Simply Electrifying by Craig R. Roach

Author:Craig R. Roach [Roach, Craig R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944648275
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

THE LONG GOODBYE: STORING NUCLEAR WASTE

With nuclear power plants supplying up to 20 percent of America’s electricity, substantial radioactive nuclear waste has already accumulated. Business consulting group Navigant reports that there are about 65,000 tons of waste stored at seventy-six sites across America, all but one a nuclear reactor site.43 The United States faces a relatively more challenging nuclear waste issue because it does not reprocess its spent fuel.44

Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, requiring the US Department of Energy to “accept and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste beginning no later than January 31, 1998.” The department selected ten possible sites and, in 1987, Congress narrowed that to a single site: Yucca Mountain in Nevada, about ninety miles from Las Vegas. In 2002 Congress and President George W. Bush approved the choice of Yucca Mountain, but they did so “over the State of Nevada’s veto.” By 2010 the political situation had been reversed and President Obama and the Congress defunded the development of Yucca Mountain.45

Federal courts have another opinion on Yucca Mountain. They have found the US Department of Energy to have breached its contract to provide storage, a contract under which it has collected $750 million a year from nuclear utilities. A blue-ribbon panel, created by the secretary of energy in 2010, recommended “an independent waste management organization” and “a consent-based siting policy” among other guidelines. Given all this, centralized nuclear waste storage is stalled politically. The unresolved storage issue only adds to the fear of harm from nuclear power.46

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