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Nye County official sees no alternative to Yucca Mountain
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STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- After two years of scrutiny, a high-level study of nuclear waste has not come up with anything that would work any better than storing the material at Yucca Mountain, Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis said Thursday.
Hollis said at a public hearing that the panel that was established to devise alternatives to the canceled Yucca project found "nothing new."
"It doesn't matter how one views the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission, or how the recommendations are packaged; no better solution has been found, and there is no silver bullet," Hollis said at the meeting, where the public could comment on the panel's draft findings.
"The publication of your draft report confirmed what we had expected," Hollis said.
"Nothing new has been found that would warrant abandoning a workable policy" that the Yucca project represented.
Some residents of rural Nevada are lamenting the passing of the Yucca program. They hoped the proposed $96.2 billion repository would become a cornerstone of their economy, but the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is all but abandoned since it was terminated by the Obama administration.
The Yucca project is unpopular with most Nevadans.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was directed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu not to evaluate the Yucca Mountain Project or to second-guess the administration's decision to end it.
Among the findings, the panel in a 192-page draft report this summer said the United States still needs to dispose of used nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive materials in deep underground vaults.
But it recommends that states, tribes and local governments play a larger role in repository siting, including powers to turn one down.
In Nevada, top leaders argue the state unfairly was singled out for nuclear waste, which fueled a 25-year battle with the federal government, a battle the state ultimately won.
Hollis said the commission should at least have recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission complete its licensing evaluation of the Yucca site. That process was suspended on Sept. 30.
"After 30 years of study and over $15 billion spent, it makes sense to have this information available to compare a thoroughly studied real site, like Yucca Mountain, against an unknown new site," Hollis said.
Darrell Lacy, director of Nye County's nuclear waste project office, said finding and developing a new waste site "will take a minimum 20 to 30 years."
Lacy asked: "Is it fair to our kids and grandkids to kick this can down the street one more time?"
Abby Johnson, the nuclear waste adviser for Eureka County, told the commission that it fell short in studying nuclear waste transportation, a key public confidence issue.
"Transportation is unusually vulnerable," she said. "One accident can undermine a perfect transportation record and the public's confidence in the safety of the entire system."
Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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nuclear waste is a lie!!!!!!!!!!
nuclear waste is a myth
beentheredonethat, it seems that not only are you suffering from extreme paranoia, but you insist on comparing nuclear disasters with the potential danger of the transportation of nuclear waste. If all these nuclear agencies have lied then how can you find so much information about these "nuclear disasters"? All I'm saying is that the potential benefit of Yucca Mountain to all the people who live in Nevada significantly outweighs the potential dangers.
And you are living in a fantasy world. From the time the first atom was split, the lies coming from those associated with nuclear power have never ceased. Whether it was lies about the effects of radiation on humans, or lies about the safety of nuclear plants, or lies about the safety of the American public, the nuclear agencies responsible for ensuring safety have repeatedly lied to the American public. There never has been, and there probably will never be a time, when our government will tell the people the truth about the dangers of nuclear power; why would they? They, and their corporate masters have decided that there is money to be made, and all else falls by the wayside. The nuclear disasters, and near disasters in the world, and in this country, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukishima, Chalk River, Santa Susana, Waltz Mill, Charles Town, Buenos Aires, the list goes on and on. And in NONE of these cases was the agency responsible for "safety" honest" or transparent with the publics that they were responsible to. Narrowing the list to ONLY those in the United States, does no damage to this fact. These "disasters" and near disasters are characterized by "well-attested and substantial health damage, property damage or contamination.", "damage must be related directly to radioactive material,""civilian" "event should involve fissile material or a reactor." Lies, d@mn lies, and the liars that tell them, is a story of nuclear power.
<> You are living in a very scary world, but it is not the real world. All nuclear nations move spent fuel and high-level waste, using trucks, trains and ships, they all follow, as we do, the International Atomic Energy Agency rules regarding that sort of transportation, and there has been nary a peep about accidents causing serious radioactive consequences that harmed the public because there haven't been any. Acidents? Sure. Even fatal ones. But accidents made very bad because radioactive releases injured a bystander or victim? No. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences published a study that looked at the data, worldwide and especially in the US, and found the movement of radioactive materials to be from ten-thousand to a hundred-thousand times less risky (meaning less likely to kill people) than the transport of toxic chemicals that move on our rails and roads continually. The one US repository that already functions, in New Mexico, just celebrated its 10,000th shipment, logging over 12 million loaded miles, without any radiological incident! That is unexpectedly safe!!! That repository deals with defense wastes from Cold War weapons production and research programs, and even its waste acceptance, transportation and emplacement records are largely open to the public, the civilian wastes from power reactors are even more open to public scutiny. Security concerns require specifics to be kept from the public without a need to know, in both categories, but the safety of transportation that has already been completed is there for all to see. Relax, not everyone in the government is a liar, that is not a requirement for federal employment. To the contrary. Lying to the public for the purpose of making the government look good where it does not deserve to look good is a punishable offense. All feds take an oath to defend the Constitution. You can't do that and at the same time lie to the very people the Constitution empowers!
rdisman: Nothing I said is unsubstantiated and if you want to point something out, be my guest. Never said that there hasn't been transportation of waste in the past, and researching the "issue" of whether anyone has ever been "harmed" by that transport is nearly as useless as trying to find information out about what happens in Area 51; just cause they don't tell you about it doesn't mean nothing is happening. You realize that right? I mean, an educated person such as yourself clearly understands the nature of nuclear power in this country better than most, and obviously that would mean that you know that the NRC, AEC, and all other nuclear related entities have repeatedly lied about the consequences and hazards of nuclear power since the first atom was split. Do you honestly except anyone, with any sense, to believe that "now" these entities are going to be telling the truth about the deaths and injuries sustained by people who have been exposed to nuclear power plant waste? Based on what? I'm assuming, that such an educated person, like yourself, has seriously doubts about ALL government activities and the transparency that comes along with that; why might it be, that with regard to this SINGLE issue, some, like yourself, seem so willing to ignore the fact that this government has lied about nearly any activity that it has undertaken, which may in any way, be considered harmful? I say, either stop lying to me, about what you believe/know, or stop lying to yourself about why you're willing to believe what you do in regard to nuclear waste; it makes you look naive or worse.
What is it about WE DON'T WANT IT HERE that you don't understand? Nye County??? Isn't that where they allow whore houses?
Well all I can say beentheredonethat is there have been a lot of people killed and crippled as a result of car accidents and there has been no one hurt as a result of accidents from transporting and storing nuclear waste. To compare what happened in Japan with the destruction that resulted to their nuclear reactors from a tsunami to the potential damage that can occur with transporting and storing nuclear waste is like comparing apples with oranges. My recommendation would be to do a little research and listen to the people that have been involved with the transportation and storage of spent nuclear fuel like JAB0566 before you state your unsubstantiated opinions like they were facts. If you truely believe there has been no transportation and storage of nuclear waste in the past then you really need to do some more research. Better yet, see if you can find anyone that has ever been harmed by this activity.
People are funny. You hear people try to compare the outcome of a traffic accident to the outcome of a release of plutonium as if they would be equal. They come here, and tell people that "heck, there's more of a chance that you'll die in an auto accident than there is that plutonium will be released in some transportation accident" as if that is the issue. Ask them when the last time an auto accident required that 40 square miles of land be completely evacuated, as it has in Japan, and as it will be in Japan for the next hundred plus years. Ask them the last time an auto accident left victims in the surrounding country side fearful of eating the food that was produced there, or breathing the air, or taking their children to school, for the next several hundred years. Ah, they'd probably say "don't worry about it, the public was never in any danger at any time" cause, don't you know, that's what they ALWAYS say in the event of the release of plutonium and cessium into the air and water.
I've been in the commercial nuclear power plant business for 37 years. We've been moving spent fuel around the country since back in the 1970's. The older plants would fill up their fuel pools and we'd take that fuel and transport it via train or truck to the newer plants that had more room. It was all done safely and discretely. We didn't advertise it but local and state officials were notified and proper precautions taken. Google spent fuel transportation cask and you'll see how we did it. The reason that you never heard of it is because we did not have any problems. Transportation or spent fuel and/or nuclear waste is not a new technology. We've been doing it for years.