Nevada, National and International News

In Vernon, a panel explores a new approach to storing nuclear waste

Yucca Mountain repository site in limbo

The DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other federal agencies have been sued over the government’s failure to fulfill its obligation to take nuclear waste.

A site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was proposed in 1987 and approved by Congress in 2002. But with development of the country’s single centralized spent-fuel storage site having reached a standstill, the DOE has shifted its focus to the creation of one or more CSFs, explained GEC’s executive director, Erik Funkhouser.

The shift came after a 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission recommended that the U.S. seek a site to replace Yucca Mountain and apply a collaborative-based siting model to the process. Rather than identify a site and seize the property for a top-down development, the commission urged what the DOE calls a “consent-based process” — for communities, industry, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations to work together in the process to develop a solution with far less rancor.That repository, once expected to be Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas, faced intense opposition from the public as well as entities ranging from tribal to state governments. It was ultimately abandoned by the federal government in 2011.

The Most Expensive Mistakes Made by Governments

America’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
The U.S. government poured more than $15 billion into building a nuclear waste dump inside Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Despite years of effort and progress, officials shut it down in 2011 because of politics.

That massive investment left behind an incomplete site destined to sit idle. There’s still no long-term plan in place for handling radioactive waste nationwide.

Yucca achieved zero real results. With the location now empty, spent fuel keeps stacking up near power plants from coast to coast.

Utah is betting big on nuclear. Here’s what a leading expert says about its future.

I worked on the Yucca Mountain project, which was (supposed to be) the nation’s geologic disposal site in Nevada.

Nuclear hype empty without addressing waste

By Richard Bryan

Nuclear waste finally being moved after 80+ years at Eastern WA site

Treatment of high level radioactive waste is required under a federal court order to begin in 2033. That waste is required to be sent to a deep geological repository, which the nation has yet to find a location for after plans for a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., were abandoned.

New U.S. nuclear power boom begins with old, still-unsolved problem: What to do with radioactive waste

Five years later, lawmakers designated Yucca Mountain, a 6,700-foot promontory about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, as the nation’s sole geological repository.

That was the recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, created by the Obama administration in 2010 after the Yucca Mountain project was defunded, on which she served.

Rosen: Trump, Republicans feast while SNAP, health benefits on the line

The right-wing manifesto also calls for reviving plans to bury high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Titus, Rosen blast Trump plan to resume nuclear weapons testing

Along with calling for resuming work on a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Project 2025, the document that has served as a blueprint for multiple Trump administration policies, outlined a plan to “restore the nuclear infrastructure” and to “restore readiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), formerly the Nevada Test Site, to ensure the ability of the U.S. to respond quickly to asymmetric technology surprises.”

When $50 billion can’t buy much of anything

Minus what the department spent (squandered?) on the moribund Yucca Mountain project and related efforts over the years — about $11.5 billion — we have a current balance of some $49.5 billion in the NWF, just sitting around, waiting to spring to action.

That’s an awful lot of money. But it can’t do much of anything because, under current law, NWF dollars can buy a repository at Yucca. Period. And Nevada — which never had a commercial nuclear plant — will assure you that Yucca is never going to happen!

– Congress must amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to drop Yucca-and-Yucca only, and allow nuclear waste dollars to pursue other disposal efforts.

When the Earth Moves: 25 Years of Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazards

The first systematic PFDHA was developed in the early 2000s for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the USA. Since then, the methodology has expanded from normal faults to include strike-slip and reverse faults worldwide.

One of the earliest and most influential applications was at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where PFDHA helped assess the safety of a proposed nuclear waste repository.

Hanford facility in WA begins turning radioactive waste into glass

Only about 10% of the tank waste is expected to be high-level waste, which once vitrified must be disposed of in a national repository, such as what was once planned at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

State gets Holtec to cry “uncle”

When Congress selected Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be the nation’s waste repository in 1987, it was a decision based on politics, not geology. Harry Reid was just a freshman senator, and Nevada lacked the political clout to stop the plan from being passed. By the time the project was halted, Reid was the majority leader.

Dr. James Conca, former director of the Environmental Monitoring and Research Center at WIPP, explained during a community radio interview in 2024 that underground nuclear waste storage requires finding the “right rock.” Yucca Mountain was never going to work because it’s in a seismically active area that is prone to earthquakes and has underground faults and fractures that risk water contamination.

US Radwaste Technology Company Calls On First Mover States To Help Find Disposal Solutions

Background: Growing Stockpiles And No Progress At Yucca
According to the US Nuclear Industry Council, the US has accumulated around 92,500 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, growing by 2,000 tonnes annually. This waste is stored at over 70 sites across 35 states, in temporary facilities not designed for permanent, long-term containment – an estimated liability for US taxpayers of well over $150bn (€129bn) that is increasing significantly every year.

Plans for a permanent deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, have stalled because of opposition from most Nevada residents and officials.

Former New York Times reporter to speak to Oak Ridge audience on nuclear energy policy

Wald, who was a reporter for 37 years for The New York Times, wrote extensively about electricity markets, electric technologies, and nuclear energy. He has toured and written about 14 nuclear power plants, two research reactors, two military production reactors, the nuclear waste repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, several nuclear weapons plants, two uranium enrichment plants, and three major electric grid control centers.

Solid ideas and misinformation compete at Irvine’s nuclear waste session

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran — and, frankly, many others, including yours truly — have little faith in the federal government’s ability to find a permanent home for commercial nuclear waste. The feds vowed to start taking possession of it back in, er, 1982, with the first pickups to begin in 1998. Alas, as of 2025, the feds haven’t accepted a single ounce of commercial waste for permanent disposal, even after collecting more than $40 billion from ratepayers for that purpose and spending more than $11 billion on moribund Yucca Mountain.

Spent Fuel To Stay At Oyster Creek

A national solution, long promised at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, remains politically deadlocked. Alternative interim facilities in states like Texas and New Mexico face lawsuits and strong local resistance. Without a federal repository, the NRC requires utilities to keep fuel on site.

“So, Lacey Township is basically Yucca Mountain,” suggested local resident Alison Lemke, who said the community should be compensated for “babysitting” nuclear waste. “We should really be getting what Yucca Mountain was supposed to get, which was at least some sort of infrastructure funding, and also funding for our schools.”

Ranked choice voting threatens status quo. That's why Ohio's status quo is freaked | Letters

“Not in my back yard” mindset has prevented the super-safe disposal of spent fuel at Yucca Mountain.

But I participated on the committee that analyzed the no-action alternative (an environmental impact statement requirement) to Yucca Mountain, which would be to leave the spent fuel on-site in protective storage containers. Ultimately, that is not the way to deal with spent fuel, but our analyses showed that there would be trivial radiological consequences over tens of thousands of years.

Health clinic to host Idaho Falls public meeting to help downwinders apply for compensation

In this May 11, 2003, file photo, protesters lie on the pavement opposed to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility and weapons testing. Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, where more than 30 million tons of ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities. JOE CAVARETTA/AP FILE

Nuclear waste startup Deep Isolation inks a deal with a major federal contractor

For years, the U.S. had plans for a major repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, and construction started under President George W. Bush. But President Barack Obama yanked funding for the effort that was widely seen as a favor to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who opposed the repository. Federal law requires the government to handle nuclear waste, and dictates that Yucca Mountain must be the first site completed. Until that legislation changes, federal efforts for a permanent waste site remain stalled.

Opening Plenary U.S. Fuel Cycle Policy: Energy Dominance Meets 15 Years of Inaction on Waste

There have been fifteen years of near-total federal government inaction on the nuclear waste front since the Department of Energy (DOE) ceased work on the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in 2010. The U.S. Congress steadfastly refuses to fund the Yucca Mountain Project, but it has made no changes to the official U.S. policy for managing used nuclear fuel, defense high-level radioactive waste, and other materials addressed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

How Much Of The Us Power Is Nuclear

* **What about nuclear waste?** Used nuclear fuel is radioactive and needs careful handling. It’s currently stored on-site at power plants in secure pools or robust dry casks. These casks are designed to last decades and withstand extreme events. The long-term plan is deep geological storage, like the proposed Yucca Mountain site. Politics stalled this. Research continues into recycling waste or new reactor types that use it as fuel. The waste volume is small compared to other industries.

Richard Muller: ‘Physics stays the same. What changes is how the president listens’

Encourage the development of nuclear power? “Yeah. Particularly fission; fusion’s too far in the future. Also, I’d tell the president to make clear that nuclear waste storage is a solved problem, and make sure that Yucca mountain is quickly approved.”

Science over fear: EPA approves WIPP expansion while anti-nuke crowd whines

Despite the holdup, Holtec scored a victory when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 ruling, removed legal obstacles to private interim nuclear waste storage in Texas and New Mexico. That decision underscored the judiciary’s recognition of the need for safe interim solutions—even as New Mexico officials continued reflexively rejecting alternatives to Yucca Mountain status quo.

OPINION: Yucca’s Ghost: Mothers for Nuclear brings its sunny power argument to town

But the nuclear issue poses a challenge for Nevadans, and especially for Trump-friendly Gov. Joe Lombardo. Just months ago, the governor through a spokesperson assured skeptics that the Yucca Mountain issue was settled. It was history. Mothballed. That puts Lombardo in diametric opposition to the Trump administration, whose Project 2025 playbook proposes not only restarting the licensing process but fast-tracking it.

Nuclear technology companies interested in doing business in Gillette, mayor says

One long-term repository site, or deep geological repository, in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was under development for decades, beginning in the 1980s, before the project’s funding ceased in 2010. The Trump administration has so far declined to pick up the Yucca Mountain project.

Crossroads contention: Natrona County is ground zero for Wyoming’s nuclear dilemma

All nuclear sites across the U.S. are required to hold their spent fuel,” Radiant Senior Operations Manager Makai Cartman told the Casper Kiwanis Club on July 24. He added it’s a temporary solution to the lack of a permanent national repository for high-level nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain in Nevada, once a prime candidate for that repository, is no longer being considered, and the U.S. Department of Energy is now working through a siting process in search of host communities.

The Enduring Problem of Nuclear Reactor Waste

Clearly, though, the basic challenges inherent in the toxicity of the waste of a normal functioning reactor were never fully accounted for. Throughout the 1980s, for instance, efforts grew to create a repository in the American West where such spent fuel could be deposited and kept for the decades—even centuries—in which it was thought to remain toxic. The most protracted effort focused on Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The proposed Yucca Mountain Repository has remained mired in legal issues involving jurisdiction (it is located on the Western Shoshone Native American reservation) and the issue of a state’s right to determine its economic and environmental future. In short, no one wants nuclear waste in their backyard.

What Is A Problem Commonly Associated With Nuclear Power Facilities?

4. **Policy & Politics:** Governments spend billions researching disposal solutions (like deep geological repositories – Yucca Mountain in the US, Onkalo in Finland). Finding a site, getting approval, and building it takes decades of political wrangling and public debate. Progress is painfully slow.

UNLV researchers tackling nuclear waste crisis by transforming danger into energy

None of the radiochemists on campus would say they’re in favor of a dump site, Hatchett said — they don’t want to see Yucca Mountain actually be used as a radioactive waste repository.

How and where is nuclear waste stored in the US?

A 1987 federal law named Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, as a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste – but political and legal challenges led to construction delays. Work on the site had barely started before Congress ended the project’s funding altogether in 2011.

No need to go 'NIMBY' on nuclear power | BIDLACK

There is a term well known in the political world, and that term is “NIMBY,” standing for “not in my back yard.”

The enduring dilemma of managing American high-level nuclear waste

Legislation adopted during the 1980s was designed to resolve this issue through the construction of a geological repository for permanent disposal. It specified that site selection and facility development should be completed by 1999. But federal designation without local or state consent of a southern Nevada site, commonly known as Yucca Mountain, triggered decades of aggressive political and legal resistance at the state level. This included the creation of a Nevada agency that repeatedly challenged Yucca site suitability on environmental and technical grounds. It also emphasized that the state operated no nuclear reactors, contending that Nevada was being singled out unfairly to solve a national problem not of its making.

Western governors say they should have control over where nuclear waste is stored

Highly radioactive waste, a by-product of electricity generation, has been piling up at nuclear power plants around the country in recent years, and the federal government has been searching for a temporary location to put it. In 2010, plans for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada fell through.

Western governors say they should have control over where nuclear waste is stored

Highly radioactive waste, a by-product of electricity generation, has been piling up at nuclear power plants around the country in recent years, and the federal government has been searching for a temporary location to put it. In 2010, plans for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada fell through.

Where Is The Nuclear Waste From Nuclear Power Plants In The United States Currently Being Stored?

Everyone knows this “store it where it’s made” plan isn’t ideal forever. Plants weren’t designed as eternal dumps. Security costs add up. Communities near these sites worry. For years, the big hope was Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It was picked deep underground. Billions were spent studying it. Then politics hit hard. Nevada said no way. Funding dried up. Yucca Mountain stalled out, stuck in limbo.

Supreme Court clears the way for temporary nuclear waste storage in Texas and New Mexico

Plans for a permanent underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, are stalled because of staunch opposition from most Nevada residents and officials. Nuclear waste can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

Supreme Court clears the way for temporary nuclear waste storage in Texas and New Mexico

Plans for a permanent underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, are stalled because of staunch opposition from most Nevada residents and officials. Nuclear waste can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

With Nevada's Yucca Mountain site stalled, Supreme Court OKs nuclear waste sites in Texas

The commission approved temporary storage sites in Texas in 2021 because nuclear power plants were running out of room and the permanent underground storage facility planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain stalled largely due to local opposition.

Despite reassurances, Nevadans in Congress see Yucca threat resurfacing

President Donald Trump and his administration have continuously assured Nevadans that their interest in nuclear energy doesn’t mean they’ll revive the federal government’s plan to store waste at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas.

Which Of The Following Is True Regarding Nuclear Power Plants?

**The Waste Problem Isn’t Going Away**
Storing nuclear waste safely remains a headache. Finland built a underground tomb called Onkalo. It’s designed to hold waste for 100,000 years. The U.S. still debates where to put its waste. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain site got scrapped after political fights. Until a permanent fix exists, waste stays at reactor sites. Critics argue this risks leaks or theft. Supporters say current storage is safe.

Meta strikes nuclear power deal to secure long-term energy for AI infrastructure

Concerns persist around radioactive waste, safety, and proliferation, with the US still lacking a permanent waste storage solution after Yucca Mountain was shelved.

Wyoming lawmakers mull, again, allowing nuclear fuel waste

That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, according to federal officials. It will take an act of Congress to resume efforts to establish one at Yucca Mountain, or anywhere else, according to Idaho National Laboratory’s Thomas, who worked for more than a decade on the Yucca Mountain project.

“Yucca Mountain has been defunded and is not being pursued,” Thomas said. If Congress were to direct the U.S. Department of Energy to resume the work, he added, “I would say that we are probably four or more decades off.”

Culture, security and radioactive waste: challenges abound for nuclear-powered data centres

Nuclear waste is typically buried far beneath the Earth’s surface. In the US state of New Mexico, for instance, authorities store nuclear waste from weapons research and production in natural salt deposits more than 600 metres underground. A similar waste repository was proposed at a site in Nevada, in Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles from Las Vegas, but has failed to receive regulatory approval.

“The biggest issue is who will be responsible for managing and disposing of the SMR waste,” Krall says. When the US legislature defunded the Yucca Mountain project in 2009, for instance, a stalemate ensued over who was responsible for disposing of the waste intended for the site. The US, Krall adds, currently lacks sufficient storage capacity for its nuclear waste.

Wyoming lawmakers mull, again, allowing nuclear fuel waste

That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, according to federal officials. It will take an act of Congress to resume efforts to establish one at Yucca Mountain, or anywhere else, according to Idaho National Laboratory’s Thomas, who worked for more than a decade on the Yucca Mountain project.

“Yucca Mountain has been defunded and is not being pursued,” Thomas said. If Congress were to direct the U.S. Department of Energy to resume the work, he added, “I would say that we are probably four or more decades off.”

There's 90,000 tons of nuclear waste in the US. How and where is it stored?

A 1987 federal law named Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, as a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste — but political and legal challenges led to construction delays.

Weighing Whether the United States Should Dispose of Defense HLW and SNF First: Roundtable Summary

The roundtable was organized in response to the US HLW and SNF disposal program’s ongoing lack of momentum. The one disposal site designated by law and approved by Congress—Yucca Mountain—has not received appropriations from Congress to move forward since 2010.
One participant noted that the United States has been working on a model of tightly interspersed disposal of defense and commercial waste at emplacement areas in the Yucca Mountain repository, meaning that the disposal of the two inventories had to be done simultaneously.
One speaker felt that all options need to be kept open, and that the primary issue is that the United States needs a hosting agreement—i.e., a politically and socially acceptable site, which the country does not have in Yucca Mountain.

5 takeaways from Chris Wright’s Hill visit

The U.S. does not have a permanent facility to store nuclear waste, after years of opposition from Nevada politicians to the Yucca Mountain repository. Wright said DOE will take an “opt-in approach” for the siting of such a repository, a reference to support from local communities.

US Waste Agreement Clears Way For Critical Research Into Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage

In 1987, US Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only site for construction of a repository for spent nuclear fuel, but in 2009, the Obama administration ended work at the site after deeming the project unworkable.