Yucca Mountain - yes or no?

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Bobby_Jim

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Do you support the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada?

This was in the news again today because apparently some of the studies on water drainage in the mountain were flawed or falsified. Anyway, just curious what folks here think about this.
 
Bobby Jim:
Do you support the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada?

This was in the news again today because apparently some of the studies on water drainage in the mountain were flawed or falsified. Anyway, just curious what folks here think about this.
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Gotta put it someplace. Right now the waist is sitting in open ponds next to nuclear plants.

If you want to get away from foreign oil, atomic energy is definately one way to go. The bigges hurtle right now for atomic energy is what to do with the waiste.
 
I tend to agree with gilliam on this - the current waste storage situation doesn’t strike me as any safer long-term than Yucca Mountain, and perhaps less so.

And nuclear power is a good technology - I think the safety engineering over here is a lot more conscientious than it ever was in the Soviet Union, so the risks of another Chernobyl are pretty low. And an overlooked piece of this is that coal-fired power plants actually put out more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear plants. Nuclear power generates a very low volume of waste compared to coal - it just happens to be very nasty stuff.

At the moment though it’s not very cost-effective - I think the nuclear plants rely heavily on government subsidies. But as fossil fuels become more expensive I think nuclear power will eventually play a bigger role.
 
I voted no because I’m tired of people profiting at the expense of others.

These nimrods should have had a plan, a SAFE plan WAY before they started producing this waste.
 
So since they didn’t have a plan beforehand, they are now hosed? And if their original plan had to be tossed because someone gave bad data, that’s absolutely their fault? Just what do you want to happen to the stuff now? It can’t be un-created. I personally don’t know enough of the facts of this case to say if the Yucca Mountain is a good place to put the waste, but it does have to go somewhere.
 
Now the millionaires are the victims?

We certainly don’t want to hold anybody accountable.

I’m sure if I dump my car waste oil in the river because it was convenient for me and I had faulty data that I could put it in the garbage can, well then it should be ok.
 
Right now a lot of it is sitting at the 50+ year old Savannah River Site here in SC. The vessels are old and leaky and the stuff needs to be moved. There are quite a few people living in the immediate area, plus many, many more downriver at Beaufort, Hilton Head and Savannah. To me, an area like Yucca Mountain would be much preferable to where it is now.
 
On the con side, I will say that we are talking about safely storing this stuff for tens of thousands of years, which is longer than the entire recorded history of mankind. We have extant a few structures like the pyramids and Parthenon and the Coliseum that are a few thousand years old and crumbling, built by empires and societies that have long since faded and moved on. Kind of makes you think - perhaps there is a bit of hubris on our part, thinking we can keep this waste intact and secure for ten times as long with our modern technology.

But the waste is here, I don’t think we have any real choice but to try to do something with it.
 
Bobby Jim:
On the con side, I will say that we are talking about safely storing this stuff for tens of thousands of years, which is longer than the entire recorded history of mankind. We have extant a few structures like the pyramids and Parthenon and the Coliseum that are a few thousand years old and crumbling, built by empires and societies that have long since faded and moved on. Kind of makes you think - perhaps there is a bit of hubris on our part, thinking we can keep this waste intact and secure for ten times as long with our modern technology.

But the waste is here, I don’t think we have any real choice but to try to do something with it.
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The question is, are we BETTER off leaving it where it is, in leaking containers near large population centers?
 
vern humphrey:
The question is, are we BETTER off leaving it where it is, in leaking containers near large population centers?
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I think the answer to this question is no. I think moving it to a long-term storage facility like Yucca mountain is a better solution. But it is a very ambitious project, and I can understand why some people are very strongly against it.
 
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geezerbob:
Right now a lot of it is sitting at the 50+ year old Savannah River Site here in SC. The vessels are old and leaky and the stuff needs to be moved. There are quite a few people living in the immediate area, plus many, many more downriver at Beaufort, Hilton Head and Savannah. To me, an area like Yucca Mountain would be much preferable to where it is now.
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Ah, but sir, that’s the problem. Here, there’s lots of people living “downriver” (downwind) from Yucca Mountain! 1, 500, 000 people to be more or less precise. I’m actually fairly confident that they will find a way to make Yucca safe, BUT…would you want it stored in near your home? You can hardly blame us for feeling the same way.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
Ah, but sir, that’s the problem. Here, there’s lots of people living “downriver” (downwind) from Yucca Mountain! 1, 500, 000 people to be more or less precise. I’m actually fairly confident that they will find a way to make Yucca safe, BUT…would you want it stored in near your home? You can hardly blame us for feeling the same way.
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I can see Three Mile Island from my house and have lived within 100 feet from the front gate. I really can’t believe people are worried about storing the waste, in a mine, in a desert.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
Ah, but sir, that’s the problem. Here, there’s lots of people living “downriver” (downwind) from Yucca Mountain! 1, 500, 000 people to be more or less precise. I’m actually fairly confident that they will find a way to make Yucca safe, BUT…would you want it stored in near your home? You can hardly blame us for feeling the same way.
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It IS stored near my home now (about 50 miles away). That’s why I would like to see it moved.
 
Bobby Jim:
I think the answer to this question is no. I think moving it to a long-term storage facility like Yucca mountain is a better solution. But it is a very ambitious project, and I can understand why some people are very strongly against it.
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The same people who are against everything.

We can’t leave nuclear waste stored as it is indefinitely – sooner or later, there will be a disaster. Yucca Mountian is the best solution.
 
vern humphrey:
The same people who are against everything.

We can’t leave nuclear waste stored as it is indefinitely – sooner or later, there will be a disaster. Yucca Mountian is the best solution.
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Vern: Virtually the entire political community here in Nevada, regardless of their stripe, opposes it (well, of course they do!), Democrats, Republicans, etc. It’s not “the same people who are against everything.” What I really think is this: Yucca Mountain is probably as safe as anyplace (except the Salt Mines in New Mexico, where they haul the stuff from Los Alamos), and if there was a little hiccup, we could get the people who live close to it out of there and compensate them for their land. It probably wouldn’t affect Las Vegas, our most populous area, unless it blew up and I don’t think that’s actually one of the worries (it’s erosion and seepage…there are mountains between LV and Yucca). It has the added benefit of creating some jobs and getting more money into our state. But all of this kind of hinges on the “probably.” And honestly, who will say,“Yippee! We get to store nuclear waste for the whoooooollllllleeeee country?” I think the desert of Nevada is isolated enough that it only makes sense, but I wish Yucca was temporary and we could dig a vast pit here in the Mojave, line it with 15 feet of concrete (reinforced) and call it good. I think science and engineering could come up with something better than an old porous mountain cave. I could be wrong.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
Vern: Virtually the entire political community here in Nevada, regardless of their stripe, opposes it (well, of course they do!), Democrats, Republicans, etc. It’s not “the same people who are against everything.” .
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That’s in Nevada – and I can understand the NIMBY syndrome. But across the nation, there is a coalition that will oppose everything, from thinning second growth forests (resulting in things like the disasterous fires in the Southwest a couple of years ago) to exploration in the ANWR.
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JKirkLVNV:
What I really think is this: Yucca Mountain is probably as safe as anyplace (except the Salt Mines in New Mexico, where they haul the stuff from Los Alamos), and if there was a little hiccup, we could get the people who live close to it out of there and compensate them for their land. It probably wouldn’t affect Las Vegas, our most populous area, unless it blew up and I don’t think that’s actually one of the worries (it’s erosion and seepage…there are mountains between LV and Yucca). It has the added benefit of creating some jobs and getting more money into our state. But all of this kind of hinges on the “probably.” And honestly, who will say,“Yippee! We get to store nuclear waste for the whoooooollllllleeeee country?” I think the desert of Nevada is isolated enough that it only makes sense, but I wish Yucca was temporary and we could dig a vast pit here in the Mojave, line it with 15 feet of concrete (reinforced) and call it good. I think science and engineering could come up with something better than an old porous mountain cave. I could be wrong.
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It’s the best we have – for now. And the clock is ticking – sooner or later, there will be a disaster or a terrorist attack at some of the storage sites around the country.
 
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