Another call for licensing of Yucca Mountain has been made.
Today an editorial in the Albuquerque Journal points out the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste repository — New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad — is filling up quickly while Yucca Mountain remains mothballed.
The newspaper’s editorial board posits that WIPP can be expanded and such expansion is welcomed by the community for economic development — so long as it can be done safely.
“But WIPP is not a permanent solution for all the nation’s nuclear waste because there are still 70,000 metric tons being stored throughout the U.S., above ground and adjacent to rivers or on top of water tables, with more being created,” the board notes.
Now that Obama and Harry Reid have left office, the newspaper suggests that now is the time to put Yucca Mountain back on track.
“New Mexico has done, and will continue doing, its part to safely dispose of the nation’s nuclear waste. Nevada, which has also benefitted from the nation’s nuclear programs as well as $15 billion-plus in nuclear investment, should do the same,” the editorial concludes.
WIPP is filling up fast. (Photo from WIPP via Albuquerque Journal)
4TH ST8 
So New Mexicans have had enough and somehow that’s reason for Nevada to do what no one is interested in doing?
No thanks.
Any suggestions for what should be done? Maybe Canada would be interested – or Mexico.
My solution is to stop producing the waste until the industry figures out a way to make it safe. As to the waste that already exists, I suppose there are a couple options and none of them good.
We could leave it where it is, with disincentives to the industry if they don’t figure out a solution because let’s face it; every industry has to make sure it’s products, and the waste they create, is disposed of properly and it’s not the publics responsibility to figure it out, or pay, for it.
The next option is to try in this terrible anti science world we live in to do a legitimate search, if disposal is a potential short term solution, to find multiple places in the country where burying the waste would be most safe (because let’s face it, it’s not now, and will never be, what anyone would consider “safe”). And then, after the determination is made, we make it a best bidder process; either the federal government makes offers for the states to accept, or the states make offers based on how “great” they believe having poison buried in their state is worth.
Any ideas?
“My solution is to stop producing the waste until the industry figures out a way to make it safe. ”
Do the same for Solar PV and wind turbines.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
And this. I bet Solar and wind wouldn’t do as well in a similar situation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/storm-irma-nuclearpower/fpl-begins-to-bring-back-nuclear-reactors-after-irma-idUSL2N1LS123
Sept 11 (Reuters) – Electricity company Florida Power & Light said on Monday it was doing final checks before bringing back nuclear reactors that were powered down as Hurricane Irma hit Florida.
“We are in the process now of doing final checks on a few of them, we will be bringing those up,” FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy told reporters. FPL reduced power at one reactor at the St. Lucie nuclear plant due to salt buildup in a switchyard from Irma. FPL also closed the two reactors at Turkey Point, shutting one unit on Saturday as Irma approached. It shut the other unit a valve issue unrelated to Irma, the company said earlier on Monday.