Comment/Rebuttal on USA Today Editorial for Yucca Mountain

 By Robert Alvarez, and by Sens. Harry Reid & John Ensign

   The glaring irony of the USA Today editorial escapes its author, who despairs over the decision to end the Yucca Mountain project because it "empowers not-in-my-backyard politicians in every state to dig in their heels."

Had the writer bothered to study a little history, he might have discovered that the power of "backyard politicians" in the U.S. Congress was why the Yucca Mountain site was selected in 1987. This act of political darwinism occurred soon after the Energy department's tentative selection of potential disposal sites in the eastern U.S. threatened to ignite a political firestorm before the 1988 elections. True to form, the Congress struck down all sites but Yucca from the list because Nevada had one electoral vote and not much clout then.

OUR VIEW ON NUCLEAR POWER: RESPONSIBILITY? YUCCA CHOICE SQUANDERS $8B INVESTMENT
OBAMA BUDGET PUTS POLITICS ABOVE SCIENCE, LEAVES WASTE ISSUE UNSOLVED
USA Today Editorial -- March 17, 2009

We usually applaud politicians who keep their campaign promises, but one we were hoping President Obama would forget was his pledge to end the 22-year effort to build a nuclear waste repository inside remote Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Like it or not, the nation needs nuclear power as a carbon-free bridge to a future in which wind, solar and other options will power computers and TVs and charge plug-in hybrid cars. It makes sense to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in a single place instead of at more than 100 nuclear plants around the country, where it is now. Yucca was the presumed central location until the president's "new era of responsibility" budget would eliminate virtually all funding. Never mind that environmental objections to the project have long seemed strained and the logic for going forward strong.

Now the government has to find some other way to fulfill its contract with nuclear utilities to take the waste off their hands. Since 1983, the government has levied a fee on every kilowatt hour of nuclear-generated electricity guess who's been paying that, ratepayers to finance a national disposal site. The feds have collected about $30 billion and spent almost $8 billion on the Yucca Mountain site. So much for that investment.

During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama said he wanted no new nuclear plants until there was some place to store the waste, a stance that seems ominous now that he's killed off the only central disposal site. When we asked the Energy Department if that means no new nuclear plants until there's a successor to Yucca Mountain, we got a carefully hedged non-answer: "The president remains committed to resolving key issues including nuclear waste, non-proliferation and plant security."

Yucca's demise shouldn't be an excuse to delay new nuclear plants. Storing spent fuel at existing plant sites is a second-best solution, but it's a safe enough stopgap until the nation agrees on a permanent disposal site. Once spent fuel has cooled enough to move, it's typically stored outdoors in steel pods that weigh 100 tons or more, emitting little radiation and virtually impossible to destroy or steal.

The president and the nuclear industry now want a group of experts to convene to decide what to do next. An idea to revisit is reprocessing spent fuel, which President Carter banned out of security concerns that seem much less compelling 30 years later. Reprocessing allows fuel to be re-used and shrinks the ultimate amount of spent fuel but what's left still has to go somewhere.

One potential site is in New Mexico, which in the past decade has quietly accepted more than 7,000 shipments of radioactive materiall from the nation's nuclear weapons facilities and buried them in a salt bed almost half a mile below the desert in the southeastern part of the state. By law, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant can't accept spent fuel from nuclear power plants, but some state officials have agitated for a second facility there as a backup for Yucca. It might be an alternative worth pursuing.

Killing Yucca is a big political win for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Nevada lawmakers who've long opposed the storage site. But that victory empowers not-in-my-backyard politicians in every state to dig in their heels. And, whether it's waste dumps or wind farms or oil refineries or air routes, they do the national interest be damned.

When Obama lifted the ban on stem cell research last week, his press secretary said the president made it clear that "politics should not drive science." Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened here.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/03/our-view-on-nuc.html

YUCCA PLAN POSES "GRAVE" RISK
IT'S TIME TO END THIS BOONDOGGLE AND FIND NUCLEAR WASTE ALTERNATIVE
USA Today Op. Ed. -- March 17, 2009
By Harry Reid and John Ensign

We applaud President Obama's bold decision to scale back the budget for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. Permanently ending the project is right not just for our state but for our entire country.

The peril of storing 70,000 tons of the nation's toxic trash just an hour's drive from Las Vegas rightly worries Nevadans, and all Americans would face a grave threat from this bad idea.

The reasons for ending the taxpayer boondoggle are plentiful: supporting data that relies on flawed science; estimated costs of nearly $100 billion; and the egregious error of burying waste that could, with American innovation, be less dangerous and even be turned into energy.

The Department of Energy's plan to store deadly nuclear waste at Yucca ignores even the most glaring facts, such as the major earthquake fault lines running across the storage site. Many Americans are unaware that DOE concedes that water will flow through the dump, eventually carrying radiation into Nevada's groundwater.

Yucca Mountain, simply put, is bad policy that is wrong for America.

America still needs a scientifically sound and responsible policy to deal with nuclear waste. More taxpayer money dumped into the Yucca Mountain project is more money wasted that could have been invested in securing waste on nuclear plant sites in dry casks, while researching new technologies such as reprocessing. There are solutions.

That is why we are working together and with our colleagues on bipartisan legislation to form a commission exploring alternative approaches. The Obama administration and the nuclear energy industry have expressed support for reviewing our nation's approach to nuclear waste so we will no longer be stuck with the current failed policy.

Forming such a commission would be only a first step away from Yucca Mountain. It's an important and necessary step, though. The effort will require input not only from our nation's foremost authorities on nuclear energy and nuclear waste, but also from policymakers, environmental experts and public health and safety advocates.

The time is now to put Yucca Mountain to rest and work together to deal with nuclear waste concerns while also protecting the health, safety and security of all Americans. We look forward to working with President Obama and all stakeholders in resolving our country's nuclear waste issues.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/03/yucca-plan-pose.html