Yucca Mountain Repository (Closed)

USA / Nevada / Beatty /
 abandoned / shut down, nuclear waste storage
Yucca Mountain Repository was the proposed United States Department of Energy deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other radioactive waste. The repository is located in a desert on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 miles from the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The repository lies within Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The ridge is composed of volcanic material (mostly tuff) ejected from a now extinct caldera-forming supervolcano.


www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/index.shtml

In February of 2009, the White House eliminated funding for
the Yucca Mountain project from the budget and directed the Department
of Energy (DOE) to withdraw its application to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission for a license to build the repository.
The Yucca Mountain site is now effectively closed. In May
2010, DOE ordered the Yucca Mountain project’s main contractors
to stop all work, with the exception of preserving records.
Then, on October 1, 2010, the Office of Civilian Radioactive
Waste Management—the organization within DOE responsible
for the Yucca Mountain program—was formally disbanded, with
responsibility for waste disposal activities transferred to DOE’s
Office of Nuclear Energy.

www.yuccamountain.org/docs/sumer_2011_newsletter.pdf
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   36°51'9"N   116°25'36"W

Comments

  • ...leaving all nuclear waste scattered around the country in the back lots of power plants. Once Obama is gone in the 2012 election, we can restore some sanity and again open Yucca for a safe place to dispose of the waste sitting in our backyards unsecured
  • So shipping highly radioactive waste through cities, towns and communities is safer? This "unsecured" waste was created by industry with no long term plan for disposal. Now they want to shift the costs and problems of dealing with the waste onto the public. Capitalism, ain't it great?
  • They ship this stuff every day... You do not know about it!
  • Yucca Mountain was closed for one reason only: Harry Reid is a giant NIMBY who has never liked that his barren wasteland of a state is a good place to store nuclear waste. He doesn't like nuclear energy at all. He was ignored during the Clinton administration but Obama hates nuclear power too, so his objections were suddenly treated as noble instead of bitter and petty (which they actually were).
This article was last modified 5 years ago