Nuclear Waste: Yucca Mountain's Scrapped, So What Now?
February 26, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/26/nuclear-waste-yucca...
The Obama budget had a wink for Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"-Yucca Mountain is now officially dead, after agonizing on its deathbed for years.The draft budget removes funding for the planned nuclear-waste storage facility in Nevada, which has been 20 years and more than $9 billion in the making. A Department of Energy spokeswoman told Bloomberg that President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu "have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period."
What does that mean for the future of nuclear power? In the short term, nothing. Yucca Mountain never opened, and spent fuel from the country's 104 reactors are kept in pools on site. Big nuclear countries like France don't have deep geological storage, either. Even if it did open, there's already a big enough backlog to fill it, so the administration was going to have to find a bigger solution to the waste-storage issue anyway.
But longer term, nuclear power's fate is intertwined with the storage question, as folks at National Journal have been hashing out all week. That's still the main reason many environmentalists hate nuclear power, despite a raft of recent green converts. Ramping up nuclear power in the U.S. to provide more zero-emissions electricity will require the country to address the waste issue head on at some point.
The draft budget says the administration will now "devise a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." There aren't any states clamoring to be considered for long-term radioactive storage, even if only Nevada can lay claim to the tireless anti-Yucca efforts of Sen. Harry Reid. And if Yucca Mountain's tortured existence so far is any guide, the storage question will take some time to solve.
Does this mean that the administration will embrace one of President Bush's pet projects, reprocessing spent fuel? That's what France and Japan do, both to recover useable fuel and to cut down on the volume of the waste. The downsides to reprocessing include loads of additional, if lower-level, radioactive waste and potentially a greater risk for weapons proliferation.
Secretary Chu acknowledged in his confirmation hearing that the bulk of his energy would be spent tackling the nuclear-waste issue. No time like the present.
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/26/nuclear-waste-yucca...
The Obama budget had a wink for Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"-Yucca Mountain is now officially dead, after agonizing on its deathbed for years.The draft budget removes funding for the planned nuclear-waste storage facility in Nevada, which has been 20 years and more than $9 billion in the making. A Department of Energy spokeswoman told Bloomberg that President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu "have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period."
What does that mean for the future of nuclear power? In the short term, nothing. Yucca Mountain never opened, and spent fuel from the country's 104 reactors are kept in pools on site. Big nuclear countries like France don't have deep geological storage, either. Even if it did open, there's already a big enough backlog to fill it, so the administration was going to have to find a bigger solution to the waste-storage issue anyway.
But longer term, nuclear power's fate is intertwined with the storage question, as folks at National Journal have been hashing out all week. That's still the main reason many environmentalists hate nuclear power, despite a raft of recent green converts. Ramping up nuclear power in the U.S. to provide more zero-emissions electricity will require the country to address the waste issue head on at some point.
The draft budget says the administration will now "devise a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." There aren't any states clamoring to be considered for long-term radioactive storage, even if only Nevada can lay claim to the tireless anti-Yucca efforts of Sen. Harry Reid. And if Yucca Mountain's tortured existence so far is any guide, the storage question will take some time to solve.
Does this mean that the administration will embrace one of President Bush's pet projects, reprocessing spent fuel? That's what France and Japan do, both to recover useable fuel and to cut down on the volume of the waste. The downsides to reprocessing include loads of additional, if lower-level, radioactive waste and potentially a greater risk for weapons proliferation.
Secretary Chu acknowledged in his confirmation hearing that the bulk of his energy would be spent tackling the nuclear-waste issue. No time like the present.