Nevada, National and International News

A New Specialized Train Is Ready to Haul Nuclear Waste

In the 1980s, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act mandated the DOE to start permanently disposing of SNF in an underground repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. However, social and political opposition ultimately quashed the hotly contested project.

Nuclear waste, atomic testing on tap for Nevada in Project 2025 manifesto

Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste dumping ground in 2002, during Pres. George W. Bush’s first term. In 2009, thanks in large part to the political clout of former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, President Barack Obama’s administration discontinued the licensing process and put a lid on funding for the proposed nuclear repository.

Counterpoint: New fission reactors are a dangerous folly

In fact, the nation's only proposed permanent high-level nuclear waste repository, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, is dead.

The thorny social problem of permanent nuclear waste storage

The 1982 law directed the Department of Energy to provide the president, Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency with suggestions for several sites. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate one: Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on land the Western Shoshone Nation considers sacred.

Nuclear waste license could go before US Supreme Court

Both facilities were designed to temporarily hold fuel rods on the surface in the absence of a permanent repository, after such a project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada was canceled amid stiff opposition from state lawmakers. Holtec’s would have a capacity to hold about 100,000 metric tons of the rods, while ISP would hold 40,000 MT.

How do you convince someone to live next to a nuclear waste site?

The federal government’s missteps continued when plans for a deep geologic repository derailed about 15 years ago. The 1982 law directed the Department of Energy to provide the president, Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency with suggestions for several sites. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate one: Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on land the Western Shoshone Nation considers sacred.