Yucca Mountain report defends and slams NRC chairman

[alp227]

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) -- Sixteen months ago, the Obama administration announced it was ending a controversial plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The news flash -- like a flash in a distant fireworks show -- created very little noise.

Get ready for the bang.

A House subcommittee on Tuesday will hold a hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko's handling of the administration's decision to kill Yucca Mountain. At issue: Did Jaczko, an opponent of the Yucca Mountain plan, give the administration an assist, unilaterally and improperly ending the NRC's consideration of the Yucca Mountain proposal, further sealing its fate?

Prior to his appointment to the NRC, Jaczko was a top aide to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid had vowed that Yucca Mountain would never open.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/06/12/nevada.nrc.chairman/index.html

[bemildred]

1. Well, "improperly" is the key word here.

And that is all speculation.

[wtmusic]

2. Yucca will be the United States nuclear spent fuel repository

whether this is all staged, or not.

[AndyTiedye]

3. There are 33 Earthquake Faults Running Through It

Chernobyl and Fukushima were/are bad enough, but imagine if a repository containing decades of nuke waste from all over the country gets busted open by an earthquake.
What would that be, 10,000 Chernobyls all at once? We might survive out here in California (if Fukushima doesn't kill us first), but most of the country would be downwind.

Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity. Earthquake data bases are available that provide current and historical earthquake information, and these can be accessed to gain information on seismic activity in the vicinity of the proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository site at Yucca Mountain, in southern Nevada. The data bases reviewed for the southern Nevada area were the Council of the National Seismic System Composite Catalogue and the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network.

Analysis of the available data indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.

The most notable event during this period was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near Little Skull Mountain, about 8 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site, that occurred on June 29, 1992. This earthquake caused damage to a nearby Department of Energy field office building. This earthquake, and many after-shocks, occurred on a fault that had not previously been identified. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake and numerous others at about the same time in the western U.S. are considered to have been triggered by the magnitude 7.4 Landers earthquake, in California.
…
The mountain ranges and valleys of the Basin and Range, including the Yucca Mountain area, are a result of millions of years of intense faulting and volcanism. Records of recent events indicate that faulting is an ongoing process in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain that is expected to continue long into the future. Thirty-three faults are known to exist within and adjacent to the Yucca Mountain site.

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/seismo01.htm

[FLPanhandle]

6. Believe it or not, it's still much safer than leaving waste in above ground tanks near cities

Even if Yucca isn't perfect it's FAR better than leaving that stuff above ground and next to every major city in the country. Some locations are on far more active faults with stronger quakes (a mag 2.5 is nothing).

People always point out some of the dangers of Yucca while forgetting the current situation is even worse. A Fukushima storage problem is more likely to happen to one of sites next to a major US city than anything happening at Yucca.

[bananas]

9. The waste has to stay above ground for decades anyway, even with Yucca Mountain

Yucca Mountain is at least a decade from completion,
and it will take at least two decades to move all the fuel there.
Those are the official estimates - double or triple them for more realistic timelines.
And that's just the waste already generated.
New waste will continue accumulating in above-ground storage while the old waste is moved.

Spent fuel has to stay in cooling ponds longer than it was in the reactor,
so as long as a reactor is running, spent fuel will accumulate in cooling pools.
Yucca Mountain won't change that, the risk of a Fukushima is still there.
Dry cask storage won't change that either - the risk will remain either way.

[wtmusic]

8. And the last one was active 10 million years ago.

I suppose in some perverted way that can be considered "ongoing". :eyes:

[SkyDaddy7]

4. This is why we need 4th Generation...

Nuclear Power...To burn most of the waste & what is left will have a far shorter half life & be much less dangerous. Common sense.

[wordpix]

7. no, this is why we need solar, wind, biofuel solutns and NOT more waste

Solve the waste, natural disaster risk, human error risk, and cost of building nuke reactors without taxpayers footin any portion of the bill, and get back to me then.

[Frances]

5. I live in CA and we are already worried about

the effects of the Japan meltdown on us. I REALLY don't want to have to worry about Nevada as well.

If the Repubs want to criticize Obama on this issue, they've picked the wrong time IMO.