http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8vjuGJCg4ao&refer=home

Quote :

" Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion. Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu “have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period,” said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The federal budget plan Obama released today “clearly reflects that commitment,” she said. “The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today. [Obama’s decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for nuclear waste, primarily from power plants, even as utility companies seek to build more reactors. Under the disputed proposal, nuclear waste from reactors around the nation was to be shipped to Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas, to be stored in tunnels 1,000-feet underground. The Energy Department had plans to store more than 109,000 metric tons at the site. Radioactive waste is now spread among more than 120 sites in 39 states, according to the Energy Department. There are 104 operating commercial reactors in the U.S., and 17 applications are pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 26 more reactors. Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. operator of nuclear reactors, and New Orleans-based-Entergy Corp., the second-largest, are seeking permits for new reactors. Obama’s plan will not curtail work on new reactors, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the industry. Earthquake Risk Nevada opponents and environmental groups have filed lawsuits seeking to block the storage project on grounds that Yucca Mountain could be subject to earthquakes and that transporting waste across 43 states would create a hazard and a potential target for terrorists. Under Obama’s budget plan the administration will devise a new strategy on waste. Spending on Yucca Mountain will be limited to the costs necessary to meet a legal requirement for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to process an application that former President George W. Bush submitted in June, the budget plan indicates. The Energy Department didn’t meet a contractual obligation to take possession of nuclear waste by 1998, and has been found liable in court to claims by utilities for compensation for storing the waste. Ed Davis, an industry consultant, said the administration is continuing the application to the NRC to avoid the liability the government would face if the application were abandoned. $100 Billion “If they terminate the license, it’s likely that that will constitute a full breach of the contract, which could potentially cost $100 billion,” Davis said. Nuclear-power consumers have paid $29.6 billion into a fund intended for Yucca Mountain construction. Jerry Stouck, an attorney for some utilities in the dispute, said courts have so far awarded more than $1 billion to utility companies. The government has to “either pay damages forever or find something to do with the waste,” Stouck said. ‘Lasting Victory’ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, hailed the decision in a statement on his Web site. “Make no mistake: this represents a significant and lasting victory in our battle to prevent Nevada from becoming the country’s toxic wasteland,” Reid said. Congress in 1987 directed the Energy Department to study only Yucca Mountain as a possible nuclear repository, and Bush in 2002 signed a resolution designating it as the site. The Energy Department estimated last year that the repository would cost $96.2 billion over the life of the project. The project has been beset by legal and technical problems, hinging on questions about the safety. In June, the Energy Department submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an application to build and operate the repository."

Well, good job there, Obama - only took you less than two months to really screw up.

So much for that restoring scientific integrity to the White House, huh? Science triumphing over politics and all that jazz?

Hope and change.

2/26/2009 11:17:05 PM

Fucking hell, this is ridiculous. Maybe he thought since he's already blowing over a trilliion, that another 100+ billion won't be noticed?

I wonder what's next.

2/26/2009 11:27:10 PM

Obama is a fucking moron

2/26/2009 11:31:39 PM

I have faith in Chu, and am interested in what he proposes as an alternative

2/26/2009 11:43:33 PM

Quote :

"$9 billion"

2/26/2009 11:47:31 PM

^^I'll be impressed to see how he gets all that money back. I'll have faith in this guy when he gives me something to have faith in.

2/26/2009 11:59:14 PM

No, Yucca Mountain was a stupid idea. The waste should be re-processed back into usable fuel. Once you do that, the plutoneum left over can be put anywhere you want without fear (unless it is stolen, of course).

2/27/2009 12:08:46 AM

Well, even if we do reprocess, we still have waste we need geologic disposal for. Not everything can be burned back in a reactor.

Frankly, for reprocessing to work on an economic standpoint, we need to re-form our entire waste management policy, including the mil/kWh disposal fee. This, alas, is another discussion altogether.

PM me sometime LoneSnark if you're interested in the issue - I've actually got a policy paper I'm writing which addresses the incentives problem in waste management policy.

2/27/2009 12:14:08 AM

oh wow.

2/27/2009 12:55:18 AM

The Yucca Mt was selected back in 1987 because it was the most suitable, safest place to store Nuclear Waste. There is no ground water movement in that area. No one lives there. It is dry desolate land. Not on that, they solidify the waste and store into concrete casks that are for all intents and purposes, indestructible.

I am very interested to hear what Obama's alternate plans for nuclear waste storage are.

So to summarize:

Quote :

"Obama is a fucking moron"

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 1:15 AM. Reason : -]

2/27/2009 1:12:21 AM

^ You don't store it, you recycle the vast majority of it. The remainder can be stored anywhere secure.

2/27/2009 1:15:33 AM

Quote :

"The remainder can be stored anywhere secure."

Well no. The remaining waste still needs to be isolated for hundreds or thousands of years. So you still need a geologic repository site, where waste can be isolated from both the general public and the environment.

2/27/2009 1:17:06 AM

Yes I agree, theoretically we could recycle some of it. Whats the over/under for how many years before we break ground on a breeder reactor in the US? 20yrs? 40yrs? 60yr? never?

Regardless, the output from a breeder reactor is still radioactive waste! It needs to be put some where that is safe and where we never have to worry about it contaminating anyone.

2/27/2009 1:24:42 AM

Quote :

"I'll be impressed to see how he gets all that money back."

Playing devil's advocate here, he's not beholden to the spending policies of past administrations/congresses. I'm less concerned with him recuperating the money than I am with him coming up with viable alternatives.

Sadly, I don't see "viable alternatives" as likely to come up in the near future.

2/27/2009 3:04:26 AM

Quote :

"GROW SOME BALLS"

honestly is "yes we can" some far distant memory?

2/27/2009 3:35:54 AM

I fail to see how this is surprising. This came up in the campaign, just like the tax cuts for anyone over 250K. He's only doing what he was planning on doing. Yucca isn't a proper waste solution, and I give him credit personally for not folding to home state Exelon Corp like everyone said that he would during the campaign.

2/27/2009 8:14:10 AM

If Yucca isn't a proper waste solution then NOTHING is. WTF this is ridiculous. Nuclear is the quickest and most cost-effective way to gain greater energy independence and massively reduce our addiction to CO2 emitting power production like coal and oil. But lets not do something smart like that, lets just go with fucking inefficient and costly "renewable" energy like wind and solar.

2/27/2009 8:19:14 AM

What? Nuclear power costs $60/MWH. This is expensive when compared to other means of generating electricity. For example, clean wind power is $55/MWH; coal $53/MWH; and natural gas $52/MWH.

Additionally with wind you don't get the huge waste problem like you do with nuclear. Or the extreme and costly startup to build reactors.

Don't just parrot out bullshit talking points. I support nuclear as well as an additional investment to energy but I also support the alternatives.

2/27/2009 8:41:49 AM

And yet again, I will refer you to a Bullshit Episode (Season 5 Episode 9) "Nukes, Hybrids, and Lesbians".

In this Episode, they show film of the testing done to the concrete casks that would be used to transport the waste to Yucca mountain. They crashed cars into them, let them on fire with jet fuel, triggered explosives. What'dya know? They didn't emit an appreciable amount of radiation. So there goes the "it's dangerous to ship these through our populated cities argument."

So really, what's the big deal with using Yucca Mountain? If this decision was really based on scientific research and not political horse shit, then they would have released their alternative plan. I'll be impressed if we even get an alternative plan in the next 4 years.

2/27/2009 8:51:29 AM

^^Ok, I didn't just mean in MWh, but in the cost of the land and space that it will take up. A nuke power plant is big, but solar and wind farms take up HUGE amounts of space.

Additionally with wind and solar, you don't have the reliability of power generation like you get with nuclear.

Personally I want to see a future with nuclear as the primary source of large scale power generation, with a distributed solar and wind generation system at the point of use, mainly our homes. Make them cheap enough that it can power a house without covering the roof and the whole yard and not cost as much as the house its built on and then I'll be very interested. That way we can basically generate most of our own power, esp. during the day, and then use nuclear to power the grid when its cloudy, dark, not windy, etc. In addition, when its sunny and windy, we power the system with the extra power and get to make money off of our home power production system.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 8:59 AM. Reason : ]

2/27/2009 8:55:02 AM

Quote :

"A nuke power plant is big, but solar and wind farms take up HUGE amounts of space. "

Agreed.

I am fucking tired of the ignorant "nuclear power is scary" crowd who really has no clue what they are talking about.

2/27/2009 9:27:17 AM

I kind of wonder what Chu has in mind. He's not an idiot by any means, and he surely is able to grasp the issues this entails.

But, Canada gets 70% of their electricity from renewable resources (which I don't think includes nuclear). I don't see why the US couldn't do similarly.

2/27/2009 9:54:38 AM

Quote :

"But, Canada gets 70% of their electricity from renewable resources (which I don't think includes nuclear). I don't see why the US couldn't do similarly."

Then you really are a moron. Canada is a sparsely populated country with abundant hydroelectric capabilities. America uses far more electricity. We have tapped nearly every hydroelectric potential in the country and all we have to show for it is 7.1%. There is simply not much more hydro to be had.

2/27/2009 10:31:54 AM

Quote :

"Yucca isn't a proper waste solution, and I give him credit personally for not folding to home state Exelon Corp like everyone said that he would during the campaign."

Yeah, yielding to Excelon just like a broad bipartisan majority did - (which, by the way, includes many, many Democrats) when they passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Totally not yielding to those guys by ignoring the decades of sound science which have gone into site study and characterization. But I'd sure love to see what a "sound solution" looks like if it's not one that was put together with broad bipartisan consensus and years of scientific study.

Seriously, do you even listen to yourself?

Again, I find it interesting that when Obama decides to throw science out the window for politics, he's just "not yielding to the nuclear agenda." Riiiight.

Quote :

"What? Nuclear power costs $60/MWH. This is expensive when compared to other means of generating electricity. For example, clean wind power is $55/MWH; coal $53/MWH; and natural gas $52/MWH."

Citation needed. I'm calling bullshit on your numbers.

Quote :

"Additionally with wind you don't get the huge waste problem like you do with nuclear. Or the extreme and costly startup to build reactors."

We wouldn't have the "huge waste problem" if we didn't have idiotic policies which, for instance, suddenly suspended commercial reprocessing in the 1970's, then took away all incentive to do reprocessing once we actually allowed it again.

We'd still have some waste, but not nearly the same amount.

2/27/2009 10:55:07 AM

Quote :

"But, Canada gets 70% of their electricity from renewable resources (which I don't think includes nuclear). I don't see why the US couldn't do similarly."

They may produce most of their energy from hydro and geothermal, but guess what comes next?



You ever hear of CANDU? Canada's own nuclear fuel cycle? (Actually very interesting - it uses typically light water reactors like the U.S. on the front end, then chops up cooled spent fuel and burns it more in a heavy-water reactor; which can also handle natural uranium, plutonium from weapons, and thorium).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU

Canada has been a pioneer in nuclear. Which makes sense, given the fact that they sit on one of the largest reserves of Uranium ore outside of Australia and parts of Africa.

2/27/2009 11:07:29 AM

nuclear is a great transition step. unless we plan on shooting all the manmade nuclear waste into the sun, we will at some point have to deal with it.

our great plains are the Saudi Arabia of wind. we need to be tapping into it because after the set up costs its virtually free, and you don't have to store the waste for hundreds or thousands of years. also, windfarms and solar farms don't have ''meltdowns''.

i would like to know what the alternative to Yucca is as well, but one thing is clear -- we need leadership that will provide LONG TERM SUSTAINABLE solutions, and this is the closest we've come to it in a long time.

2/27/2009 11:09:59 AM

Quote :

"I am fucking tired of the ignorant "nuclear power is scary" crowd who really has no clue what they are talking about."

a-fucking-men.

2/27/2009 11:13:24 AM

Wind is not the answer for the simple reason that the wind doesn't always blow. You're going to need a more reliable power source for the base load. Solar has the same problem. Oh shit, It's cloudy. Why not nuclear? And why not just put the waste (after economically viable recycling) in a well designed hole in the middle of nowhere?

2/27/2009 11:41:48 AM

Quote :

"And why not just put the waste (after economically viable recycling) in a well designed hole in the middle of nowhere?"

You mean like... Yucca Mountain?

One of the things we have to consider with any waste disposal is to minimize the possibility of leakage out to the environment or into groundwater. Which means your options for geologic disposal are inherently limited.

The NWPA selected 5 candidate sites originally, this was narrowed down to three, then to Yucca. Experts may disagree on whether the process was forced (and certainly, it could have been handled better), but the point to take away from all this is that you can't just dump it anywhere. A lot of thought has to go into it.

2/27/2009 11:44:24 AM

^^ noone is suggesting the world shuts down when the wind isn't blowing or if its cloudy.

the fact that its being discussed is indicative of how far behind we are in thinking this through. we're still discussing how we will "store the waste" and "why we should drill here", and "whether global warming is real".

we should be discussing how efficient can we make batteries, and where are we getting the battery material. how can we sustainably mine for this stuff of batteries. and how renewable battery material can be made/how many times can you recharge the same battery without needing a new one. and where we will store the battery waste after we've completely recharged it to death. storing battery waste is a lot safer than storing radioactive waste. we really need to step up our level of thinking.

2/27/2009 11:54:44 AM

Where do the Frenchies store their nuclear waste?

Don't they get something like 60% of their energy from nuclear?

2/27/2009 12:06:28 PM

Quote :

"the fact that its being discussed is indicative of how far behind we are in thinking this through. we're still discussing how we will "store the waste" and "why we should drill here", and "whether global warming is real"."

We've got 30+ years of legacy waste sitting around. How far behind exactly is it to ask, "Well gee, what are we going to do with that waste?" Obstinately sticking one's head in the sand while praying for widespread wind and solar farms doesn't cut it.

Quote :

"Where do the Frenchies store their nuclear waste? Don't they get something like 60% of their energy from nuclear?"

Yes, they also get nearly 80% of their power from nuclear, in fact. And they're the only country with commercial reprocessing (at La Hague). Japan also reprocesses (but I think it's a government-operation - mrfrog, do you know?).

The remaining waste is put into geologic storage.

2/27/2009 12:27:50 PM

Quote :

"Where do the Frenchies store their nuclear waste?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_Research_Laboratory

Quote :

"What? Nuclear power costs $60/MWH. This is expensive when compared to other means of generating electricity. For example, clean wind power is $55/MWH; coal $53/MWH; and natural gas $52/MWH."

I'm not even going to bother with the crap about asking for a citation. The bottom line is that no one knows these numbers, and the economic arguments should be based on the qualitative aspects that we know of all these sources. Allow me to demonstrate.

If we have another commodity boom like we just did before the economic collapse then coal, nat gas, and petroleum go OUT THE ROOF. Those plants are exposed to unthinkable economic volatility, with possibly the exception of coal. Since coal is mined domestically and has relatively stable supply the price is much less prone to a runup. It still responds to blips in the energy market, but not near what natural gas does.

The bottom line with Natural Gas is that it might cost 5 cents/kWh today, but could be 30 cents/kWh next year. Is that the kind of thing you want your economy running on? Really?

Nuclear power uses enriched Uranium. The Uranium metal itself is almost a negliable cost. You may use 216 tons of Uranium for a GW plant in a year (http://www.wise-uranium.org/nfcm.html). At $100 per kilogram, that amounts to about $20 million. If electricity is sold at 5 cents/kWh (it's not), then your annual revenue is half a billion. Fuel costs are 4% of your total costs. So when Uranium shot up from $10 / kg to $80 / kg, you can imagine that utilities were not feeling the pinch. Enrichment is expensive, but it's powered... surprise! electricity. Nuclear plants also make electricity. If the price of enrichment raises, then income correspondingly increases as well, thus enrichment does not expose utilities to more cost fluctuations.

Bottom line: Nuclear power is a stable source of electricity in terms of security and economics.

Coal. How about coal? It's cheap, it's most stable economically, politically, and security-wise. The only problem is that it kills people. A lot of them. You can look up data on this, or take my word for it, but the economic externalities for coal are about equal, if not more, to the economic value of the electricity it produces. Let's say you paid $53/MWH for that electricity. Well hey, guess what? You just cost someone else $40/MWH in medical bills, and someone else $30/MWH in property damage from acid rain. These made up numbers are not an overstatement, and there are volumes of studies to support that claim.

Bottom line: Coal is only cheap to the person who produces it. If you include all the damage it causes it's not only expensive, but much more expensive than wind and nuclear. I mean a factor of 2 or 3.

Quote :

""

I made this graph

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 12:45 PM. Reason : ]

2/27/2009 12:41:44 PM

Quote :

"We've got 30+ years of legacy waste sitting around. How far behind exactly is it to ask, ""

i didn't mean that we don't have to deal with the waste we've accumulted. matter of fact, the waste we've accumulated is emblematic of what we did wrong.

i just want us to be forward looking instead of doing the next easiest thing.

2/27/2009 12:43:13 PM

2/27/2009 12:48:40 PM

i'll say it again - nuclear is a great transition as a step away from fossil fuels, and the next few decades will be good for nuclear power buildout.

but its clear that the end game is with "free" energy...

2/27/2009 12:54:24 PM

Quote :

"Yes, they also get nearly 80% of their power from nuclear, in fact. And they're the only country with commercial reprocessing (at La Hague). Japan also reprocesses (but I think it's a government-operation - mrfrog, do you know?). "

All nations that use nuclear power have to eventually put together plans to have a domestic geologic repository. There is an international agreement that basically entails that whatever nuclear fuel a country burns has to be disposed of domestically. I default to Dr. Chaos on political issues like this.

I personally find this to be a formula for disaster, i.e. leaving it to the Ukrainians to bury their own nuclear waste. GNEP entailed reprocessing in a manner that would allow "user" states to never worry about the waste or bury it domestically, I am personally strongly in support of this idea b/c the most different places we bury the stuff, the more likely something is to go wrong, and the United States should not get it's panties in a wad about having to throw away Vietnam's spent nuclear fuel since we're so worried about them reprocessing it and making a bomb. Duh.

However, the 'idea' as it stands is that every user of nuclear power will make a big hole and put their spent fuel in it. This is what Wikipedia has collaborated on the numskull idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Radioactive_waste_repositories

You'll soon see that all the other major nuclear power users have had as big of a pain-in-the-neck about the stuff as we have. Sweden, being the responsible country they are, has made significant headway. I consider the problem to be considerably 'smaller' for both Japan and France since they can vitrify the waste after they reprocess and it's not just a big dumb hole for the nuclear fuel in the same state as it came out of the reactor - it's a considerably more robust and cohesive package.

2/27/2009 12:56:45 PM

Quote :

"“The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today"

good friggin' luck

2/27/2009 3:00:40 PM

I honestly propose completely phasing out nuclear power in the near future. Why? Because no matter what the short-term solutions for nuclear waste are, it sticks around for thousands of years. Once we have the technology to deal with it, we may forget about and have built new cities overtop it.

I always hear nuclear power advocates talk about how safe it is because the storage will last thousands of years. Well, what then? The answer always seems to be 'we have hundreds or thousands of years to answer that question." Yeah, unless we either can't answer it or forget the waste is there.

As far as this particular situation is concerned, I think you people should probably wait until Chu comes up with some alternatives. You guys keep going after Obama's policies without looking at how he's balancing them out: plenty of cuts to balance out a lot of the stimulus spending, etc.

2/27/2009 3:45:39 PM

I swear some people would rather us just move back into caves.

NO OIL
NO COAL
NO NUCLEAR
NO DAMS
NO WIND FARMS (in my backyard)

RAWR RAWR

2/27/2009 4:07:43 PM

Well, those all have their negatives, but honestly I think that nuclear might be one of the worst. Dams harm species, but if done correctly at least some dams can end up ok. I'm completely fine with wind farms - there's no way they have a significant enough impact.

Caves are cool, though. I like caves.

But I'm saying, think about it. What do we know about details of infrastructure in cities that existed 1000 years ago? Imagine in a few hundred years - there's no records of where we've stored all of the nuclear waste, and the containment starts to break down or leaks or who knows what - we would never know what was happening until it was too late, and it could contaminate wide swathes of land.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 4:19 PM. Reason : .]

2/27/2009 4:18:39 PM

Quote :

" I always hear nuclear power advocates talk about how safe it is because the storage will last thousands of years. Well, what then? The answer always seems to be 'we have hundreds or thousands of years to answer that question." Yeah, unless we either can't answer it or forget the waste is there."

To be brutally honest, if a thousand years from now climate change turns Colorado into a furtile valley occupied by millions and then water destroys the containment, then the fallout will not be that bad. It is quite likely that the enhabitants would not even notice the ill effects. The issue with nuclear waste has always been the concentration; once the containment is gone, the water-soluble heavy radioactive elements will begin to disperse underground. Yes, it could be cancer inducing if you are unlucky enough to drill your water well into certain aquifers, but surface water should remain clean.

So, the burden of future generations upon loss of containment would depend upon their level of technology. With today's technology, it would not be much of a hassle; just get your water tested regularly if you are using a well. As time passes the contamination will be moved to the world's oceans and dilluted to an undetectable degree.

But again, this all assumes the region becomes particularly enhabitable to humans. If it does not, then the damage would go unnoticed as the contamination made its slow progress either to the oceans or deeper into the earth transported by water.

This worst case scenario calls out for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Afterall, the less there is, the less there will be for mother nature to deal with.

2/27/2009 4:29:20 PM

Oh for crying out loud, the anti-nukes here have shown up to reinforce just how stupid the opponents are.

Ever heard of something called a half-life? Nuclear waste has decay chains on top of that, but the idea is that it gets LESS HAZARDOUS OVER TIME. You people have no idea what you're talking about do? After about 1000 years the stuff in there is not that bad, not that bad at all. At that point you would just about be completely justified putting it into a blender and then dumping the stuff into the sea.

But yet you want to stop with nuclear power period because of that? This 'problem' is horribly mundane after a thousand years have past. And you want to talk about long term viability of the container? True, not many structures have held up for eons, but how about geologic formations? What's the oldest rock you've seen?

It's pretty old. There is no reason that the innards of Yucca Mountain would move anywhere in spite of the warmongering about earthquakes. It's been there for millions upon millions of years, it will continue to be there for eons to come, and certainly long enough for the nuclear waste to become not dangerous anymore.

Quote :

"I always hear nuclear power advocates talk about how safe it is because the storage will last thousands of years. Well, what then? The answer always seems to be 'we have hundreds or thousands of years to answer that question." Yeah, unless we either can't answer it or forget the waste is there."

Feed it to your children at that point.

The forceful assumption that it has to be handled carefully that far out is uninformed and dishonest.

2/27/2009 4:40:27 PM

Additionally DirtyGreek, assuming that people 1000 years from now will know as little about us as we know about people 1000 ago is silly.

Data transmission and preservation has evolved. Unless there is a widespread loss of electricity (possibly because we've abandoned reliable sources of power) I see no reason to assume the information of our time will be lost. I mean shit, The Bible has been reprinted for thousands of years and now I can burn a DVD in a few minutes. Information is so widely distributed that you would need to have a global catastrophe to erase us from history, and that would pretty much make the argument moot anyway.

2/27/2009 5:04:02 PM

As Arjun Makhijani has shown, Yucca Mountain ain't such a great place to store nuclear waste.

I thought fission power was pretty sweet until I read Carbon-free and Nuclear-free. I recommend the book to y'all.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 6:04 PM. Reason : meow]

2/27/2009 6:00:26 PM

Quote :

"I honestly propose completely phasing out nuclear power in the near future. Why? Because no matter what the short-term solutions for nuclear waste are, it sticks around for thousands of years. Once we have the technology to deal with it, we may forget about and have built new cities overtop it."

We have technology - it's called spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. France uses it right now.

We still need geologic disposal for the things we can't recycle, but the need is much smaller, and generally we can separate the troublesome isotopes - the ones that actually are mobile in groundwater - from the ones that just need time to sit and decay.

Quote :

"I always hear nuclear power advocates talk about how safe it is because the storage will last thousands of years. Well, what then? The answer always seems to be 'we have hundreds or thousands of years to answer that question." Yeah, unless we either can't answer it or forget the waste is there."

Look, you realize where Yucca Mountain is, right? On the Nevada Test Site? You know, where we blew up over 900 nuclear weapons during the Cold War?

Yeah. Somehow doubt this will become prime condo developments no matter what happens with Yucca Mountain. And the source term from Yucca - under worst-case scenario conditions - doesn't even begin to compare with what's already there.

Not to mention that we've already done a lot of studying of the physics and geology here. (Yes, I know people like you just tend to think that nuclear engineers are clueless dolts - somehow, harnessing the power of the atom is simply child's play; and clearly these same people have never even thought about issues a non-expert would raise).

Quote :

"As far as this particular situation is concerned, I think you people should probably wait until Chu comes up with some alternatives. You guys keep going after Obama's policies without looking at how he's balancing them out: plenty of cuts to balance out a lot of the stimulus spending, etc."

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act - the policy framework which Yucca was developed under - is over 25 years old. In two months, Obama has managed to overturn a long-standing, bipartisan consensus because of the particular objections of Harry Reid and a concerted anti-nuclear lobby. The Yucca Mountain site was the result of a decade's worth of study and several billion dollars.

And we're just supposed to sit tight and wait for Obama and Chu's magic plan?

Yeah, okay, that sounds like a fantastic idea.

2/27/2009 6:07:52 PM

Quote :

"As Arjun Makhijani has shown, Yucca Mountain ain't such a great place to store nuclear waste. I thought fission power was pretty sweet until I read Carbon-free and Nuclear-free. I recommend the book to y'all."

Makhijani is a crank who doesn't have the slightest clue about what he's talking about. Especially when it comes to Yucca Mountain. He notoriously manipulates numbers and misrepresents the state of the science.

No wonder you actually cite the guy - birds of a feather.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 6:10 PM. Reason : >.<]

2/27/2009 6:09:06 PM

They want to put metal containers in an oxidizing environment. You don't have to be Reed Richards to see the problem there.

^ He's got far more credibility than, say, you.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 6:15 PM. Reason : ad hominem]

2/27/2009 6:11:44 PM

No, they want to put metal containers in concrete casks, which are backfilled with inert gas, then backfill the location with soil.

But please, do keep lecturing us on things you're so completely knowledgable on.

2/27/2009 6:14:47 PM

^ Do you dispute the oxidizing nature of the environment in question?

Note also that the alloy used in the containers has only been around a few decades. As such, its long-term durability under hostile conditions remains uncertain.

Quote :

"No wonder you actually cite the guy - birds of a feather."

Dude's actually too mainstream and respected for my taste. He's light-years from being radical.

[Edited on February 27, 2009 at 6:25 PM. Reason : radical]

2/27/2009 6:17:25 PM