Opinion:

Yucca Mountain: The Counting Has Begun As Congress Slowly Turns

The Concept Of Recycling All That Nuclear Waste Into Useable Fuel

by Johnny Gunn

One by one it seems many in Congress are seeing the reality known as the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository for what it is; a disaster. Many such as Utah Senator Robert Bennett (D) have been saying for some time that the answer isn't to transport thousands of tons of the most dangerous radioactive waste across the country and bury it under a Nevada mountain. Bennett called for the change in an impassioned speech before his peers saying keep the spent nuclear fuel at the power plants and begin the process of recycling.

He used as an example the fact we have been working to recycle the military nuclear product recovered from Soviet Union warheads. If we can do it for military grade nuclear debris we can do it for power plant waste was what he promoted.

Bennett has picked up some help recently. Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (D) is calling for recycling, and on November 8 U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the top ranked democrat in the senate, has decided to join the battle as well. Reid has been opposed to Yucca Mountain virtually from the first, but it's believed that this is the first time he has come out in favor recycling the waste.

The change came about from pure politics, but it is a positive change. Reid announced that he will drop his opposition to a provision that would create a new wilderness area near the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah. The wilderness designation could potentially prevent the opening of a nuclear waste storage facility on the reservation, something Utah's elected leaders have fiercely opposed.

The Senator said that after a recent conversation with Utah's Senator Bennett he agreed to set aside his concerns in order to help the efforts of Bennett and other state officials to prevent the nuclear site from opening. "While I continue to have concerns about the Cedar Mountain wilderness proposal, of even greater concern is the threat posed by deadly nuclear waste." Reid believes the Nevada plans at Yucca Mountain "continue to be delayed indefinitely, putting that project in jeopardy."

Reid believes in "a more realistic approach to solving the nation's nuclear waste storage problems by leaving the waste at the sites where it is generated." Reid has hinted that legislation to that effect could be introduced soon.

Bennett and Reid along with many other members of congress may be getting some help from an unexpected source. Edward Sproat has been picked by President George W. Bush to oversee the Yucca project as head of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. During his confirmation hearings in Washington Sproat voiced a desire to see more recycling of spent fuel waste.

Sproat said he believed the original intent of the nuclear industry and its regulators was to recycle the waste. He believed that was the primary prospect back in the 1960s. He said he believes recycling makes perfectly good sense.

While the budget for Yucca Mountain has been reduced by congressional action at least $50 million has been set aside for continued study of recycling. When one looks at the alternative, that is more waste being developed every year than Yucca can hold, never mind what's on the ground is already more than the repository is designed to hold, all being transported through mega-population centers just to sit on the ground and possibly contaminate future generations, recycling is the only answer.

The Department of Energy has continued to postpone attempts at licensing; there is no date on the books for the process to begin. DOE has attempted to change the rules for storage of nuclear waste more than once. DOE has changed transportation plans from railroad to truck, back to railroad, and now railroad and truck.

When all else fails in their grasping for an argument over storage, DOE usually plays the terrorist card saying having high level nuclear waste stored all over the country is too dangerous. Terrorists might steal some bomb grade material. Hundreds of trains and trucks moving the high level waste isn't dangerous?

If recycling is good enough for weapons grade nuclear material it certainly should be good enough for the high level waste coming from energy plants. More plants are coming on line all the time, more plants are being designed regularly, and if there is a fuel source such as recycled nuclear waste available, it looks like more than one question has been answered.

The Nuclear Energy industry forced this horrible concept on the American public because if taxpayers could pay for transportation and storage of the waste, so much the better. DOE and the NRC must start working with each other for betterment of nuclear energy, not force its will on a population that simply doesn't want Yucca Mountain. It's bad science, it was a bad idea then, it's a bad idea today.

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