Unfeasible

Aside from the deadly transportation hazards associated with getting nuclear waste across existing roads, water ways and rails to Nevada, and the unsuitability of Yucca Mountain in particular as a permanent storage site for high-level nuclear waste, the storage plan itself is inherently flawed.

Though the Department of Energy (DOE) has spent a total of $9 billion so far funding its program, and digging its huge hole into the mountain (and into the pockets of taxpayers), it has yet to come up with a feasible permanent storage design plan. The plan is to store the waste in "casks" (containers) at Yucca Mountain. For these casks to be feasible storage vessels for high level nuclear waste material, they would have to remain intact and totally unbreached (uncracked) for thousands and thousands of years. No such container has yet been constructed; yet, each time opponents point out the geological unsuitability of the site (volcanic and earthquake activity, running groundwater), the yet-to-exist cask design is put forth as the answer. The federal government is fond of saying that the cask will be so fool-proof that no environmental concerns will matter.

People everywhere oppose the Yucca Mountain plan and have pledged to fight it every step of the way.  Realizing how unworkable the project is, the Secretary of Energy has decided not to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  The Secretary filed a motion to withdraw the license application that was submitted in 2008.  The NRC is still considering the motion.

Lawsuits have been filed in Federal Court by the states of South Carolina and Washington and others to force the DOE to build the repository at Yucca Mountain.  Those cases are pending.

Does that make sense?? - 


To see what luck the DOE has had with its super-engineering of a storage cask design, press here

 
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