A Lesson in Relative Risk wrote on November 13, 2009 12:35 PM: Okay all of you anti-nuke environmentalist Yucca haters, I’m going to say it again:

What Harry Reid endlessly refers to as “the deadliest substance on earth,” i.e., plutonium, is indeed deadly. But is it in fact “the deadliest”? How does one quantify it?

The environmentalist fringe is fond of telling us that the current inventory of plutonium, if distributed equally and ingested, is capable of killing 10 billion people. Wow. That sounds deadly indeed. One would think that the amount of plutonium originally destined for Yucca Mountain would be more than enough to kill the entire population of Las Vegas, if not the state of Nevada.

But wait a sec: If official stats are to be believed, we produce enough chlorine gas to kill 400 TRILLION people. We produce enough phosgene to kill 20 TRILLION people. We produce enough barium to kill 100 BILLION people (ten times more than plutonium could kill).

Hey, but isn’t barium widely used in medical procedures?

Anyhow, at least we’re not exposed to chemicals such as phosgene, and the stuff it’s used to make, like methyl isocyanate.

Oh, but wait: Wasn’t it methyl isocyanate that leaked out of a plant in Bhopal, killing 6,000 people in 48 hours? Don’t some estimates say the eventual death toll was 20,000, with an estimated 250,000 suffering adverse health consequences?

Good thing they don’t make that stuff here in good ol’ Home Town USA.

What? We produce about 4 million kilograms of methyl isocyanate in the U.S. every year? About 2 million tons of phosgene worldwide every year?

Nah, that couldn’t be, or else the same environmentalists who try to scare us about Yucca Mountain would be warning us about the risk of chemical plants right in our own backyard. (Where’s your NIMBY now?)

Skeptical Nevadan wrote on November 12, 2009 02:05 PM: Here's something to think about:

Roughly a million Nevadans are potentially dooming the rest of the nation to environmental catastrophe.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, if no permanent solution to the nuclear waste problem is found, and if Harry Reid gets his way and we simply "punt" the problem on to future generations and rely on the status quo, the U.S. could face an environmental disaster of unprecedented scale by the next century.

Consider this: The current on-site storage scenario that Reid endlessly touts as "safe" is only designed to store spent nuclear fuel for 60 years beyond the life of the reactor. After that period (after 100 years), the uncertainty over whether the storage casks can isolate radioactive waste from the environment skyrockets.

Also consider this: At present, approximately 160 million Americans live within about 50 miles of a facility that includes spent nuclear fuel storage.

If we fail to find a permanent solution, if we "punt" and let the status quo remain in force, and if (God forbid) there is some catastrophic breakdown of our social institutions that prevents us from maintaining the integrity of our nuclear waste storage facilities in the next century, then the eventual failure of the current storage scheme could poison massive areas of our country irrevocably.

(And bear in mind that nuclear facilities are near every major waterway in the nation.)

None of this is my opinion; it is the conclusion of credible scientific studies.

Contrast that with Yucca Mountain, which would store most of our spent nuclear fuel 1,000 feet underground by about 2070, in the middle of what will probably continue to be a sparsely populated area ALREADY CONTAMINATED with radionuclides (the Nevada Test Site).

So, yes, scuttling Yucca Mountain sounds short-sighted and selfish to me, but that's Nevada in a nutshell, isn't it?

bcrocky wrote on November 11, 2009 08:13 AM: Its a money thing. These lawyers don't want this to end. If Nevada had the money back it spent on fighting this we would be in great shape financialy.

Gary Watkins wrote on November 11, 2009 07:10 AM: What is the deal with this anyway. I personally know (one) of the lead geoligists on the Yucca mountain project. He did all of the modeling for the project and by using Yucca mountain, the southern Nevada area will never be in danger of radiation poisoning. The plates are situated so that the drain of any leaks in the system would drain the opposite way.
So, we come to the decision - who benefits by shutting this down - a bunch of corrupt politicians who continue to get elected and money hunger lawyers who have built vast wealth off of this issue: Not Nevada citizens. In an economy that has significantly downturned (in southern Nevada) lets bring back jobs to its citizens instead of turning our back on ourselves. It is time to stop the corruption and think about people and jobs and the MAJORITY who will benefit instead of the minority(politicians and lawyers) that just keep piling up their personal wealth.

ted wrote on November 11, 2009 05:36 AM: The only "clean" energy we have is the nuclear plants. Obama, Harry Reid, and Pelosi have to make sure they kill Yucca so there are no storage facilitise in USA to try and pass their job killing heavily taxed cap and trade bill. The rumor is Harry Reid will get 4 honest votes, has Reid pushed to refund ACORN yet? Any bets on when Reid will pull his backroom deals to refund ACORN, so he can get the fraudulent votes?