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Response to the Nevada Independent article: Concerns about government bullying and safety were the top reasons for those opposing the House Yucca bill
Before turning to the assertion of “bullying,” it is meaningful to look at the assessment of safety of the Yucca Mountain site. Demonstrations of the safety of the site have been made by several National Laboratories, the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff. Although Nevada claims that the site is not safe, the State has fought every effort to have their safety concerns adjudicated in the process required by Commission regulations. Nevada’s refusal to enter into the licensing hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where technical issues are to be adjudicated, must be viewed in this light.
September 28, 2018
Yucca poses threat to bases in Nevada
The storage and transportation of nuclear waste at the site — less than 100 miles from Las Vegas — poses a serious threat to national security because of the U.S. military bases that surround the area, Rosen said earlier this month on Nevada Newsmakers.
September 19, 2018
Letters to the editor of the Pahrump Valley Times
Tim Burke’s “Yucca Mountain Transportation Scenarios Explored,” PVT September 14, 2018, is wrong on the facts. If Yucca Mountain were built, high-level nuclear waste would be shipped through Las Vegas for 50 years...
September 20, 2018
Upton Disappointed In Lack Of Yucca Mountain Funding
The latest federal spending plan reached by Congress does not include money for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Congressman Fred Upton tells WSJM News he’d been pushing to get the Yucca Mountain project rolling again, but no dice.
September 15, 2018
Nevada Dodges Another Yucca Funding Bullet
House efforts to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain were foiled once again last week when the Senate and House approved a spending package that included funding for the Department of Energy, but did not include money for the project.
September 14, 2018
Yucca Transportation Scenarios Explored
In analyzing what is “fact or fiction” regarding the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository today we will look at rail transportation of nuclear waste and the studies done on the possible routes.
September 14, 2018
Kavanaugh on the wrong side of health care, immigration, Yucca:
Heller tossed vicious criticism at Donald Trump in 2016, only to later admit that he voted for him. He opposed the decimation of working people’s health care before voting in favor of it. He’s been a moderate and a red-blooded conservative...
September 13, 2018
Upton Working On Yucca Mountain Funding
“At the moment there is not the funding to continue to fund the Yucca Mountain site where we’ve already spent about $15 billion, and so I’m joining with a number of my colleagues to try to insert the appropriate money into the spending bill,” Upton said.
September 12, 2018
Misguided & Dangerous Yucca To Receive No Federal Funding
Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) statement following the passage of the federal appropriations legislation that includes the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs funding bills, which provides no federal funding for Yucca Mountain.
September 12, 2018
Yucca Mountain Halted Again as GOP Aims to Retain Senate
Supporters of the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada face a familiar fate despite bipartisan momentum to restart progress on the site: Once again, their hopes appear dashed by a Silver State senator.
September 12, 2018
Congressman: Political considerations derailing Yucca Mountain
A House champion of using Yucca Mountain for permanent storage of nuclear waste charged Wednesday that national energy priorities have been dashed by political calculations to...
September 12, 2018
Legal abortion, Yucca Mountain among concerns about Kavanaugh
For Senate Democrats, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, the calls last week to delay the Senate judiciary committee hearing to question the potential newest member of the Supreme Court were the result of many concerns.
September 10, 2018
Heller Keeps Funding to Revive Yucca Mountain Out of Reconciled Appropriations Bill Released Today
U.S. Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) today announced that he once again successfully worked to keep funding to revive Yucca Mountain out of the reconciled bill.
September 4, 2018
Sandoval on Yucca fight: ‘Pop them between the eyes’
Gov. Brian Sandoval says Nevada must become the aggressor in the fight over the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
"We're going to take the fight to them," he said. "I don't want to play defense any more."
September 3, 2018
Yucca Mountain would drive down Las Vegas home prices
In reference to the Aug. 21 letter to the editor supporting the building of the Yucca Mountain repository: Although an influx of good-paying, high-tech jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in
September 1, 2018
COMMENTARY: Yucca Mountain: No easy transportation, no free government money
Two recent letters to the Review-Journal suggest there are safe and easy ways to transport high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Jim Marsh (“Nuke dump,” Aug. 21) proposes flying the waste...
About This Website
About Yucca Mountain
Project Overview
This website is offered in order to shed light on the Yucca Mountain effort. First, we believe it is important to present factual information on Yucca Mountain, as opponents have made every effort to disassemble and erase its outstanding research record from the pages of history since the Obama Administration terminated the project in 2011.
Second, Yucca Mountain represents feats of engineering and scientific prowess that need to be more widely recognized. The facts need to be told.
And . . . the United States still needs a safe place to store its high-level nuclear waste.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, located on a piece of land adjoining the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, was designed to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and other high- level radioactive waste, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987.
The United States currently obtains about 20 percent of its commercial electricity from nuclear energy. Waste from the more than 60 commercial nuclear power plants operating across the country is accumulating at the rate of about 2,000 tons per year. Approximately 65,000 tons are currently in temporary storage at the sites where it was produced.
In 1987, Congress singled out Yucca Mountain, located in Nye County, Nevada, adjoining the Nevada Test Site, as the site for intensive study of long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste.
As of 2011, the nation has spent as much as $15 billion on finding a permanent storage site for its high-level nuclear waste, some $9 billion on Yucca Mountain alone. Hundreds of men and women worked on the study of Yucca Mountain for decades, including some of the best scientists in the world.
In 2011, as a result of political maneuvering, funding on Yucca Mountain and the search for a permanent storage site for high-level nuclear waste came to a halt.
Yet in 2014, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared that high-level nuclear waste could be safely stored at Yucca Mountain for at least 1 million years.
Dr. Voegele's talk outlined the history of the U.S. high-level radioactive waste disposal program, with particular focus on how Yucca Mountain was selected for the country's first nuclear waste repository. The talk provided a very good outline of the legislative history of the project, along with related court decisions through the years. He also touched on recent activities that might affect the future of Yucca Mountain. Dr. Voegele spent 40 years working in the U.S. high-level waste disposal program, most of that time on the Yucca Mountain project.
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August 31, 2018
Hearing set for challenge of NRC’s Yucca Mountain decisions
A federal appeals court has scheduled a briefing on Nevada’s legal challenge to Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner David Wright’s participation in decisions involving Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste storage at the proposed site, officials said Friday.
August 28, 2018
Nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain discussed with congressman
During a pit stop in Aiken Tuesday, Congressman Jeff Duncan says he is all in on getting the "yucky" to Yucca Mountain.
August 29, 2018
Nevada files to force NRC official’s recusal from Yucca Mountain
Nevada continued its legal attack on the Trump administration over Yucca Mountain on Wednesday, asking a federal appellate court to block an agency commissioner from participating in
The USA is the world's largest producer of nuclear power, accounting for more than 30% of worldwide nuclear generation of electricity.
A single uranium fuel pellet contains the same amount of energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil.
In response to growing concerns over nuclear waste storage, Congress passed the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982.
The U.S. first began using nuclear power to produce electricity in 1957.
The amount of electricity produced by a multi-reactor nuclear power plant would require about 45 square miles of photovoltaic panels or about 260 square miles of wind turbines.
The intended method for providing long-term isolation of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. and most other countries is mined geologic disposal.
As of May 2016, 30 countries worldwide are operating 444 nuclear reactors for electricity generation and 63 new nuclear plants are under construction in 15 countries.
August 25, 2018
Interstate 11 would make it easier to transport waste to Yucca Mountain
I agree with Jim Marsh’s Tuesday letter “Nuke dump.” Mr. Marsh, however, missed one significant benefit to the valley when opening Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository...
August 22, 2018
Nevada Gov. Sandoval: gear up to fight Yucca Mountain in 2019
Despite a stalemate in Congress that appears to have shelved action on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project for the year, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval urged state officials to be prepared and proactive and to take the battle to the federal government.
August 20, 2018
Not all Las Vegas businesses oppose Yucca Mountain
The Review-Journal recently reported that the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce had a delegation of 100 in Washington, D.C., lobbying against Yucca Mountain. I have been a chamber member for more...
