Life After Yucca

Deck: 

Reviving hope for spent-fuel storage.

Fortnightly Magazine - November 2010
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When the Obama administration declared the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project dead in January 2010, plant owners and regulators across the country were outraged—but not surprised.

Since the 1980s, the industry has seen about $7 billion of the Congressionally-mandated nuclear waste fund poured into the Yucca Mountain project, with apparently nothing to show for ratepayers’ money.1 With about one-third of the fund now spent, the cancellation of DOE’s Yucca Mountain project has further diminished the belief that the U.S. DOE ever will site a repository for spent nuclear fuel.

The reaction from states and localities has both shaped and complicated the path forward in the United States. In Utah, for instance, a proposal in the late 1990s to site an interim storage facility for dry casks containing spent nuclear fuel rods met with fierce local opposition, spearheaded by then-Governor Mike Leavitt. The opposition in Utah continues today, primarily because decision makers are convinced that waste received never would be removed (see “Utah Gov. Leavitt: ‘No Such Thing as Interim Storage’”).

Utah’s position and the intense battle over Yucca Mountain in Nevada exemplify the almost universal opposition to such facilities throughout the United States.

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