Jake Young is a 
I don't want to get into the issue of whether the nuclear storage site at Yucca Mountain is a good idea. (The folks over at SEA know a whole lot more about the subject than I do.) My gut instinct is that the whole thing will cost a fortune -- and likely much more than the estimates -- but if we are committed to carbon-free power, then we must be prepared to make sacrifices.
However, it is satisfying to see that a final decision about whether to build the thing is proceeding speedily along:
After twenty years of study by more than 2,000 scientists and engineers about the feasibility of using Yucca Mountain, Nevada as a permanent nuclear waste repository, the United States is about "three to four years away from answering that question and putting it to bed." So stated Edward F. Sproat III, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of the Department of Energy at a congressional hearing last month.Sproat was one of the witnesses at a July hearing of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Since that hearing was held, DOE released a 52-page report that estimates a $96.2 billion life cycle cost over 150 years to research, construct, and operate the repository.
The "three to four years" Sproat referred to is the length of time that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will need to review the 8,600-page license application that DOE submitted in early June. After an initial review of the adequacy of the application, NRC will, following reviews and hearings, determine if a construction and operating license can be issued. The earliest opening date for the repository is now estimated to be 2020.
It renews my faith in government to see that in a mere 4 years we can set a deadline for a hearing to make a decision about issuing a plan. Decisive action is at hand. Whoever said that bureaucracy wasn't efficient has clearly never worked with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
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I guess you'd rather they rush the job. The license application seeks to show that the repository can isolate nuclear waste for more than twice recorded history. Analyzing that data is bound to take a while.
Your profile says you're a med student. How long does it take a new drug to hit the market?
Don't get me wrong-- DOE is 10 years late and counting. But your post is a cheap shot and way off base.
Posted by: Off base | September 3, 2008 3:10 PM
What you need to appreciate is that the central questions to be examined in the license review have to do with whether a defined surrogate individual at a certain location near the repository will ingest water that eventually X hundreds or thousands of years in the future that may have radiation levels above a dose specified in a rule issued by the EPA for two periods, up to 10,000 yrs and beyond out to one million. This will all be modeled on a computer with different radionuclides from the numerous isotopes in the non-heterogeneous "waste" with their own half-lives.
Second reason for the 3-4 years, is that the application is subject to challenge or contentions by those who oppose the project. State of Nevada has already forecast it may have several hundred contentions.
Third reason: this type of facility has never been built before and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is assigned in law to make the judgment as to the safety of the facility.
Posted by: Brian O'Connell | September 3, 2008 4:14 PM
There is evidence there was a natural fission reactor on Earth two billion years ago. We know about it because the nuclear waste produced didn't move far. I think that should count as a precedent.
I'd like to know if any of the candidates for President or Vice President accepts that evidence.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | September 4, 2008 4:42 PM
I'm extremely pro-nuclear, but I'm not a huge fan of Yucca Mountain. The "open" fuel cycle that is epitomized by the Yucca facility wastes an enormous amount of potential energy. The plan back when our current nuclear plants were planned in the early 1970s was that spent fuel would be reprocessed into fuel assemblies for a new generation of fast nuclear breeder reactors that would enter widespread service toward the end of the 20th century. However, the aftermath of the 1974 Indian nuclear test convinced the Ford Administration that reprocessing posed an unacceptable proliferation risk, and it was decided that US spent fuel would be buried in a permanent geological repository. As of 1977, it was expected that this repository would be completed within ten years. Clearly, it hasn't worked out that way.
While the US has been dawdling over spent fuel repositories, most of the world refused to buy into the open fuel cycle. France and Russia both have active civilian reprocessing programs, and Russia is currently building a "commercial" fast-breeder reactor, the BN-800, which will be fueled with recovered uranium and plutonium. I don't think we should emulate them, however--the fast breeder is inherently complicated, expensive, and a proliferation risk. I believe we would be better served pursuing the thermalized Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. These reactors can combine excellent safety and proliferation resistance with decent breeding performance and the ability to burn long-lived actinides from our existing nuclear waste inventory. On top of that, thorium is so abundant and cheap that this technology could feed or current level of energy consumption for mind-boggling amounts of time. I think it looks like a huge winner.
Posted by: Sovietologist | September 4, 2008 9:05 PM