The politicalization of Nuclear Waste management has always been controversial, but Obama and Reid have made it a travesty. When it comes to making decisions that should be based on fact based technology and not emotional rhetoric the US Congress is ignorant and incompetent. We didn't let Congress design Nuclear Reactors for the Navy or for Nuclear Power plants, but we are perfectly willing to let them decide how to process nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain was designed and developed by competent engineers and scientists and then fully tested for environmental risks with a multi thousand page report of all tests submitted to the federal government to justify a license to open and operate. The most important aspect of Yucca Mountain that Obama and Reid continue to misrepresent is that it is a RETRIEVABLE STORAGE SITE, not a "burial site" as the Democrats and Media have always called it. To describe it accurately would not serve their purposes to scuttle the project. The truth is that the spent nuclear fuel intended to be stored at Yucca still contains 90% useable uranium and will become economical to recover at some time in the future when our supply of natural uranium becomes rare and too expensive to process. When that occurs a whole new industry to retrieve the spent fuel and recover the useable fuel will become feasible and Yucca Mountain will become a logical site for reprocessing. All of the other hype of transportation safety and ground water contamination is totally fabricated to invent scare tactics to satisfy the opponents objective to kill the use of Nuclear Energy. We have been transporting both nuclear fuel and weapons all over the USA for over 65 years with out an accident that released any radioactive material. Why would it suddenly be hazardous if we moved it to Yucca Mountain in the same ultrasafe shipping containers we have been using all this time. Let's leave the technical decisions to the experts and respect their judgement for a change. Our politicians have a poor track record of managing this problem and after their recent performances with the fiscal issues why on earth would we want to entrust the decision of how and where we should store and treat our nuclear waste.
Time for Congress to do more than talk about nuclear waste
The politicalization of Nuclear Waste management has always been controversial, but Obama and Reid have made it a travesty.
When it comes to making decisions that should be based on fact based technology and not emotional rhetoric the US Congress is ignorant and incompetent.
We didn't let Congress design Nuclear Reactors for the Navy or for Nuclear Power plants, but we are perfectly willing to let them decide how to process nuclear waste.
Yucca Mountain was designed and developed by competent engineers and scientists and then fully tested for environmental risks with a multi thousand page report of all tests submitted to the federal government to justify a license to open and operate.
The most important aspect of Yucca Mountain that Obama and Reid continue to misrepresent is that it is a RETRIEVABLE STORAGE SITE, not a "burial site" as the Democrats and Media have always called it.
To describe it accurately would not serve their purposes to scuttle the project. The truth is that the spent nuclear fuel intended to be stored at Yucca still contains 90% useable uranium and will become economical to recover at some time in the future when our supply of natural uranium becomes rare and too expensive to process. When that occurs a whole new industry to retrieve the spent fuel and recover the useable fuel will become feasible and Yucca Mountain will become a logical site for reprocessing.
All of the other hype of transportation safety and ground water contamination is totally fabricated to invent scare tactics to satisfy the opponents objective to kill the use of Nuclear Energy. We have been transporting both nuclear fuel and weapons all over the USA for over 65 years with out an accident that released any radioactive material. Why would it suddenly be hazardous if we moved it to Yucca Mountain in the same ultrasafe shipping containers we have been using all this time.
Let's leave the technical decisions to the experts and respect their judgement for a change. Our politicians have a poor track record of managing this problem and after their recent performances with the fiscal issues why on earth would we want to entrust the decision of how and where we should store and treat our nuclear waste.
March 4, 2013 at 11:53 p.m. permalink suggest removal