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Republicans point to cost of nuclear waste
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 9:34 a.m.
Cheaper is better when it comes to shouldering taxpayers with the burden of dealing with the nuclear power industry's mounting piles of highly radioactive waste.
That's the view along party lines when Congress tackles the issue in pending legislation and in a request to the Government Accountability Office.
The difference is how to go about making the task cheaper and whether disposing 77,000 tons of it in Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is still an option despite the Obama administration's stance to the contrary.
"The one thing they agree on is the taxpayers are getting ripped off," said David Cherry, a spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
He was reacting Tuesday to an Oct. 1 request from Yucca Mountain backers Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Barton and Walden say abandoning the Yucca Mountain Project will cost taxpayers to store used reactor fuel temporarily, fight lawsuits from the nuclear power industry and study another disposal site.
They want the GAO to examine what weighed into the Obama administration's decision to deem Yucca Mountain not an option and the taxpayers' liabilities that lie ahead.
"Given that Yucca Mountain's price tag has swollen to $100 billion, it is laughable that House Republicans are still clinging to this pile of radioactive pork," a statement by Cherry reads.
From Berkley's perspective, Cherry said, "It will cost us far more money to dump nuclear waste in Nevada than to pay every one of these liability claims."
Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Director Bruce Breslow said any financial solution will require the government to take ownership and or liability for the waste.
"It doesn't appear the private sector can afford it," he said by telephone Tuesday.
In July, Barton and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., introduced a bill that would authorize the Energy Department's nuclear waste fund to establish contracts with a company to recycle spent fuel from power reactors. The measure has not been scheduled for action by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"Emissions-free nuclear energy means economic growth, jobs and affordable electricity for working families," Barton said in a statement touting the bill as step toward reducing the volume of waste that would be destined for a Yucca Mountain repository.
Upton added, "We must restore some sanity to our nation's nuclear policy, especially in light of the administration's foolish diversion from Yucca Mountain."
Cherry said there is "plenty of time to find a real solution to the waste issue" given that it can be stored in dry casks at reactor sites for a century.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu is expected to appoint a commission to examine solutions without Yucca Mountain.
Cherry said the path the nation will take on nuclear waste will be charted in provisions of a climate bill that will take shape in the next few months.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
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I'm on record when it comes to (1) my support for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain and (2) my contempt for Rep. Berkley the other members of what is laughably called our "congressional delegation." Regardless of what happens politically, the Yucca Mountain Project will probably win (or would have won) its technical and regulatory licensing case now under review by the NRC. Thus, wasting breath on arguments with the anti-Yucca crowd is like trying to debate a turnip: Two different species here, rational and "myth-based."
That said, the anti-nuke crowd in general will soon find their uncritical enthusiasm for "alternative energy" severely tested when it comes time to actually build and operate their fantasy-land of solar panels and wind turbines.
Check out, for example, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu's testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee a couple of months ago. During this testimony, Senator Feinstein of CA gave Chu a severe scolding -- not for reaffirming his support for nuclear power, but rather for DOE's sponsorship of SOLAR projects in the CA desert.
It seems that Sen. Feinstein, aside from being skeptical about nuclear power, is all for renewable energy -- that is, except when someone proposes to build a solar facility in her backyard.
Shocked by the seldom-mention reality that solar (and wind) power require huge areas of land to produce even a fraction of the electricity generated by a "conventional" nuclear or coal plant, Sen. Feinstein pretty much threatened to halt the solar projects DOE is sponsoring in CA.
"Sixty square miles!" she kept on saying. "Sixty square miles!" And that was only for half of the proposed solar facilities in the area. What did she think? That solar and wind have the relatively small footprint of a nuclear or coal-fired plant?
Welcome to reality, alternative energy fans.
hey simply put do u want to gamble w/the fate of las vegas should anything go wrong at yucca mountain. great all those people mad a living out there.but nuke waste rite here.get real.its too big of a chance.hopefully it'll never happen.
More evidence of our coming demise.
I'll get more radiation on cross-country flights than from Yucca.