides $7 billion included in the $9 billion spent on Yucca, that does not mean $24 billion is sitting waiting to be spent. Instead, Congress has "borrowed" that amount and left behind a series of IOU's that future Congress (uh-huh, wink-wink) will pay back when we get a new disposal facility.

Dr. van Luik has provided a valuable history of Yucca in the course of this dialogue. Thanks, Abe.

The Dept of Energy provided no scientific or technical basis to support the decision to terminate Yucca other than to say (in the March 3 motion to withdraw the license application from the NRC) that, "the Secretary has decided that a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain is not a workable option." President Obama has referred to the principle that "decisions have consequences." He clearly made a decision in 2007 that it was important in seeking Nevada votes (as did other Democrats during the primary campaigns) to say he opposed Yucca. That pleased Harry Reid and Reid and Obama are together on Yucca and other issues. Now, after talking about it for a year, the administration has brought in a "blue ribbon commission" to find a more "workable" disposal strategy, that will likely take another 20 or more years to implement.

Secretary Chu has said that Yucca is "off the table" and that we can do better, but other than some expression that sufficient R&D and technology advances should yield a better solution in the decades ahead when he and Obama are long gone, Chu has never given a specific reason based on science why Yucca is not workable. Instead, we get the recitation of Nevada assertions like Masto gave as "facts."

This is one of several articles in the media elsewhere that have the lead of the story that this budget cancels the Yucca repository. The Obama administration has made clear that it intends to "terminate" the facility there, the government has yet do so. The site was approved by Congress and signed into law by the previous president (subject to getting a license from the NRC and, one imagines, court challenges.) Therefore it will take an act of Congress to cancel the project. Reid can't pull that off.

What is the rush? Well, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act said the government (DOE) must begin waste acceptance for disposal in a repository (which the Sun refers to as a "dump,") by January 1998. Further, DOE signed contracts promising commercial reactor owners that such disposal would begin then. DOE did not and got sued for breach of contracts. DOE now estimates the liability for that failure to be at least $12.3 billion. Taxpayers, including Nevadans, will foot the bill for that.
I doubt if "the industry" said that spent fuel is "too risky" to leave it where it is. What industry and technical experts more likely have said is that the waste cannot stay at reactor storage sites indefinitely. At the risk of being repititious, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act says so, too. If you don't like it, change the law.

Rep. Berkley refers to the $100 billion to build Yucca Mountain. That is not totally accurate. The July 2008 Total Systems Life Cycle Cost report from DOE estimates $96.2 billion to build a repository at Yucca for 122,100 metric tons of waste. But, present law limits the capacity to 70,000 metric tons. DOE assumed for purposes of analysis that Congress would either lift the limit or that a second repository would have comparable costs. Nowhere in the TSLCC is there a cost estimate for a 70,000 ton repository.

Chu and President Obama say the Yucca repository will be "terminated" and is now "dead." There seems to be an unanswered question as to the authority that the Administration has to make that judgment. In 2002, when Congress overrode former Governor Guinn's "veto" of the designation of Yucca as a suitable repository site, subject to obtaining a license from the NRC, that resolution became Public Law 107-200.

In similar letters, 18 senators and two ranking members of House committees asked Secretary Chu to provide Congress the scientific and legal basis for the decision that Yucca is "not an option." Since ratepayers have paid close to $30 billion in fees and interest for disposal that was to have begun 11 years ago, they need answers to those questions as well.

Aww...Obama gets coerced to make a pledge to stop the Yucca Mountain repository to placate Reid and gain some votes in Nevada and now that he follows through, the State is crying that it can't get enough money from the Nuclear Waste Fund to continue the State's further efforts to defeat the project the President calls "terminated." Yeh, that seems fair.

Future 2012 asks a good question, I believe that no budget line item will be shown in the Budget for refunds to ratepayers or to the utilities which made the payments for disposal that was promised in contracts with the federal government but now in greater doubt than ever. What is happening is that most of the nuclear utilities are suing the government over that breach of contract. There have been some settlements but in most cases the courts are still determining how much the government must pay. When damages or settlements are set, the payments are made from a curious budget element called the Judgment Fund. What is curious about it is that no one seems to manage the Fund. Instead, the Department of Justice tells Department of Treasury who to pay how much. The money is replenished through a difficult to determine manner, but the point here is that it does not come out of the Department of Energy or any other agency's budget.

2012 may also know that Senators Graham and McCain have introduced a bill that would require the President to accept Yucca as the disposal site or rebate the balance of the Nuclear Waste Fund. It is doubtful that such a bill will pass but the matter should be debated.