by Kathleen Davis, senior editor
The US Nuclear Energy Northern Nevada Chapter averages 15 attendees each month and is growing.
News agencies from the Las Vegas Sun to The New York Times were reporting in May the demise of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project.
All the fuss centers around page 65 of President Barack Obama's 2010 budget overview, ?A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise,? which proposes the Yucca Mountain elimination and allocates millions, instead, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to explore alternatives to the Nevada site. It proposes to cut funding for the repository almost entirely.
The overview states, ?The Budget focuses on improved performance and accountability for the environmental legacy of the Nation's nuclear weapons program by addressing health and safety risks across the country. The Yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., applauded the move.
?For more than two decades, some have persistently tried to turn a piece of the magnificent Nevada desert just outside of Las Vegas into a dumping ground for dangerous nuclear waste. I am proud to say that today, with the release of President Obama's budget, that idea is dead,? Reid was quoted as saying in the Las Vegas Sun article.
Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada said the project lacked support.
?President Obama is making good on the promise he made to end Yucca Mountain, and this budget takes us closer than ever before to permanently burying this $100 billion dinosaur in the Nevada desert,? Berkley was quoted as saying in the Las Vegas Sun article. ?Support for Yucca Mountain has collapsed.?
There is opposition from Republican senators and representatives. In late April, when news of the funding cutoff filtered through political channels, 17 GOP senators wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu asking for a rationale of the decision. Republican Sen. James ?Jim? Inhofe of Oklahoma penned the letter. Former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona was among the senators who signed Inhofe's letter. The DOE stated that Inhofe will receive an answer to his letter, but no response has been made public yet by the DOE.
In mid-May, Dennis Bryne wrote in an editorial on the Chicago Tribune's Web site that the demise of Yucca Mountain's repository ?would leave Illinois with the shaft? while the state holds onto nearly 7,000 tons of nuclear waste.
?Now, the question becomes whether Illinois' Democratic senators?Dick Durbin and Roland Burris?will adequately represent the state's and nation's interests by fighting to keep the Yucca Mountain project alive,? Bryne wrote. ?Ah, but you know they won't.?
Yucca Mountain was selected in 1987 as a potential repository for nuclear waste created from electricity production, including spent nuclear fuel rods and solidified high-level radioactive waste. It has been a contentious subject for more than 20 years and the project has never been completed. (See picture for engineering schematic of the project.)
Nuclear energy, however, is not off the Obama administration's task list. Chu announced the selection of 71 university research project awards as part of an investment in nuclear research. Under the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), these 71 projects will receive some $44 million over three years.
?The next generation of nuclear power plants?with the highest standards of safety, efficiency and environmental protection?will require the latest advancements in nuclear science and technology,? Chu said in a statement. ?These research and development university awards will ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in the nuclear field for years to come.?