To stand on the windswept ridge atop Yucca Mountain is to wonder how on earth a place so remote and desolate could have inspired one of the nation's most contentious and longest-running political battles. Yucca Mountain was singled out by the federal government as the permanent repository for the nation's nuclear waste in 1987. Political squabbling and gamesmanship, however, have delayed even the first shovel from breaking ground to construct the facility. It's anyone's guess when, or if, it will ever open. The uncertain resolution of this battle means an uncertain future not just for Yucca Mountain, but for America's current nuclear power revival as well.
Not much happens at Yucca Mountain, located in the Mojave Desert about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas. More a mound than a soaring peak, it appears indistinguishable from the countless hills and buttes that can be spied for hundreds of miles. But it is this particular location's specific and peculiar degree of nothingness that places it at the forefront of the debate over nuclear power.
The 12-million-year-old mountain is among the most geologically stable locations identified by the U.S. Geological Survey. The water table sits 2,000 feet below the top of the mountain, and 1,000 feet below where the waste would be buried. The area's groundwater is part of the Death Valley hydrologic basin, separate from the Las Vegas area aquifer. The risk that well-sealed and well-secured nuclear waste could seep out to damage far-off population centers is negligible, but even that overstates the hazard. It is precisely because nothing happens at Yucca Mountain that it is an ideal locale to entomb the radioactive waste produced by the United States' 104 commercial nuclear reactors. Nevada's political class, most notably Senate majority leader Harry Reid, disagrees.
That there is any controversy over the proposed site is ironic, given the Silver State's nuclear history. Yucca Mountain sits on the western edge of the Nevada Test Site, a 1,350 square mile federal preserve that served for decades as the proving ground for America's nuclear weapons arsenal. Starting in the 1950s, the federal government detonated close to 1,000 atomic weapons on the site, or roughly half of all known nuclear explosions the planet has endured. Fully 100 of these were above-ground nuclear explosions, many far greater than the blasts that ended World War II. Yet other than craters formed by the atomic bombardment in this lunar-like landscape, southern Nevada seems none the worse off. The fallout from routinely detonating nuclear bombs 90 miles from Las Vegas had little impact on the town as it grew from a sleepy, mobbed-up gambling outpost to the spectacular Sin City of the present day.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/01/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
One of my friends went to work on this project in 1978 or so. He retired in 2006 having worked 28 of his 36 year career on a project which still hadn't been approved.
#2
Ok, pulling the pin and tossing the grenade out, the issue most of us out west have is when this happened our feds decided out west is where it should go, away from the US population base. The west is not the nations garbage dump, yet it get treated that way. Damn I hate to agree with Reid, but picking Nevada was for the same logic as the article, southern Nevada seems none the worse off and that is just crap, check the cancer rates of down wind areas. The land where they tested is lost, forever. They are trying to force the west to take the toxic trash of the east coast, again a forever event. Let the states deal with their own waste. I'm sure NY has a mountain high above the water table they can drill into and store their radioavtive garbage. We don't get power from their grid, yet we will get all the waste, just flat wrong. The agruement way back was that there are less people out west and less risk, F^&k them, my family is not an acceptable risk and just as important as any other family on the East coast!
Ok, I have my dragon skin on, awaiting the responce! LOL
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/01/2009 0:45 Comments ||
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#3
I agree with you completely. The store the crap in downtown New York for all I care.
#4
If this is the best engineering decision I am for it. Let Harry stew in his own greedy juices. Note: I grew up and live downwind of Hanford with a bit of Nevada thrown in. Nuclear detonations are NOT the same as Nuclear waste. A good bit of it is contaminated tools and clothing. Much better to store it in a properly engineered environment than outside the Nuclear Plant a few miles form some city. You have to power those electric cars with something and Øbama doesn't like coal or oil.
If you think this is bad you should have lived 150 years ago. No power, refrigeration, antibiotics. If you were not rich or royal you died young. It is only in the last 60-80 years the working stiff (and his spouse) have not been considered expendable.
Richland Wa. "The Atomic City" and home to 140 60+ year old underground vats of bubbling radiative gooo and the Columbia River glow fin, three eyed catfish! Only kidding Tipover, it's a damn nice town and one of the few where you can send your eight year old off to school on his bike without a worry. Or at least of few years ago you still could.
#7
Except the reality is that they store it someplace. One of those 'someplace' is Los Alamos which was really fun a couple of years back when the forest service decided to burn undergrowth as a preventative measure in the area. Of course they choose a day when winds were high and it got out of control, burning good portion of the town and parts of the site. We got off lucky and the old bunkers held, but the reality is that where they're stored at now is no where as physically secure as anything near what Yucca mountain provides. I hear you about dumping on Western states, but in places like Nevada the federal government still owns large tracks of land, most of which will never be settled or developed like the east or the west coast. Make lemonade out of the lemons. If you end up with these things, they're usually something that can't be closed down either which means a constant redistribution of income into the state. When you can get leverage that incoming operational money [vice pork] to exceed tax money going to Washington, you've made good on a less than taste situation.
#8
Mr.Pan,
Speaking as a prisoner of one of the bluest of the blue, I am in total agreement- if you produce it, you keep it! For me ,Cape Cod would seem ideal- low pop., far out to sea...(smiles)
#9
I have to agree that if Yucca is the best solution from an engineering standpoint then fuck Reid. But I think there is a bigger fish to fry here from the anti nuc crowd. If the waste issue ever gets solved then nuclear becomes a viable solution. And we can't have that.
#10
Look, nuclear waste treatment and storage is a political issue - not technical. In fact, the technology has basically been around for over 4,000 years. Its called vitrification. The Egyptians first used it IIRC. Yucca Mountain was not picked because its in Nevada and is isolated from population centers or because it was a way to screw Reid, etc. It was chosen over other areas and sites because of its unique geology - welded tuff. So, its either here or you start up again someplace else and waste 20 to 30 more years while the spent fuel sits in the 109 or more Nuclear plants around the country waiting to be picked up. They are all running out of storage room and when they do they will have to shut them down and we will lose base load power to be replaced by what? Solar? Geothermal? Wind? Coal? Or heavy crude from Chavez? Or better yet sweet crude from Saudi? And while we contemplate this - how secure will the spent fuel be from "sharing" with our Islamic fascist buddies? Choices and more choices.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
03/01/2009 11:04 Comments ||
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#11
Since we are becoming France, how do they store their nucleur waste?
#12
There is a lot of stuff that no one wants in their back yard, but everyone has to pull their weight.
For Nevada it is Yucca.
For me (for example) it is the rail line about a half-mile from our house that is being upgraded as the major rail bypass around Chicago; traffic is supposed to go up five-fold and the rail line will now be certified for hauling hazardous stuff like chlorine tankers, etc. The usual people are complaining.
Everyone has to take something in their backyard if modern society is going to work.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/01/2009 11:13 Comments ||
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Oh, you mean you want to get RID of Yankees ... come on, spring training isn't all that long and the Yanks do bring in some tourism bucks, even if ARod is such a jerk he deserves Madonna.
That's the lamest argument I've heard on the topic. Ever. The stuff has to go somewhere. Tell me a place better than an isolated, unpopulated, stable geological site buried deep beneath a mountain. That such a site happens to be in the west is so irrelevant I have to assume you are just trolling.
If we don't get a permanent site for nuclear waste then nuclear energy in this country is over. That's what Reid is about.
#17
Pan, there's a massive difference between storing nuclear waste in a secured facility underground in a mountain and detonating a nuclear bomb above ground. It's kinda like saying noone should build a coal plant because coal dust could be used to make a massive FAE.
I'd _like_ to have a system set up to recycle most of the waste instead, but you'd still need people to be rational about the 1% that remains.
Knee jerk responses based on "it's nuclear, so it's just like a nuclear bomb" are part of what gave Clinton the political cover to cancel the reactor design that would have allowed burning most of the waste.
#18
Nuclear waste needs to be reprocessed. It is not waste, but more of an untapped resource. Burying it in a mountain on a 10,000 year bet is shortsighted and stupid. This is the solution that you get when you combine science with politics. Radioactive bullsh*t, I call it.
The French use pressurized water reactors based on Westinghouse designs. They recycle their waste. What is left is not a lot. They thought about burying it, but people went apesh*t. So they talked about places to sequester it and monitor it.
So the answer is to look at waste not as waste but as a resource. For example, it was not that many years ago that you saw teepee burners for sawmill waste in California, Oregon, and Washington. They wasted heat and they polluted the air. Now the wood waste stream goes to products, like chips and pellets, or to heat to make steam to generate electricity and to heat drying kilns.
We are caught in the problem with nuclear waste because we have an uninformed electorate and stupid politicians. We do not have a nuclear waste problem. We have an ignorance and a stupidity problem. That is the one we must first solve, because it affects everything from the economy to energy to nuclear waste.
My two cents.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/01/2009 14:29 Comments ||
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#21
Agreed, lotp. But IMHO, the incompetence and stupididy issue in Washington is the problem that prevents us from solving the problems at hand, all across the board.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/01/2009 14:55 Comments ||
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#22
Yup. And it's self-reinforcing. Decent, smart and hardworking people find it hard to function in that environment.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
03/01/2009 16:43 Comments ||
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#24
ow, never been called a trool before, Im honored. LOL First, to compare the test sights with waste storage was the authors example, I was trying, pooly done, to point out how stupid that comparison is. But to the bigger point, and it's not lame. If this country is going to use nuclear power, and I'm ok with that and not some tree hugger, we must learn how to process and recycle it. Just stuffing it into the ground, because the geology seems right is short sighted if not stupid. Washington DC will never deal with it if they can hide it away. Then there will come a time where we as humans WILL have to figure it out. Hanford is a wonderfull example. It is a mess. A wonderfull group of communities but the waste is leaking and they are finding traces in the Columbia river. Granted, this is an emotional issue, but we as a nation are looking for the easy way out. When I see solar panels on every rooftop and our scientific community working to figure out how to process it then Nevada as a temp storage and recycling facility might be ok. Untill then no.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/01/2009 19:23 Comments ||
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#25
AP is right. If the waste is "hot", use it to boil water (or whatever) until it is "cool".
#26
Heh... the though of 49 Pan Tree Hugger makes me laugh.
:)
A question: What do you think of burying it way the hell deep in North Florida? Wouldn't bother me at all, just curious. Of course it would scare away deh Yankees (and ARod fans) but that's a side issue.
#27
Low level Nuclear waste is just that. Low Level It consists mainly of pieces of equipment, clothing, tools, and othe odds and ends as well as liquid low-level waste. Some of this liquid waste can be treated with an ionic exchange process that cleans out the radioactive particles. These particles are 99% alpha and beta particles which can be blocked by thin pieces of paper and are not enough to consist of a critical mass. Your fears are unfounded.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/01/2009 20:43 Comments ||
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#28
I thought this was about spent fuel rods, low level waste is minor and your right, not a big deal.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/01/2009 20:56 Comments ||
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