Yucca Mountain

Yucca Mountain Is Possibly More Seismically Active Than Once Believed, Geologists Discover
Recent geodetic measurements using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites show that the Yucca Mountain area in southern Nevada is straining roughly 10 to 100 times faster than expected on the basis of the geologic history of the area. And for the moment at least, geologists are at a loss to explain the anomaly.

Nearly dead and buried
The publication, which covers the nuclear power industry, reported last week that the only money the agency plans to spend on Yucca Mountain in fiscal 2011 ...

Senate passes bill to close Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site

May 24th, 2009

President’s course leaves question open: Is it dead? Despite his promise, licensing process goes on
Washington — Faced with a Nevada campaign promise to stop Yucca Mountain but the scientific and legal complexity of abruptly ending the massive project, President Barack Obama made a decision that should surprise no one following his presidency.

He chose a pragmatic middle way.

Obama’s 2010 budget lays out his intent to terminate the proposed nuclear waste repository northwest of Las Vegas, providing just enough money for the Energy Department to continue pursuing the project as alternatives are sought.

The result has left many to declare the dump is dead, and others to wonder whether it might be very much alive.

May 14, 2009

Dead or alive? Yucca Mountain still gets funding
LAS VEGAS (AP) — These days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prefers nothing so much as a one-word description for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository long planned for his state: dead. And President Barack Obama has made clear he is looking elsewhere to solve the nation's nuclear waste problem. But that doesn't mean people aren't still paying for it. Sometimes not even a president with the Senate majority leader at his back can easily kill a project 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. Not quickly or cheaply, anyway.

May 12, 2009

Yucca Mountain 'terminated'
It has already been dumped, but the the long-running Yucca Mountain waste disposal plan has now been officially 'terminated' in the US Department of Energy's (DoE's) 2010 budget request.
Although energy secretary Steven Chu requested $197 million for the USA's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the money is only enough to keep the office ticking over and liaise with regulators who are examining the license application for the project.

March 20th

Obama did not play politics in Yucca Mountain decision

USA TODAY's criticism of President Obama for abandoning the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain project for a nuclear waste repository is based on misconception ("Responsibility? Yucca choice squanders $8B investment," Our view, Nuclear power debate, Tuesday).The editorial stated that politics was the reason the Yucca Mountain project was declared dead.

Politics is the reason that Nevada's Yucca Mountain was chosen in the first place. Nevada had little political clout when the repository site was chosen in 1987. No other state wanted it then, and none wants it now..

The fundamental problem is that the DOE picked a bad site.There was more rainwater in the mountain, which promotes corrosion, than the department expected.

February 27th, 2009

Obama Rejects Nuclear Waste Site After 20-Year Fight,
President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion. Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu “have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period,” said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The federal budget plan Obama released today “clearly reflects that commitment,” she said. “The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today. Obama’s decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for nuclear waste, primarily from power plants, even as utility companies seek to build more reactors.

February 24th, 2009

Utah not for Sale! No Nuclear Waste Imports!

February 19th, 2009

NRC applies million-year standard to Yucca Mountain

The rule makes NRC's regulations for Yucca Mountain consistent with EPA's revised standards. The EPA standards were issued last September. The EPA's revised standards and the NRC's rulemaking were required by a 2004 federal court ruling, which overturned an earlier EPA standard limiting the compliance period to 10,000 years.

January 19th, 2009

Obama set to scrap waste site funding

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that the new president will essentially zero-out funding for Yucca Mountain when he releases the fiscal 2010 budget to Congress after taking office.

January 14th, 2009

Symbolically, a door closes for nuclear dump at Yucca

By Lisa Mascaro

This may speak volumes about the status of the beleaguered Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project: A chain-link fence now blocks the entrance to the tunnel that leads inside.

• Reid Cuts Additional $100 Million From Yucca Mountain Budget
• NRC applies million-year standard to Yucca Mountain
• 9th Circuit refused to block Nevada gold mine plan
• Obama set to scrap waste site funding

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2008/nn12245.htm

Dec 20th, 2008 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Nevada objects -- 229 time

Nevada reached a milestone Friday in its 30-year war to defeat the federal Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project by filing 229 challenges to the Department of Energy's license application for the planned repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Clearly this is a seminal day for us," state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said at the Sawyer Building with Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency Director Bob Loux at her side. The state's petition was filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is expected to take at least four years to review the application and contentions.

Loux declared the project dead.

Some of the contentions Nevada filed Friday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the Department of Energy's license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain are:

The plans for an above-ground facility to age nuclear waste before loading it into a maze of tunnels in the mountain fails to meet required risk standards.

Post-closure plans lack adequate analysis of future wetter climate conditions.

There's is no data to support DOE's assumption that drip shields, if installed a century later, will last long enough to effectively divert corrosive water around waste canisters.

Impacts of sabotage involving transportation of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain are deficient because DOE failed to evaluate "reasonably foreseeable attack scenarios."

The application lacks relevant information about the risk of aircraft crashes near Yucca Mountain.

DOE ignores pertinent information about the risk of volcanic events in and around the mountain that would affect the performance of the geologic repository and its system of engineered barriers.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/36489114.html

Beware the actual appeal is a pdf file, with the 229 reasons to STOP YUCCA MOUNTAIN is 13 MB

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2008/pdf/nv081219nrc.pdf

Dec 10: DOE: Yucca could be bigger still

Dec 05: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Rail proposal opposed

Dec 05: Official: Don't write program's obituary

Demise of Yucca project predicted

Two decades later, how we got here
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Nuclear waste 90 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain.
Story

EPA offers a bit of comfort on cancer risk
Thursday, October 2, 2008
..often lost in the debate over Yucca Mountain is that what we’re really talking about is cancer. Yucca Mountain Editorial: The big king about is cancer.The big pictures ...
Story

EPA issues final Yucca Mountain radiation rules
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas
Story

Next president has power, though not absolute, over waste dump decision
Monday, October 13, 2008
... Yucca Mountain project is a horseshoe-shaped tunnel, near by to Death Valley National Park. From Yucca’s ridge it is also possible to see a major fault line.
Story

A.G. files challenge to Yucca radiation rule
Friday, October 10, 2008
Nevada is filing suit in the U.S. District Court of Appeals seeking to invalidate the radiation rule for a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository issued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said.
Story

Nuclear politics and Nevada
Saturday, October 18, 2008
The power a president holds over Yucca Mountain was demonstrated in February 2002, when President Bush recommended to Congress that the partially built nuclear waste storage project be completed.

Five months later Congress succumbed to his recommendation, despite Bush’s campaign promise to Nevadans that he would hold off on any Yucca decision until the project had been “deemed scientifically safe.”

No such determination has ever been made. There have been, however, many scientific reports concluding that the project — just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — would be very dangerous.

Story

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President Bush officially approved Yucca Mountain as the nations first permanent high-level nuclear waste dump & committed to the shipment of over 50,000 "Mobile Chernobyl's" This does not mean an end to the fight!

Yucca Mountain Alert: The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a call for public comments on Yucca Mountain. Add your voice and demand responsibility and accountability from the U.S. government to protect the environment and honor the human rights of the Western Shoshone Nation. The deadline for public comments is December 12, 2006 Please read our alert and take action!

Potential Rail, Barge and Truck Routes to Yucca Mountain

The State of Nevada's website on Yucca Mountain and other nuclear issues

Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Statement: Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage at Skull Valley

The following is from Yucca Mountain - Sacred Site

For more than two decades, the Shoshone and Paiute peoples, scientists, environmentalists, the federal government, Nevada citizens and politicians have wrestled over the fate of Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy wants to use the mountain as a burial ground for deadly, high-level nuclear waste. Meanwhile, other threats to Western Shoshone land grow as politicians and multinational corporations try to undo laws and treaties in order to extract gold and other precious minerals. But the Western Shoshone stand firm. Raymond Yowell, Chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, says, “Western Shoshone title is still intact…. We’ve never accepted their money and never will—our land, the earth mother is not for sale and we will protect her and continue our responsibilities as caretakers under the Creator’s law.”

Yucca Mountain is located within the Western Shoshone Nation and has long been a place of powerful spiritual energy for the Shoshone and the Paiute. To the Western Shoshone it is Snake Mountain, a place with rock prayer rings that transmit prayers to the Great Spirit and messages back to the people. Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney tells of a traditional story that Snake Mountain will one day be awakened and split open, spewing out poison. This prophecy may predict the potential disaster of volcanic activity and nuclear waste leakage. Shoshone ancestors are buried in the mountain and the water in the area is sacred, as it is with many desert peoples. Also in Nevada are Mt. Tenabo and Horse Canyon, prominent in Shoshone creation stories and sites of burials. Today, the Western Shoshone still have ceremonies and gather medicinal plants at all of these sacred places.

The 60 million acres of Western Shoshone territory in Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and California, which includes Yucca Mountain, was never deeded to the U.S. government. According to the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty that the Shoshone signed with the government, most of the area now used by the U.S. military for nuclear weapons testing, the proposed waste storage site, and the area being mined was explicitly recognized as Shoshone land. However, the U.S. government now claims 80-90% of it, meaning that the Shoshone are unable to control what happens on their ancestral land. They have never received royalties for the extraction of natural resources and have to pay the government to graze their cattle on their own treaty lands. Meanwhile, legislators continue to try to persuade the Shoshone to accept financial compensation for their land, which most view as a way to extinguish aboriginal title and preclude future land claims. The lands at issue comprise the second largest gold-producing area in the world, are cited as the next “Saudi Arabia” of geothermal energy production, and are slated for renewed nuclear weapons testing and waste storage.

In the late 1970s government scientists began to study Yucca Mountain as a possible repository for nuclear waste, and since 1987 it has been the only site considered for 77,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. 98% of all the radioactive waste generated by U.S. nuclear reactors may soon be headed for the mountain. There is already more nuclear waste than the repository can hold, unless the 77,000 ton limit is raised. Though the facility will not open until 2010 at the earliest, reactor waste now sitting in pools of water around the country will fill Yucca Mountain’s tunnels and leave room for less than one third of the government’s nuclear defense waste, leaving 15,000 canisters of radioactive waste (7,500 metric tons) with no place to go. Commercial nuclear power plants produce 2,000 tons of high level waste per year, and by the time Yucca Mountain is full in 2035, there will be 42,000 tons of newly generated civilian waste at reactors around the country. The Yucca Mountain repository promises to be much bigger than advertised. The estimated cost of construction and maintenance of the facility for the first 100 years of operation is $58 billion. The waste is lethal for 10,000 years and dangerous for 250,000 years.

For years, there has been continuous wrangling over legislation to authorize site approval and waste transport to Yucca Mountain, and Congressional votes have been very close. In February 2002, the Bush Administration formally recommended construction of the waste dump. As is permitted in the federal law governing the location of America’s nuclear waste repository, Nevada’s governor vetoed the Bush recommendation, but was overridden by the House of Representatives (306-117) and Senate (60-39). President Bush signed the bill making Yucca Mountain the nation’s central repository for nuclear waste on July 23, 2002. Nevada’s Republican Governor Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval have sued Bush and the federal government to block the nuclear dump plan. So far, strong opposition by politicians and citizens has delayed implementation and the projected start date for the waste repository is uncertain.
Threat

Current Department of Energy plans call for the highly radioactive nuclear waste to be encased in steel containers and buried deep in the mountain. Since the canisters will last for 1,000 years at most, the dryness of the mountain will have to guarantee against leakage and migration — an idea that environmentalists and many scientists say is a flawed and dangerous assumption. Surface water percolates into the mountain, and will carry radioactive particles into the water table and render it toxic. This water table currently supplies water to local communities and farming regions which produce milk and other food products for the entire country. In March 2005, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman confirmed the existence of internal e-mails that refer to falsified data on how quickly water flows through the Yucca Mountain. Robert Hager, attorney for the Western Shoshone, argues that the Yucca site would have been disqualified years ago if the true nature of the subterranean water flow was known. With several local fault lines and a volcano nearby, earthquakes make it likely that the mountain will fracture the repository and send even more water to the waste. There are also grave concerns about the safety of transporting nuclear waste over long distances through several U.S. states, particularly in an era of terrorist threats. The Shoshone, who have been exposed to many years of nuclear weapons testing, suffer from high rates of cancer, leukemia, and other diseases — revealing the community health risk that comes from exposure to radiation.

Beyond all the safety issues lies the fact that the Shoshone should be able to determine what goes on at the mountain due to treaty rights and their historical and spiritual ties to the area. Government work has already disturbed burial remains and denied Native Americans access to the rock prayer rings. The Yucca Mountain controversy is rarely acknowledged as one that, at its heart, is about native sovereignty and the need to care for the land in a way that is spiritually responsible and environmentally sound. Even if the dump at Yucca Mountain is defeated, Shoshone and other native peoples’ homelands are constantly being considered for storing dangerous toxic waste.

Opponents of the nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain worry that with George W. Bush’s approval of the site on the recommendation of former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, an outspoken supporter of the plan, there will be increased support for nuclear power and increased pressure to approve and build the dump, since the DOE is more than a decade behind schedule in terms of receiving and storing waste from power plants. Already, there are over 40,000 metric tons of nuclear waste stored in pools or casks in 39 states. The Associated Press recently published a “Where is the waste now?” map. In July 2003, the House appropriations committee proposed increasing the budget for the Yucca Mountain Project by 67%, an enormous spending increase that suggests a renewed enthusiasm for nuclear energy. However, in November 2005, the Senate and House revealed a possible new direction in energy policy: led by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), they voted to cut $200 million from the budget for the Yucca Mountain project, and instead appropriated $130 million of the funds for research on technologies that would reprocess nuclear waste. Reprocessing would recycle used plutonium into fresh fuel and reduce, but not eliminate, the amount of waste. Several scientific studies have called this option expensive and dangerous, due to the increased chance of proliferating materials that could be used in nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must still assess the Department of Energy’s design and license application and decide whether to license the waste repository and approve transporting 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Citizens in other states are finally beginning to understand that Yucca Mountain could be a very bad idea for the entire country, and are leery of having the waste shipped through their communities on rails and highways. Many believe that the process has essentially been rigged from the start, and that the decision was ultimately made not based on sound science but on who was the weakest guy in the room: Nevada has only four electoral votes. Some observers also say that the siting of the nuclear waste repository is an example of environmental racism, and that Native Americans and other peoples of color have been subjected to a disproportionately large number of health and environmental risks in their communities. The Western Shoshone National Council continues to fight the project, filing a lawsuit in March 2005 in Las Vegas federal district court, which claims that the Yucca Mountain Development Act is unconstitutional and that the federal government does not own the land.

Current Status- 2008 (throught August 2008)

Aug 14: Nevada gets more time to file Yucca challenges

WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday granted Nevada 30 additional days to file license challenges to the Yucca Mountain repository, short of the extra time the state requested for its preparations. Attorneys for the state in April asked the nuclear safety commissioners to allow 180 days for participants in license hearings to file "contentions" that challenge aspects of the nuclear waste plan. NRC rules currently allow 30 days. the four-member commission said 180 days was too long to alter longstanding rules. But they agreed to allow an additional 30 days as a "modest extension of time." On top of the 30 days already allowed, this means the state and other participants in Yucca licensing would have 60 days to file contentions. The clock starts ticking after the NRC decides whether it will docket and hold hearings on a Yucca Mountain repository application. If the agency decides to move forward, the 60 day period starts when it files a formal notice of hearing. The agency is expected to announce a docketing decision early next month

Nuke waste for dummies

DOE report details threats to site

State of Nevada – Ruling Application for Permanent Water Rights for the Yucca Mountain Project - (pdf) Denied