Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
It detailed an urgent need to find a site suitable for constructing a consolidated geological repository, stating that any future facility should be developed by a new independent organization with direct access to the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is not subject to political and financial control as the Cabinet-level DOE is.
The DOE was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998, but did not do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressure resulting in underfunding of the construction.
On September 8, 2006, Bush nominated Ward (Edward) Sproat, a nuclear industry executive formerly of PECO energy in Pennsylvania, to lead the Yucca Mountain Project.
Following the 2006 midterm congressional elections, Harry Reid, a longtime opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, putting him in a position to greatly affect the future of the project.
Lacking an operating repository, the federal government initially paid utility companies somewhere between $300 and $500 million per year in compensation for failing to comply with the contract it signed to take the spent nuclear fuel by 1998.
[30] The Judgment Fund is not subject to budget rules and allows Congress to ignore the nuclear waste issue since payments therefrom do not have any impact on yearly spending for other programs.
[46] Many Nevadans' opposition stemmed from the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill," the 1987 legislation halting study of Hanford and Texas as potential sites for the waste before conclusions could be made.
[54] In March 2005, the U.S. Energy and Interior departments revealed that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists had exchanged emails discussing possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research.
[55][failed verification] On February 17, 2006, the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) released a report confirming the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees.
[55] In March 2006, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Majority Staff issued a 25-page white paper, "Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet."
The independent, expert review that the scientists at Sandia will perform will help ensure that the technical and scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain repository is without question," OCRWM's Acting Director Paul Golan said.
Because of questions raised by the State of Nevada[57] and congressional members about the quality of the science behind the Yucca Mountain Project, the DOE announced on March 31, 2006, the selection of Oak Ridge Associated Universities/Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (a not-for-profit consortium that includes 96 doctoral degree-granting institutions and 11 associate member universities) to provide expert reviews of scientific and technical work on the Yucca Mountain Project.
By bringing in Oak Ridge for review of technical work, DOE will seek to present a high level of expertise and credibility as they move the project forward ...
[60] Successful nuclear waste storage siting efforts in Scandinavia have involved local communities in the decision-making process and given them a veto at each stage, but this did not happen with Yucca Mountain.
Local communities at potential storage and repository sites "should have early and continued involvement in the process, including funding that would allow them to retain technical experts".
[60] On March 5, 2009, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated in a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain site was no longer considered an option for storing reactor waste.
The court ruled that EPA's 10,000-year compliance period for isolation of radioactive waste was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations and was too short.
[81] In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels.
"[82][83] In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the DOE's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain Project.
The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts".
[94] In August 2013, a US Court of Appeals decision told the NRC and the Obama administration that they must either "approve or reject [DOE's] application for [the] never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain."
So one could well imagine—again, it depends on what the blue-ribbon panel says—one could well imagine that for a certain classification for a certain type of waste, you don't want to have access to it anymore, so that means you could use different sites than Yucca Mountain, such as salt domes.
[45][98] In 2013, the House of Representatives voted twice during the 2014 Energy and Water Appropriations debate by over 80% majority to reject elimination of Yucca Mountain as the nation's only nuclear waste solution.
[99] On April 13, 2010, the state of Washington filed suit to prevent the closing of Yucca Mountain, since this would slow efforts to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
[101] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the suit in July 2011, saying the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had not ruled on the withdrawal of the license application.
[104] In August 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to either "approve or reject [DOE's] application for [the] never-completed waste storage site at Yucca Mountain.
At the same time, the staff also stated that the NRC should not authorize construction of the repository until the requirements for land and water rights were met and a supplement to DOE's environmental impact statement (EIS) was finished.
[108] On March 15, 2017, the Trump administration announced it would request congressional approval for $120 million to restart licensing activity at the Yucca Mountain repository, with funding also to be used to create an interim storage program.
[111] Although his administration had allocated money to the project, in October 2018, President Donald Trump stated he opposed the use of Yucca mountain for dumping,[89] saying he agreed "with the people of Nevada.
[118] On April 1, 2019, the Las Vegas Review-Journal noted that "Nevada Democrats in the House" were seeking to block transfers of plutonium from the DOE into the state by the use of the appropriations process.
