Nevada, National and International News

‘What we’re seeing is fear’: How national issues are affecting Nevada’s budget

Yucca Mountain protections crop up

Ohrenschall is putting forward a joint resolution urging the federal government to recognize the unsuitability of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.

He decided to sponsor the resolution after reading Project 2025 — which calls to take another look at Yucca Mountain as a possible site — as well as listening to U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., question the new secretary of energy who wouldn’t commit to saying Yucca Mountain is not suitable.

“This is a resolution that just tries to show the federal government that Nevada is steadfast, and we still believe that the science shows that Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to build this nuclear waste repository,” Ohrenschall said.

OPINION: Project 2025: increasing energy use awakening the ghost of Yucca Mountain

Back in February 2020, President Donald Trump had a problem. Running for re-election, his doublespeak on the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste project was making him look bad in Nevada.

The pesky facts weren’t in his favor.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) funding for the project was halted during President Barack Obama’s administration. Its licensing process was discontinued. It appeared to many that Yucca Mountain had finally met its match.

Yucca Mountain: The USA's Nuclear Dump

With thousands of tons of radioactive waste piling up across the U.S., Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the final resting place for America’s nuclear byproducts. But the project has faced legal, scientific, and environmental challenges for decades. Is there a better solution, or is the U.S. stuck with nuclear waste forever?

Trump’s NRC chair takes center stage for nuclear’s star turn

In 2018, he faced calls to recuse himself from Yucca Mountain deliberations, given his prior support for the controversial project. While Wright maintained he was impartial, Nevada’s resistance highlights the contentious politics of waste storage, a persistent challenge as advanced reactors promise to add to the waste burden.

D.C. Download: How Rosen, Cortez Masto approached Trump nominee hearings

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) has in the past used her opportunity to question Energy secretary nominees about nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, and Wednesday’s hearing was no exception. Wright expressed a belief in consent-based siting — the favored approach of Nevadans and Democrats — but did not go far enough for Cortez Masto in saying that the Yucca Mountain project is unworkable.

“If you’re going to build large infrastructure — and nuclear waste disposal would certainly fall in that category that has concerns — you need to have on board the local community as well,” Wright said. “And I think Nevadans, as you’ve expressed clearly, have deep concerns about seeing that facility go ahead. And I think that’s your answer.”

Cortez Masto then restated her question, asking if Yucca is unworkable — but Wright didn’t answer directly.

January 17, 2025

Cortez Masto, Rosen reintroduce bill in Senate to prevent storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain

U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto have reintroduced a bill to prevent the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Many states have resisted nuclear waste storage plans. Northwest Colorado is quietly opening the door.

After facing decades of resistance, the federal government is slowly starting a new process to identify a storage site after its plans to permanently store all the waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain fell apart. That proposal was stalled by strong public opposition and environmental and safety concerns.

Becoming a responsible ancestor

Derisively labeled the “Screw Nevada” bill, the new law confined site-selection to Yucca Mountain, located both on and adjacent to the weapons-testing area. Hardly surprisingly, the state mounted an implacable and sustained challenge to the actions of the Department of Energy, including investigations to evaluate the technical suitability of Yucca Mountain and opposition to the license application that the department submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Adams 2010).

Myth vs. fact: Is nuclear power really a climate solution?

Myth #5: Nuclear waste has been resolved

As of 2020, there were 350,000 tons of highly radioactive waste worldwide awaiting safe storage – not including the waste left in tailing ponds at mining sites. No country has yet opened a safe storage site. The Yucca Mountain waste depository – built on stolen Western Shoshone land in Nevada – has since been cancelled due to mass opposition from the tribe and others.

The irony of environmental protection under the capitalist system cannot be starker in this case. While the Yucca Mountain site was under construction, the Environmental Protection Agency founded a task force to devise a “marker system” to communicate the dangers of the site to future generations who may not understand currently-used languages 10,000 years or more from now. Yucca Mountain sits on an earthquake zone, and if filled to capacity and then breached by seismic activity, would release the radiological equivalent of two million nuclear detonations, enough to kill everyone on the planet 350 times over! We must immediately stop creating radioactive waste rather than wasting billions on creating a life-threatening problem that currently has no solution.

January 02, 2025

Humanity has many reasons for optimism as we embark on 2025

In a fascinating turn, nuclear power also emerged with a new fast and highly efficient face, as demonstration projects of small modular reactors (SMRs) were unveiled, including one promising design that uses existing stores of spent nuclear fuel from other reactors and can run for several decades with modest intervention and essentially zero risk of a meltdown. Such advancements will further help us avoid greenhouse gases and also address our nuclear waste challenges without resorting to problematic ideas like nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain.