Emily Page wrote on July 02, 2008 11:49 AM: Why would anyone with a (pea) brain vote for McCain that talks constantly about the need of a nuclear plant in every state? We cannot even store the used rods without a single assurance of the safety of it !! Craziness in this congress and administration...We need to clean every house in Washington, DC. Just waiting for November....

Brilliant wrote on June 19, 2008 08:40 AM: Roger, another well-reasoned, insightful post. Thanks so much.

Roger wrote on June 18, 2008 09:50 AM: More $ down the toilet for a project that will never happen...

Skeptical Nevadan wrote on June 18, 2008 08:39 AM: Maybe it's a good time to paraphrase Mark Twain: Reports of the repository's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Our state officials have been crowing about it non-stop since the license application was submitted, as they do every time there is a newsworthy event concerning the Yucca Mountain Project.

It will be interesting to see what our esteemed Senator Reid will be able to finagle once the spending bill gets to the Senate.

On the subject of reprocessing, Europe and Japan are actually struggling with it at this point. Remember that reprocessing still produces waste that must be disposed of, and the difference in terms of waste quantity is not as dramatic as some people would like to believe.

Also, the process can be expensive, even resulting in fuel that costs more to reprocess and handle than producing conventional fuel. And then there's the potential problem (probably over-hyped) of terrorism. Waste from conventional fuel is lethal and thus difficult to handle, whereas the byproduct of reprocessed fuel (separated plutonium) would be far easier to handle -- and therefore the potential for theft is greater, meaning that terrorists could potentially get their hands on some plutonium for use in a weapon.

All Europe and Japan have managed to do with reprocessing is defer the waste storage problem: they still have to store the spent reprocessed fuel indefinitely at the reprocessing plant, and it still contains about 70% of the original plutonium.

Not so sure I'd want a hostile nation equipped with the technology to extract that plutonium at some point to make a bomb....

ths wrote on June 18, 2008 07:50 AM: We need to look at our allies in Europe and see how they are now recycling the waste back into new fuel rods for another round of use.

We should be spending money in this field instead of doing what we as Americans are so good at doing, throw away and forget about it or collect like rat packs.