Posted on 04/27/2017 1:46:47 AM PDT by blueplum
Lawmakers faced off in a Wednesday hearing on proposed legislation to approve a nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Many lawmakers at the hearing were concerned about the federal government defaulting on its legal obligations to dispose of used nuclear fuel. Even House Democrats acknowledged the sheer scale of this problem. “Courts have determined that DOE has breached contractual obligations under this statute,” New York Democrat Paul Tonko, ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “DOE estimated that if it could begin to accept waste in the next 10 years, liabilities would total $29 billion dollars.” Nevada lawmakers strongly objected to the bill, since it would approve a project they’ve been fighting for decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
How about sending this to a handful of judges. Give them a taste of consequences their action/non-reaction produce, first hand. Just a taste of what will be forthcoming due to their inability to uphold the law of the land.
With any material remaining, send to the democrats in congress; still some remaining, throw a few pubbies names in the hat.
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage is not "The END of Nevada as We Know It!" A little perspective.
Just a few subsistence craters from the 825 previous underground nuclear tests in Nevada. So far, these have not spawned any Gigantic Teenage Mutant Ninja Gophers running rampant through the Las Vegas Casino Districts.
These are the sites of nuclear weapons underground EXPLOSIONS, not the storage of sub-critical nuclear waste materials.
This is where the nuclear waste is stored now.
So we built a nuke waste facility that last I heard was in the $240 billion range, that needs an additional $29 billion to possibly become operational. But we still aren’t sure we can ever use it, and yet there is no money for a wall. Is that about right?
Anyone that received power from a utility with a nuclear power plant paid money that went to the DOE to construct that site. The federal government collected the money but never took the spent fuel rods resulting in them be stored on site all over the country. That needs to be rectified.
‘Burn’ as much as possible of this useful stuff in a suitable nuclear reactor. French do that and have little waste left at end. Some of the proposed ‘new’ reactor designs make this easier. Let the left try to protest against recycling!,
I remember that. The Government owes a lotta money. Good luck collecting that.
Perhaps we can store the stuff from other countries for a price.
I’m not a big proponent of Yucca Mt. because the plan is to vitrify the spent fuel. This is a short sighted policy based on a Jimmy Carter executive order banning the reprocessing of spent fuel. Other than that Yucca Mt. seems to be a good repository. I just hope the operators are more on the ball than the operators of the NM WIPP facility. Morons like that should be wrangling turds at a sewer plant, not operating a nuke waste facility.
This is a national problem and Nevada should not get a veto just because the location of the storage site is in Nevada.
Nevada should not be seeking a veto because the arguments against the site are irrational and defy the science and the facts about storing the material there.
One of the last legal attempts to block the use of Yucca had one judge suggesting that the minimum 1,000 year expected safe life time for using that facility was “not long enough to be considered safe” (I’m paraphrasing it not quoting).
I wrote at the time that the president’s response should have been - fine, we’ll go ahead and do it against your judgement and the executive branch and the courts can argue about for that 1,000 years, and maybe by then the scientists will come up with some other solution, but meanwhile we’ll use the solution we have.
“But we still aren’t sure we can ever use it, and yet there is no money for a wall. Is that about right?”
No, that is not about right. As far as safety and feasibility we KNOW we can use it and the material stored there will be many times more secure and safe there than all the places it is temporarily stored now. What is the expected “shelf life” of the Yucca facility? At minimum 1,000 years. The arguments against it are not science based, they are irrational.
I think we need to use Yucca and consider “recycling” nuclear waste as well. But meanwhile, we need Yucca because we need to get the material out of many places where it is stored now.
Better read my post again. The reason we may never be able to use it is not because it’s an improper place, it’s because of the realities on the ground. Of late I see a trend here at the FreeRepulic where posters just shout out “ Congress needs to do” such and such or Ryan has to go or Yucca Mt. just use it. These statements while possibly true deny the facts on the ground. One of those facts (like it or not) is Nevada has skin in the game and can hold up indefinitely the utilization of the repository.
Well some here might say “just do it anyway”. To me that is a slippery slope towards totalitarianism. It may be ok for this issue, but it may be your ox getting gored next.
Beyond the absolutely abysmal performance at the WIPP facility ( a supposed low level waste repository) lends credence and ammunition to those opposing Yucca Mt. So don’t get on you high horse and tell me how safe it is and we know we can use it, facts on the ground say otherwise and fact are stubborn.
Actually, Yucca is still needed, but yes reprocessing will minimize how much.
In the reprocessing of “spent” fuel rods, the remaining “most useful elements are extracted (as much as possible) particularly plutonium and uranium. But that actually does not make what is left NOT radioactive (due to other radioactive elements). The “left overs” from the reprocessing process remain VERY radioactive.
And what do they do with it. They vitrify it, as is intended for storage at Yucca as well.
The reprocessing will (a) add a costly step but obtain material that can still be used, and (b) still require a long term storage site for what remains after reprocessing has extracted what it could.
Using reprocessing will extend the life of Yucca, however, at the current rate of power plant’s creating more spent fuel, we will need to locate additional long term storage sites, like Yucca (deep natural underground sites), within 25 to 50 years depending on how much is removed by reprocessing before the rest is vitrified.
The big deal is that when these solutions are put to work, the power industry will have a clearer sight towards increasing the use of nuclear power. The storage problem is part of the what has been holding everyone back (in addition to the greenie weenies legal attacks).
I understand that and agree, but U.S. policy put in place by Jimmy Carter forbids the reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the U.S. It is patently against the law at this time to do so. The only way Yucca Mt. can be utilized now is to vitrify un-reprocessed spent fuel, which is not only wasteful of the nuclear material but will also be wasteful of the square footage in the repository.
I agree, so Congress’ action should not only address Yucca, but it should remove Carter’s foolish law as well. And instead of reinventing the wheel, the U.S. contractors for the reprocessing facilities should partner with others, from other countries already doing it (most likely France).
One has to wonder if Carter was really, in a back handed way trying to kill the nuclear power industry by the problems from not reprocessing the spent fuel.
Yep, another govt solution, looking for a problem, looking for a REAL solution.
Re-process, re-use. Question is: What’s the reduction of such?
Can the by-products be used elsewhere? Maybe smaller/local plants, not needing the more purified product? How many levels ‘deep’ can we go before we take a barrel and reduce down to a bucket of ‘bad’ stuffs?
I suspect the answer is, YES...*IF* govt got out of the way of itself.
Oh, I don’t wonder. Three Mile Island scared the crap out of Carter. We nearly had a Fukushima situation. Hydrogen venting did occur and luckily the plant had power to run coolant pumps. I was just out of High school at the time and my neighbor ran an experiment exposing photo film to rain water. The exposed film showed fogging from radiation all the way here in VT.
While “possible” danger vis-a-vis Three Mile Island, the actual danger was vastly overbloom, while the press did it’s job in convincing you that officials wrongly minimized the danger.
So, since your class experiment, how many of you have had arly deaths from cancers from the background radiation that fogged the film? I see you are still here.
Have you see the healthy life - flora and fauna - that now flourishes around Chernobyl?
Do you know when, where and how the “official” rate of “lethal” dosage of radiation was determined, and how very suspect it is, scientifically?
I’m no shrinking violet, I’m a proponent of the responsible application of nuclear power. Even through all the machinations of the federal government we still get things like ventilation systems at the WIPP facility without even rudimentary exhaust filtering. While we have government mandating extreme scrubbers and carbon sequestration for coal plants, there was virtually no oversight of atmospheric venting of emissions from a supposed low level waste facility. Obviously some stupid s#!t went on there and it gives the whole industry a black eye.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.