Earlier this year President Obama canceled
the federal government's plans to store high-level radioactive waste
from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities at the controversial
Yucca Mountain site in Nevada -- but now there are concerns that South
Carolina could become a permanent dumping ground for the dangerous
waste.
The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3 billion energy spending bill that backs up President Barack Obama's promise to close a nuclear waste facility in the southwestern state of Nevada.
The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers hundreds of water projects being undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Yucca Mountain project 90 miles (145 kilometres) from Las Vegas was designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste, but has been strongly opposed by the Nevada delegation, which had been outgunned in its efforts to kill it.
An Eagle-based company wants to build a 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plant in Elmore County.
The U.S. Congress is considering a bill that proposes the nation build 100 new nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years.
Idaho Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson has embraced nuclear power, and like others, promotes it as cheap and clean. They argue also that nuclear energy emits no greenhouse gases. But it is unclear which part of the nuclear energy cycle they're referring to. Nuclear power is neither cheap nor clean.
In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The
Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new
light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.
The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new
French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of
Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph
for the "Peaceful Atom". But they come simultaneous with Republican
demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.
How do you get people to vote for radioactive waste to be dumped in Texas in close proximity to the Ogallala and Dockum aquifers? And how do you also get the same community to agree to bankroll the project's $75 million buildout costs? You sell it as a prosperity issue.
A private company was being paid $300 million by the federal government to clean up radioactive waste at two abandoned Cold War plants in Tennessee when an ironworker crashed through a rotted floor. That prompted a major safety review, which ended up forcing work to an abrupt halt, and the project was shut down for months. The delay and a host of other problems caused cost estimates to rise, eventually hitting $781 million.
BRATTLEBORO - It wasn't just invectives that flew from mouths of the anti-nuclear activists at Thursday's Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting in Brattleboro.
One activist also threw compost at Vermont Yankee's site vice president Michael Colomb.
"You folks have no idea what to do with spent fuel or radioactive waste," said Sally Shaw, of Gill, Mass.
Carrying a bag to the front of the conference room, she threw a handful of "spent food" at Colomb and other Entergy executives before depositing handfuls of compost on a table where NRC officials sat.
WASHINGTON - Thirty years after the accident at Three Mile Island shattered Americans' trust in nuclear power, lawmakers are touting a nuclear rebirth as a safe, green way to wean the United States off foreign oil.
"We have the enormously powerful opportunity for a nuclear renaissance in our country. We need to pursue that aggressively and effectively to meet all of our energy and environmental goals," Senator David Vitter told a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on clean air and nuclear safety this week.
WASHINGTON - Ever since President Barack Obama promised to significantly scale back the Yucca Mountain budget this year, the question has been a simple one: Now what?
Sometimes the question comes as a genuine line of inquiry about the future of nuclear waste. At other times it is loaded with incredulity.
Either way, Obama's proposal has caused a phenomenal shift in thinking that would have seemed unbelievable just a few months ago.
