Somewhere along the line, folks here decided this Yucca Mountain thing was a Nevada problem. But this is not another “not in my backyard” bit of whining on the part of a poor, politically impotent state.
It’s a scam of national proportions.
In case you’ve been hiking the Siberian wilderness or biking across Malaysia, I’m talking about the recommendation of the Department of Energy secretary Spencer Abraham to use Nevada’s own Yucca Mountain as the nation’s only deep geologic storage facility for used uranium waste products. More specifically, that’s 77,000 tons of toxic crap decaying over 100,000 years.
Here’s what a few Renoites who think they’re being pragmatic are saying: “Well, uh, the nuclear waste has to go somewhere.”
That’s partly true. Something has to be done with the waste from nuclear power plants across the United States. These plants have been generating nice, cheap juice for the consumers living in their vicinities. These plants are storing their leftover radioactive rods on site. They’re running out of temporary storage. If you’re gonna make nuclear waste, you gotta have permanent storage.
What’s to be done? In places like Europe, nuke plants are working hard to develop efficient ways to reprocess the fuel. In some nuclear reactors, spent fuel still contains a high percentage of enriched uranium. And plutonium, about 1 percent of the discharged fuel, can also be reused as fuel, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency based in France.
But so far, reprocessing brings with it a whole new set of contamination variables. And bottom line, it’s more expensive than throwing a cask o’ waste or two—or a few thousand—on Union Pacific trains or flatbed trucks and shipping them through downtown Reno or across Interstate 80 to some mountain in the middle of nowhere.
Burying everything, the NEA states tactfully, may be the least expensive solution—and it also requires the least handling of the waste: “On the other hand, it implies some waste of energy [and] the formation of what are in fact uranium and plutonium mines.”
Building a radioactive mine in Southern Nevada, though, means moving the ghastly glop. Transporting waste is dangerous—think tractor trailer overturns, train derailments and terrorist threats. Why not instead store the waste in deep, carefully monitored vaults—close to its origins?
The worst part of the Yucca plan is the impetus it will give to encourage more new nukes. Greedy energy capitalists—’twas Dick Cheney who thought up Bush’s energy plan with the help of such glowing luminaries as Ken Lay of Enron Corp. and James Langdon, a lobbyist whose firm works for nuclear power companies—are waiting, waiting, waiting for the nation to have a plan for nuclear waste disposal. Bad Democrats like Clinton and Sen. Harry Reid kept nixing the whole thing. Geesh. But now that Bush is the man of the hour, the time has finally come.
You can bet that the micro-second this Yucca recommendation becomes a Yucca reality, new nuclear power plants will sprout up like deadly weeds across the United States. There’s money to be had, boys. After all, nuclear power is cheap and all.