Harry "Pinky" Reid says Yucca Mountain will not open.
Other recent comment (DAGS).
"DOE: Cost Estimate Soars for Yucca Mountain Project
08/06/2008 By Pam Hunter and Tom Ichniowski The cost of the proposed nuclear waste repository beneath Nevada?s Yucca Mountain has risen sharply. The Dept. of Energy reported on Aug.
5 the project?s estimated 150-year life-cycle cost is $96.2 billion, up 67% from 2001?s $57.5-billion. DOE says the hike includes $16 billion for inflation and a 26% rise in the amount of spent fuel to be disposed. Construction, operation and decommissioning comprise $54.8 billion of the new figure."
... Oh, it _will_ open, the question is just how much longer Harry can keep dragging it out. There simply isn't a viable alternative any longer and it is inevitable imo there will begin to be brownouts before we final get past the quagmire which is (also imo) only going to deepen w/ the next adminstration which will focus on the utopian dreams which will turn out to be unrealizable in time if ever. At that point, public opinion will change dramatically and Harry won't matter any longer.
Re: pictures, etc., ... did quite a bit of work there years ago thru consulting firm was working for at the time. Always hated it when was short enough of other work that ever had to work on DOE-sponsored stuff instead of commercial, but in Oak Ridge one always had to hold one's nose and do what needed doing on occasion to stay in groceries. :(
That's not a plan, its a disaster just waiting to happen. It just plain stupid and anyone with half a brain would recognize that. What you have just said is that you don't have a valid alternative for disposal so you just ignore the problem in the hope that some way will eventually be found BEFORE a disaster occurs.
We already have more nuclear waste waiting to be disposed of that can be put into the Yucca Mountain site if it were opened tomorrow and it is not ready to be opened. Political or Technical, it is a problem that must be addressed before it becomes a disaster not after.
Obama has made it clear in the past that he does not favor nuclear power and Reid will not have any problem getting his support to continue to stonewall.
You should have put it slightly differently. Their concept is that YOU DO WITHOUT just like Gore wanted everyone (But Him) to do without while he continued to burn more energy that any 50 other people in the country. They never want to look in the mirror at their own consumption but are quick to ask YOU to sacrifice.
Until the lights go out...then sentiment will change overnight.
And, unless something is done sizably w/ conventional generation of one sort or the other, it's inevitable assuming he's not so adamant the he does actually drive the boat into a complete economic collapse.
It's simply not possible w/ any short term alternative technology on the present horizon.
And, don't forget, there are 28+ new units already filed on the NRC licensing docket. There will be some delay owing to the current slowdown undoubtedly that will allow for some additional deferral of demand, but as those new units approach operation and time continues w/ operating units, the spent fuel pools _will_ have to be emptied or the current units will have to shut down with nothing to replace them.
And, of course, also as noted upthread don't forget that if the big-O and his minions are really serious about C-sequestration, there simply is no large-scale alternative w/ the necessary reliability factor. Solar and wind are simply too intermittent for more than the 20% sort of contribution unless he can figure out how to pull a Joshua on the solar and harness the hot air from DC for the wind. Otherwise, afaik, the one sets every night still and will probably continue to do so and the other is sporadic even in the windiest of areas, also somewhat inconveniently at typical minimums in the height of summer and the depth of winter; the two highest demand times of the year.
It's a case of reality will trump hoping for in the end.
We have the technology to make it safe - reprocess it and reuse it in the plants. That cycle can continue so long as to make nuclear energy effectively renewable.
As for the greenie who babbled about the sun and it being inexhaustible
Harry don't matter anyway, imo. I think completion is due in 2020? Just a layman here, BUT there are a lot of transport problems to be faced in our future. Particularly trucking and train safety.
What about earthquakes at Yucca Mt.?
Just yesterday Vegas had a small quake.
"LAS VEGAS -- A 2.6 magnitude earthquake could be felt across the Valley Wednesday night, according to the National Earthquake Center.
The minor earthquake originated from the area of East Lake Mead and North Nellis boulevards, near Nellis Air Force Base."
No. Spent fuel transport casks have been demonstrated experimentally to take direct hit from 70-mph railroad locomotive followed by fire and not leak contamination. There's no significant radioactive risk.
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What about them? If worst were to come to worst, it will simply bury the waste underground. Meanwhile, the facility is designed to accommodate seismic activity. There are far more real dangers and boogey men to worry over in this world.
Even _IF_ (the proverbial "big if" which in this case is simply huge, not just big) it were to happen, that it's underground would prevent any massive immediate release and the effects afterward could be dealt with w/o any need for rush.
I reiterate that there are far more serious boogey men to worry over than some theorized disaster at Yucca Mtn is my point. Sure, a large enough 'quake could make a mess of the facility, but it would not be any nuclear disaster.
SMUD was, regrettably, a _VERY_ poor nuclear operating utility--the problems there were really very little related to the power plant per se but to poor (primarily inexperienced w/ nuclear generation vis a vis fossil so they didn't control the interaction w/ the NRC and follow the regulatory requirements to the tee. That led to the extremely high costs in having to try to meet those after the fact which is far more difficult and costly than doing so originally). I was, in fact, working in the commercial nuclear division of the particular reactor vendor during construction and went through plant startup and first year or so of operation so know the plant pretty well and knew SMUD well also.
I'd have to refresh my memory on the actual shutdown decision politics, but as I recall it was a plebiscite organized by the various activist groups of the time that made the final determination rather than a Utility District decision.
IMO of the time, if they would have brought in an experienced operating contractor to oversee the plant day-to-day operation early on rather than trying to operate it inhouse it would be a positive impact economically to the state and an additional 850 MWe on the grid today.
SMUD, btw, wasn't terribly unique to several other relatively small and first-time-nuclear utilities. They and others tended to think of them as simply generation units w/ a nuclear boiler instead of coil or oil which they were used to operating. Consequently, they generally would name an experienced fossil manager as head of the nuclear project and that would start the problems of not building the correct nuclear management and operation mindset of even more precise attention to detail. Many of the "performance issues" in these cases really had very little at all to do with other than paper audit trails on welds or similar QA/QC processes. The problem would be, when a failure to document was found, it could be months down the road after a zillion more welds had been completed or thousands of yards of concrete poured or whatever and to have to go back and qualify the oversight was terribly expensive.
Experienced nuclear utilities (often w/ ex-nuclear Navy-trained folks who had already been thru the drill w/ Rickover) managed to avoid many those mistakes; or at least minimized them.
If I were in the area, I'd have no qualms of a restart of Rancho Seco from the plant safety aspect at all. It is, of course, out of the question at this point as the plant wasn't maintained w/ the idea of a restart.
Re: quake-prone CA and nukes --
If there were a serious quake, in containment would be an ideal place to be to ride it out.
Look to your rate commission and be glad it isn't even worse.
Here E KS is as much as 60% lower than W owing to bias in the makeup of the rate commission in the populated areas vis a vis the agricultural/less populated.
You're at least partially correct that the problem is political rather than technical, except that the technical objections to nuclear waste storage are also formidable.
Regarding Nevada as you mentioned, it should be pointed out that not only Nevada, but also Utah have both maintained very strong opposition to high-level nuclear waste storage policy at the federal level. I know about this: in college I won a cash award for a paper I wrote on the subject. I used to subscribe to both the Utah and Nevada state newsletters from the agencies in those states set up specifically to fight the waste repositories from going there. So it wasn't just one senator's personal vendetta. And I hardly need to point out that these are both conservative states, hardly bastions of antinuclear activity or havens for tree-huggers. (Interesting to note that Utah also vigorously opposed the MX missile--remember that?--on account of the Mormon Church's *moral* opposition to siting a weapon of mass destruction in the state.)
You obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.
One of the requirements for any high-level nuclear waste repository (such as Yucca Mountain) is that the waste be both monitored and retrievable. They don't just chuck it in there willy-nilly and figure "out of sight, out of mind". Mind you, these are DOE's rules, not those written by some granola-munching tree hugger.
So earthquakes do pose significant risks, and you can be sure that the DOE is paying attention to the reports they get from the USGS.
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