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Search results for "Yucca Mountain" ...
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Yucca Mountain Conflict of Interest
A Las Vegas Sun investigation reveals that the law firm hired by the Energy Department to do legal work on the Yucca Mountain repository has been lobbying to get the project built. The Energy Department manages the proposed Yucca Mountain project, a federal proposal to bury tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste at the site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The plan is controversial, environmentalists say its a bad idea, the nuclear energy industry says its needed. The Energy Department hired Chicago-based Winston & Straw to "independently review Yucca documents and impartially advise the DOE about possible flaws." But the Las Vegas Sun learned that Winston & Straw also does lobbying work for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the energy industry's top trade group and the "most vocal Yucca proponent in Washington." Nevada lawmakers contend that Winston & Straw involvement with the NEI and DOE presents a dangerous conflict of interest.
Tags: conflict of interest; ethics; Winston & Shaw; lawyers; federal government; Energy Department; Department of Energy; Yucca Mountain; nuclear waste; nuclear energy; Nuclear Energy Institute; lobbying; big money; politics; environment
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DOE wants Yucca
The Las Vegas Sun investigates a Department of Energy study that says Nevada's Yucca Mountains are a suitable site for a one-of-a-kind dumping ground for nuclear power plant waste. The Sun discovered that the DOE has a strong bias toward building the repository in Nevada, "regardless of scientific findings."
Tags: Department of Energy; Yucca Mountains; DOE; nuclear power; repository; dump
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Dumped on
Nearly 35,000 metric tons of spent, but still deadly, fuel rods and other toxic waste are stowed in concrete casks and water-filled cooling pools at 70 commercial nuclear power plants across the nation. Since 1994, the federal Energy Department has been burrowing into the Yucca mountain, 100 miles north of Las Vegas and on the edge of a federal nuclear weapons testing site. The point of digging is to let scientists determine whether this ancient volcanic mound can safely contain highly radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
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Out of Sight, Out of Our Minds: 12,001 A.D.: Are you listening?
The New York Times Magazine reports that "Rushing to bury nuclear waste doesn't take the problem off future Americans' hands so much as it takes the solution out of their hands....The United States, however, is impatient to entomb those wastes once and for all, even though many experts say that there are no compelling technical reasons for doing so anytime soon.... Underground burial, whatever its technical and political merits, reflects a kind of natural logic....(but) It is obvious that the decision to concentrate on Yucca Mountain did not issue from any serious comparative technical research..."
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High-level Waste, Low-level logic
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports that "After much political tugging and pulling, Congress directed in 1987 that the list of possible (nuclear waste disposal) sites be narrowed to one. Yucca Mountain, located on the Nuclear Test Site in Nevada, would be the only location evaluated for the repository. To date, the United States has spent more than $3 billion studying - or "characterizing" - the proposed Yucca Mountain site. If scientists eventually find it acceptable, and if it survives the legal and political battle that would follow its selection, sometime early in the next century the United States would become the first country to begin permanent geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel from nuclear reactors."
Tags: radioactive isotopes ESSE Energy Department Early Site Suitability Evaluation risks
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No title (id: 7684)
New York Times Magazine follows one scientist's crusade to stop Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, which has been chosen by the federal government to be the deposit of the most hazardous of nuclear material; scientist believes that the Yucca site is too dangerous for such a large dump, Nov. 18, 1990.
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