Yucca Mountain 'No Longer an Option' for Wastes

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on Thursday that the proposed nuclear waste repository to be built at the underground Yucca mountain complex would not be completed, and that the project for the location would be dropped. He added that the new White House Administration was seeking at the moment a drastically-new approach to the matter, and said that the 22 years which took for the project to be built to this point, as well as the $13.5 billion bill attached to the work, were unacceptable.

The official also believes that the over 60,000 tons of nuclear residues can be left at their respective power plants until a new, comprehensive way of storing them is devised. Still, it took nearly 22 years for authorities to excavate the Yucca complex inside the long volcanic ridge, which is located just 90 miles Northwest of Los Angeles. The new administration considers that the site is not suited for its designated purpose, but a construction and operating license remains submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

This new approach to doing things is very different from that adopted by the Republicans. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., President Obama's former presidential opponent, told in a previous hearing that not allowing the project to go through would seriously threaten the country's ability to expand its nuclear power capabilities, on account of the fact that it would offer no federal guarantees to power plants that their wastes would be handled. This would mean that every facility would have to stop growing as soon as its maximum waste storing capacity was reached.

Chu and McCain exchanged lines at the Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, where the senator asked the Nobel-winning physicist if the new stance on the White House proved Obama's lack of trust in nuclear energy. The Energy Secretary responded that that was not the case, and that short-term storage solutions were at hand, while a new way of dealing with residues in the long run was being devised.

At this point, in the US, nuclear residue amounts increase by 2,000 tons each year. They are currently being held at the location of the nuclear reactors, in polls or in concrete reservoirs, above the ground. In 1987, the Congress had it that only the Yucca site should be considered for an underground repository, thus no other options were investigated. There are more than 104 nuclear sites in the US, and the federal government is required by a 1982 law to take the residues produced by all of them and store them in a single facility.