Posted on 03/27/2015 9:38:01 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid announced his retirement Friday after serving nearly three decades. But was Reid’s retirement precipitated by fears he was losing one of Nevada’s longest political battles: preventing the nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain?
The use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository has been hotly debated for the last 25 years or so, with Sen. Reid promising Nevada residents he would never allow waste to be stored at the site.
For years, Reid has been able to successfully keep the federal government from storing nuclear waste at Yucca. Nuclear waste storage at Yucca was first approved by Congress in 2002, but Reid was able to cut off funding to the project while he was Senate majority leader. The Obama administration helped Reid out by halting Yucca’s licensing process.
Republican control of the Senate and House has increased the prospects that Yucca Mountain may be opened to waste storage in the near future. Such a development would cripple Reid’s credibility among Nevada voters that overwhelmingly oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca.
That prospect has been amplified in recent months as Senate Democrats cozy up to Republicans on nuclear waste issues.
In a recent hearing on the Energy Department’s 2016 budget, Sen. Patty Murray pressed Secretary Ernest Moniz on moving forward with Yucca’s licensing. “I really urge you, Mr. Secretary, to follow the congressional intent as directed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and defend DOE’s Yucca Mountain license application,” she said.
Murray has been pressuring the DOE to finish its licensing of Yucca for months. In December, Murray sent Moniz a letter on the issue, which was taken as a sign industry officials say “shows the waning power of the project’s fiercest foe, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,” reported E&E News.
But it’s not just Murray who could break ranks with Reid, as other Democrats joined Republicans in passing a bipartisan nuclear waste bill that did not rule out using Yucca Mountain.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Maria Cantwell of Washington joined Republicans Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in introducing a bill that would create temporary and permanent nuclear waste sites. But these sites would not take Yucca’s place.
“I should note that federal law designates one repository for our country’s used nuclear fuel, Yucca Mountain,” Alexander said in a hearing Wednesday. “After years of delay, I want to be clear: Yucca Mountain can and should be part of the solution to our nuclear waste stalemate.”
Murray also sponsored the bill. Both Murray and Cantwell have been working hard in the past few months to get the Obama administration to move forward on Yucca Mountain. Washington state also stores military nuclear waste, and its Senators have been looking hard for an alternative.
There’s another sign that Reid’s Senate influence may be waning. Reid and other Nevada lawmakers introduced a bill in early March that would give the state of Nevada the power to veto storing waste at Yucca.
“For decades the federal government wasted billions of dollars attempting to recklessly move America’s deadly high-level nuclear waste to a dump at Yucca Mountain, despite the overwhelming objections of Nevadans,” Reid said in a statement on the bill.
But with Senate and House Republicans determined to be done with Yucca once and for all, Reid may see more Democrats break ranks and push for Yucca to be opened up to nuclear waste.
Reid has another problem. Nuclear waste regulators have reiterated that Yucca was a safe place to store nuclear waste.
Nuclear regulators stated last October that Yucca Mountain would meet federal safety requirements. Regulators said Yucca could safely store nuclear waste for one million years once it’s closed. The report came after a federal court ordered the Energy Department to continue its evaluation of Yucca as a nuclear waste site.
In Jan. 2015, nuclear regulators reiterated that Yucca was a safe nuclear waste repository, adding that the government needed to transfer land and water rights to the Energy Department before construction could begin.
Reid’s office did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
“To continue to oppose Yucca Mountain because of radiation concerns is to ignore science – as well as the law,” Sen. Alexander said in Wednesday’s hearing.
I Think They Should name the Yucca site
in Honor of Sen Harriet Nuclear dumping site.
We have pretty regular posts here at Free Republic on 4th Generation MSR nuclear reactors.
These reactors use either waste uranium to start up thorium reactions or they use purely waste uranium.
Nuclear reactors today use less than 5% of the energy available in uranium. Next generation reactors will use the rest. They’ll create electricity at prices so cheap that it will help kill the cost of water desalination and transport. As a result will be economical to desalinate water from the pacific and pump it inland to Nevada. Or just pump Mississippi flood waters west to south pass in Wyoming and let gravity take it the rest of the way.
5-10 years from now Yucca mountain will be considered a windfall and goldmine for Nevada and the reason that nevada’s deserts will have been turned green as palm springs
Sounds good to me. If nothing else it will provide juice for all those electric vehicles the govt is forcing on the marketplace.
Thanks for the info.
Excellent post, thanks.
Its only a matter of time —say four years—before price/performance of electric cars reaches that of internal combustion engine based cars. That will in turn set off the most beautiful competition in the history of the world to the benefit of car buying public. There’s one more player I’m also convinced will be in the game. That’s the fuel cell cars. They’re not as far along in the USA. But they’re getting a lot of traction and investment in Japan. Fuel cell cars have great engineers in both Germany and Japan behind them with deep pockets. They’re going to be in the mix.
The result will be that starting in about 5 years gasoline prices will start to go down. It will be inexorable and terrible for oil companies but fabulous for energy consumers.
The down side is that the left will get the credit for this move... in energy and money will flow from mid continent to the coasts.
The answer for the pubbies is that they need to do something even more dramatic. Green energy is just looking for price parity with cheapest coal/natural gas. Pubbies need to announce that they’re going to kill the cost of electricity and water. So as to make it cheap enough to farm the deserts and pull water out of the ocean for California.
That will do it. That’s the sort of pubbie technological vision that is in tune with times and trumps the dem green energy vision.
Well Dingy got sideways with somebody. I’m betting the mob as you cannot come up with a way he sustained those injuries falling off a treadmill. Somebody beat the stew out of him.
ive been or had been... listening to Dr Bill Wattenburg..on the radio for years. He’s discussed the vast advances in nuclear design for abut as long.
the future it is not squashed by EPA types looks great
yeah I’ve been hearing about the changes in 4th gen nuclear designs coming from a half dozen different sources. 4th gen is not like nuclear fusion that’s always 20 years in the future. 4th gen will have the first protoypes in under 5 years. Alas they may not be in the USA.
Nah, Harry is stepping down to spend more time with his treadmill.
The french are using American designs...that we arent....
its about time we are allowed to get with the program!
I envy that person. Opening a can of whoopass on Pinky would be a good time.
In honor of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), designate the first load of nuclear waste interred at Yucca Mountain the Harry Reid Memorial Nuclear Waste Memorial Dump Site (HRMNWDS). A glowing deposit of Harry’s best waste.
No - AFixed.treadmillMob enforcer brought down Harry Reid...
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