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The nation's top nuclear energy regulator voted on Tuesday to proceed with the information-gathering stage of approving a license for the contentious nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 2-1 to begin actions related to the review of the Department of Energy's license to build the radioactive waste facility after the Obama administration attempted to scuttle the program entirely. "These next steps involve information-gathering activities related to the suspended adjudication on the application," the regulatory agency said in a statement. "These activities will enable efficient, informed decisions in support of executing any further...

After four years of battle with opponents of safe, economical nuclear energy -basically same dummies closing down our coal industry (Obama, Reid, et. al.)- the large federal nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada was recently deemed 'safe' by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission... so why not get going with that, then? Nuclear energy is simply wonderful in my view, and only real green kooks like the German left are walking away from it. Not even the tsunami disaster at Fukushima, Japan has scared them away from utilizing it... Tokyo knows the 1964, single-walled reactors were outdated and risky, and unlike anything you'd...

President Obama asserted the unilateral power to "tweak" inconvenient laws in last Friday's news conference, underscoring his Administration's increasingly cavalier notions about law enforcement. So it's good that the judiciary—a coequal branch of government, in case the Administration forgot—is starting to check the White House. In a major rebuke on Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an unusual writ of mandamus, which is a direct judicial order compelling the government to fulfill a legal obligation. This "extraordinary remedy" is nominally about nuclear waste, writes Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the 2-1 majority, yet the case "raises significant questions about...

In a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada. By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was "simply flouting the law" when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans...

n a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada. By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was "simply flouting the law" when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans...

Energy: A green administration blocks the safe storage of nuclear waste and refuses even to acknowledge nuclear power has a future. But after the GOP House votes to open a safe site, the nuclear debate has been reopened. Actually "waste" is an inaccurate term for the spent nuclear fuel rods still accumulating at above-ground fuel storage sites around the country, many near major cities. Spent nuclear fuel is a renewable resource that, in generating energy after being reprocessed, emits no greenhouse gasses. But wait, critics shout, what about Fukushima and Chernobyl? Certainly Russian incompetence and Japanese carelessness produced tragic results....

Arrogant, abusive, volatile and arbitrary in his use of authority... The chairman of the NRC has been excoriated by scientists who have seen years of research, discarded as Jaczko... terminated the national nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He has been castigated by congressmen who support a rational system for nuclear waste disposal -- as mandated by Congress and four previous administrations. The NRC inspector general concluded that Mr. Jaczko has manipulated policy by withholding information from his fellow commissioners.

Connecticut’s electric utilities and the state’s largest power generator cheered a federal panel’s report urging the U.S. Department of Energy to do what the state advocated for years — remove nuclear waste from Connecticut, rapidly. The federal Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future issued its draftThe dry casks storing 412 metric tons of spent uranium at the former site of Connecticut Yankee in Haddam. report on July 29, addressing the problem of storing uranium once nuclear reactors finish with it. The report is a precursor to a final report in January, and the commission is accepting comments through October....

“Today is an important step for some of the critical work of the NRC’s career scientists to finally see the light of day, but where are the findings? It took months of Congressional prodding and courageous testimony from NRC staff for this TER to finally be made public, but how much longer must we wait to see the fruit of their labors? The time is now for Chairman Jaczko and the entire Commission to formally vote to fully release the staff’s complete and uncensored report.

Nuclear Power: The greatest danger at Fukushima was and is the spent fuel stored at the reactor sites. So why are we doing the same thing when we have a safe place to store it? Before a 9.0 axis-shifting earthquake damaged the nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Japan, legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives endorsing the construction of 200 nuclear power reactors in the U.S. by 2040, tripling current megawatt generating capacity. H.R. 909, co-sponsored by 64 Republicans, also endorsed the completion of the spent fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That facility, which was supposed to...

Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, discusses the outlook for construction of new nuclear-power reactors in the U.S. and the disposal of nuclear waste. Jaczko, speaking with Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness,” said the NRC will start making decisions on applications to build new U.S. reactors in 12 to 18 months.

South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is launching a new attack-- calling out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for wasting billions of dollars by preventing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository from going online. Haley, whose state contains two nuclear waste processing sites, said $20 billion already has been spent on the facility 100 miles north of Las Vegas, including $1.2 billion from South Carolina.<SNIP> "We are not interested in investing in any more Nevada real estate when we get nothing in return. If the feds want to renege on the promise to keep Yucca open, they must refund the...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to bypass Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository should give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a boost in his bid for a fifth term. The action is not doing another endangered Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, any favors. And the same could be said for Democratic lawmakers in South Carolina who have distanced themselves from the administration’s decision. Democratic Reps. John Spratt and Jim Clyburn have been particularly critical of shelving Yucca in recent months. Washington and South Carolina are plaintiffs in a lawsuit designed to keep Yucca Mountain as an...

WASHINGTON — An amendment to restore money to license the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear repository failed in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

Ninety-one members of Congress urged the Department of Energy on Tuesday to immediately halt work to dismantle the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear repository.

In March of 2010, the Department of Energy (DOE) filed a motion to withdraw its licensing application to construct the geologic nuclear materials repository at Yucca Mountain. If successful, the action would essentially terminate the project. Yesterday, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the three-judge panel charged with conducting licensing hearings for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected that motion. This is a resounding victory for the future of nuclear energy. Though the Board’s decision was a surprise, it was the correct decision. Existing statute is clear that Yucca Mountain shall be the nation’s nuclear waste repository. So absent any technical...

An expert scientific commission to visit Hanford next month has a fascinating scientific mandate from President Obama: Look everywhere in America for the best place to bury radioactive reactor wastes. Everywhere, that is, except Nevada. Nevada, the state where the federal government has spent $10.5 billion developing Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste repository. The dry-as-talcum-powder state identified 20-plus years ago as the best place in America to bury radioactive waste. We know this is a highly scientific mission because Obama has assured the nation that – unlike George W. Bush – he would never, ever, so much as...

After being on opposite sides for most of the project's history, the DOE and Nevada both argued in favor of the DOE withdrawing the Yucca Mountain license application with prejudice so the agency can get on with considering other alternatives for disposing of the nation's used nuclear reactor fuel.

March 18, 2010—Objections to DOE’s plans to withdraw its license application for the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository continued to gain pace this week, with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) adding their voices. NARUC filed with the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board its petition to intervene in the board’s considerations of DOE’s March 3 motion to withdraw with prejudice its Yucca license application. In its filing, NARUC said DOE’s withdrawal is “premature, arbitrary and capricious.” The ASLB is the body determining whether DOE can legally withdraw its application. The filing went...

Stuck on YuccaHas Obama moved center on nuclear power?  The perennially optimistic strained to find evidence of a new centrism in President Obama’s State of the Union address. Well, the Hyde Park liberal embraced nuclear power, they say. And he did seem to. “To create more . . . clean-energy jobs,” the president intoned, “we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” It’s a nice sentiment. The Nuclear Energy Institute pronounced itself “delighted.” But hold the champagne. The other nuclear news this week is that the Obama administration’s...