JESSICA SCOTT

March 28, 2009

With the nuclear industry threatening that abandoning the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project will lead to lawsuits, President Obama has cut off almost all funding for the facility in his budget released several weeks ago. The Yucca Mountain site was selected over twenty years ago to serve as the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository, with over $7.5 billion being invested in the site since then.

Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who has been an outspoken opponent of the site since its inception, called this "our most significant victory to date in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country's toxic wasteland." It remains unclear, however, what will happen to the nation's increasing quantities of nuclear waste.

The site never had the support of the local community and, soon after Congress selected the site, Nevada sued and lost to stop the project. Other countries have taken a different approach, according to Rodney Ewing, an expert on nuclear waste at the University of Michigan. In Sweden, for instance, "[t]heir approach is, we won't build a repository unless the local community agrees." In most communities in the U.S., this is difficult to imagine, even with EPA promising to fulfill its role of "setting human health and environmental radiation protection standards" and not allowing the plant "to open unless it meets EPA's requirements."

There are alternatives to sending nuclear waste directly into permanent storage. In France and Japan spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed, which reduces both the toxicity and volume of the waste product. This is fraught with problems also, however, as it is contrary to U.S. policy to limit nuclear proliferation as it involves separating out plutonium, which can be used for bombs.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently informed Congress of efforts to develop reactors that can burn waste, but this likely will not be realized for several decades. Unfortunately, neither of these options eliminates the waste altogether, so as long as the country continues to use nuclear power, there will be a continued need for a permanent nuclear waste facility.

As the search begins for a new facility, the Yucca Mountain project has taught, if nothing else, the importance of local support in making such administrative decisions.

Sources:

Kent Garber, Lessons from the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Storage Debate, Mar. 16, 2009, http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/energy/2009/03/16/lessons-from-the-yucca-mountain-nuclear-waste-storage-debate.html.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Yucca Mountain Standards, http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/yucca/ (last updated Mar. 11, 2009).

Steve Vogel, Controversy Over Yucca Mountain May Be Ending, Washington Post, Mar. 4, 2009, at A13, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303638.html.

KRNV-TV, Lawmakers Push Alternative to Yucca Mountain, Mar. 16, 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29682090/.