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Yucca Mountain Approved for US Nuclear Waste Storage
Cephalien writes "As reported by Reuters (The link is from AT&T Worldnet -- No registration required, etc, etc), looks like congress has pushed this through against Nevada's objections (NIMBY, anyone?). Now all that's left is the licensing from the NRC. I dunno about you folks, but I'm glad I don't live in Nevada." After 20 years in the making and 4 billion in studies construction on the $58b facility can begin. It was this or Cmdrtacos basement.
I know this is an old debate, and you might consider it a troll, but if we had invested 58 BILLION DOLLARS (falling over backwards here ...) propermy 20 years ago, we might have had an alternative for nuclear power by now. I recently heard a radio interview with a nuke expert who said that, with a bit of luck, they might have an experimental FUSION reactor by 2030. Right now they do have the capabilities of warming deuterium plasma to 150million degrees celcius, which is sufficient to start fusion. Now they have to invest 17billion dollars to build a reactor. Dollars they don't have...
silly, isn't it ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Yep.
I don't know how many people here have actually met/worked with DOE guards. Trust me on one thing: They're not the rent-a-cops at the mall. DOE security is where Navy SEALS go when they leave the Navy. They tend to be better trained and equipped than my department's SWAT team.
I'm in reasonably-good shape. At 35, I still run a 24-minute 5K, bench my own weight for seven, etc. And from duty gear, I can put two into an index card, two seconds at five yards. And the DOE guys I've met pretty much all run, lift, and shoot circles around me.
I pity the dumb-assed terrorist who tries to hijack one of these convoys. It'll be a quick trip to Allah, is for damn sure.
And it's sure suck if a future geoligist accidentally falls into a long-buried septic tank too. Seriously, what's the MAXIMUM possible damage here? A geolgist knocks a few months off his life? While I have the greatest possible sympathy for the poor guy (or women/neuter/android/alien or whatever is digging stuff up 5000 years from now), I don't rank this problem as high as, say, deciding what to have for lunch tomorrow.
:-P
Really, you raise one of the WEAKEST arguments against nuclear power. Weigh the benefits against the possible negatives, and it's obvious that the health of future lost geologists (yeah, 5000 years from now and they're not going to use sensors we haven't even DREAMED of yet?) is a small problem.
Actually, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest argument against nuclear power is that it's mostly too damn expensive (yeah, even when you factor in the cost of the damage of burning fossile fuels). I suppose it might be nice to have some capacity on reserve in case foreign oil imports are cut, or something, but it'd probably still be cheaper just to stockpile a few years worth of oil.
A single mid-sized moving van took out the federal building in Oklahoma. I think something similar could be done to take out a transport truck.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I see, so if one state doesn't want something but the other 49 gang up on them, then they're gonna get it. What a wonderful system we have.
Interesting too that Nevada doesn't have any commercial reactors, yet they get stuck with the waste. In fact the bulk of the nuclear material and programs within the state are federal.
Yup, the waste has to go somewhere. So in this case someone shits in New Jersey and it ends up in Nevada's back yard.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Well since the government has been collecting a waste disposal fee from the plants for years, it's hardly unreasonable for the nuclear industry to expect the government to spend the money on the disposal they have already charged for.
The anti-nuclear activists are the ones who originally said the nuclear industry couldn't be trusted to dispose of the wastes, and the government should handle it. Now that it's time for the government to live up to it's end of the bargain, suddenly we have anti-nuclear activists urging that the people they wanted to handle the waste refuse to do so.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The waste needs to be stored on-site at nuclear plants and we need to find ways to recycle the waste further -- things like breeder reactors and reprocessing.
While the waste is transported to Yucca from nuclear power stations, it will pass within 2 miles of 90% of the US population -- it will be in your backyard too.
The Feds have lied about a number of key facts.
The government claims that the area is a seismic (sp?) dead zone. Yet there was an earthquake at Yucca mountain about a month ago and a major fault line about 300 miles away.
There is also a possibilty that any waste that leaks from the mountain will contaminate an aquifer which provides water to millions.
No matter how you put it, Yucca mountain is a bad deal for everyone.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It's time for Nevada to assert its rights as a sovereign state and tell the Federal government to go to Hell. Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal government given authority to demand a state accept ANY thing (be it postal mail, electricity, Cheese Doodles, or nuclear waste) from another state. And before you Federalists out there pipe up with "but what about the Regulation of Interstate Commerce clause?" stop and think -- it's not commerce if one party is deprived of the option of saying "no" to the deal. No different that if I dumped my garbage in your front yard against your objections and then threw you a five dollar bill as "payment" and called it commerce.
If Nevada wants it fine, but if not, the other states must accept that as a final answer. Failing that, the Nevada government should call the National guard and give them orders to use whatever means necessary to stop these shipments.
Which kind of makes the point. Do you want the people who are producing the waste and sitting there waiting for something to happen protecting the waste from terrorists?
The nuclear industry and the government made some deals and it's the US government's problem. All do respect to the nuclear industry, they have had a remarkably safe history with only a handful of accidents (which is amazing, any way you look at it) but after 9/11 I think the stakes have been raised a little and one of the few things the US government can do fairly well is build a fortress, spend billions of dollars and man it with a ton of heavily armed 20 year old who will kill whomever they are told to.
We should blame the politicians but that doesn't really fix anything, does it? You can't undo what has been done.
It's all rhetoric right now anyways. What's the liklihood of a truck crashing? Pretty low but it's high enough, we've all seen semi trucks upside down at some point in our lives. So they spend some hugh amount of money coming up with the one true container for this crap, I'm guessing that at least several hundred million went in to the R&D on that. They are bullet proof, bomb proof, they've had trains crash in to them, they've shot javelin missles at them, and they weigh a couple tons so the local gangs or terrorist groups couldn't just drive up in a van a take one. Well that's not good enough, the actual waste will still pass with in miles of major cities; never mind the fact that it's all sitting there now.
There is a fault near Yucca mountain, how many places in the world aren't near faults or experience earth quakes from time to time? None? One? Plus the crap will be in those containers. Yucca mountain is simply a consolidation place, it's not like it's just getting buried and walked away from, people will go down there regularly and inspect things and we could take it all out if we need to.
If nothing else, we should build a big warehouse somewhere and start putting the stuff there. I feel much safer with it consolidated and watched by a whole division of marines than spread out around the country being watched by rent-a-cops that the nuclear folks pay for.
Nuclear power is the first time we went into an energy source with a good idea of exactly how dangerous. The same statement very probably can't be said of any other powersource.
How about that clean hydropower. Then look at what it does to fisheries, and the fact that the salmon no longer take their nutrient-laden bodies back up the river, where the bears catch many and fertilize the forests. Look at the silting problems in dams, and the lack of that necessary silt below the dam.
How about fossil fuels and global warming?
At this point, I don't even know about trusting either solar or wind power. Extensive use of solar power may well change the albedo of the Earth, or something odd like that, affecting the climate. Extensive use of wind power could conceivably affect climate, in addition to killing large numbers of birds.
I'd prefer we learn to live more efficiently and control our breeding.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
How many of you actually have a college degree in Nuclear Engineering? I know I do. Just wondering - some of the things I've read here are just plain wrong.
As bad as it is for citizens of Nevada, I feel even worse for the Shoshone, who absolutely don't deserve having our radioactive shit stored in their sacred land. Hey, maybe we should start stashing some waste in Canada. I mean, it's not like the Canucks could do anything to us.
http://www.indiancountry.com/?1022253815
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?