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Yucca Mountain nuclear project will not die

yucca.jpgAmerica’s two-decade old proposal to store high level nuclear waste in a mountain in Nevada just will not die.

Geologists, local senators, and President Barack Obama have all tried to kybosh plans to build a waste storage facility inside Yucca Mountain.

But yesterday three judges from the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), ruled that Obama doesn’t have the power to kill the Yucca dream. He cannot overrule the act passed by Congress in 1982 that specified the mountain as the resting place for waste from nuclear power plants across America, they said.

When the Department of Energy (DoE) tried to withdraw the 8,600-page construction authorization detailing the Yucca plans various states and other groups objected. Now the judges have denied the application to withdraw.

“Did Congress, which so carefully preserved ultimate control over the multi-stage process that it crafted, intend – without ever saying so – that DoE could unilaterally withdraw the Application and prevent the NRC from considering it? We think not,” they wrote (verdict, hosted by NY Times).

A spokeswoman for the DoE insisted that the agency did have the legal authority to withdraw the application and was confident the judges’ decision would be overturned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NY Times, AP).

The fight looks set to continue.

Senator Patty Murray, from Washington State – one of those opposed to the application, says, “Given today’s decision, the Department should stop all current actions to terminate the project. Over the last 30 years, Congress, independent studies, and previous administrations have all pointed to, voted for, and funded Yucca Mountain as the nation’s best option for a nuclear repository.”

On the other side, Harry Reid, one of Nevada’s senators, says, “Nevadans can rest assured that as the majority leader of the Senate, I will continue working with President Obama and Secretary Chu to ensure Nevada never becomes the nation’s nuclear dumping ground. I will continue to ensure that this dangerous project never comes back to life.”

So there may, in fact, be a simple solution to the long term storage problem: by the time the wrangling over Yucca Mountain has stopped, the waste probably won’t be radioactive any more. It’ll only take a million years or so.

Image: former secretary of energy Spencer Abraham with the 2002 recommendation that Yucca Mountain becomes America’s long term waste store / DOE Photo

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