Yucca Mountain Waste Dump Likely to Open 3 to 4 Years After Original Deadline, Chief Says

[Omaha Steve]

http://omaha.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D8O5G0C80&_action=validatearticle

Yucca Mountain Waste Dump Likely to Open 3 to 4 Years After Original Deadline, Chief Says
03-28-2007 6:53 PM
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- The head of the Yucca Mountain project said Wednesday that although 2017 is the goal for opening the Nevada nuclear waste dump, it will likely happen three or four years after that.

There could be more litigation and delays in getting construction authority from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Edward F. "Ward" Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

The program is already long delayed and the Energy Department keeps revising the opening date. The 2017 date was announced last summer; Sproat said he still hopes to make it.

Sproat warned lawmakers at a hearing that annual funding for Yucca must rise above the level it's been at for recent years _ around $500 million _ for the program to happen at all.

"If all we can do is continue to fund the repository at that level the repository will never be built, it will never happen," he told the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.

FULL story at link.

[Monkeyman]

1. We found the new home for Bush and Cheney with the waste

[NNadir]

2. Which "waste?"

Are you referring to carbon dioxide or to spent nuclear fuel?

[Monkeyman]

3. Nuclear Fuel with leaking Barrels

[NNadir]

5. What leaking barrels?

Are you asserting that the barrels containing fossil fuel wastes never leak?

[bananas]

4. It's likely to shut down 3-4 years after it opens

what a fucking boondoggle.

[NNadir]

6. Nowhere near as effective as the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumps

Dangerous fossil fuel waste dumps function very smoothly without problems and public opposition.

They're thinking of building a new one on the coast of Maine. Didya' ever hear about it?

Within 5 years of opening Yucca Mountain, they'll be pulling the fuel out. Unlike dangerous fossil fuel waste spent nuclear fuel is valuable.

[Eclipsenow]

7. Reuters thinks we are running out of uranium.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Limited supplies of uranium fuel for nuclear power plants may thwart the renewed and growing interest in nuclear energy in the United States and other nations, according to an industry expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Over the past 20 years, none of the nation's utilities has ordered a new reactor and there has been little investment in new uranium mines or facilities to produce fuel for existing reactors due to safety concerns.

Instead, the industry has lived off commercial and government inventories, which are nearly gone. Uranium production worldwide meets only about 65 percent of current reactor requirements.

"Just as large numbers of new reactors are being planned, we are only starting to emerge from 20 years of underinvestment in the production capacity for the nuclear fuel to operate them," Dr. Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at MIT's Center for International Studies, said in a release.

Only a few years ago, uranium sold for $10 per pound. The current price is over $90 a pound, according to the latest data from the Ux Consulting Co. LLC, of Roswell, Georgia.

Currently, much of the uranium used in the United States comes from mines in Australia, Canada, Namibia and Kazakhstan. Mines in the western U.S. only produce a small amount of uranium.

The United States also relies on Russia for half its fuel under a "swords to plowshares" deal that Neff originated in 1991. This deal is converting about 20,000 Russian nuclear weapons to fuel for U.S. nuclear reactors, but it ends in 2013, leaving a substantial supply gap for the United States, Neff warned.

Moreover, Neff pointed out that China, India and Russia are also seeking to build several nuclear power reactors and those nations are trying to lock up supplies from countries upon which the United States has traditionally relied.

The United States could be the "last one to buy, and it could pay the highest prices, if it can get uranium at all," Neff noted.

"If we're going to increase use of nuclear power, we need massive new investments in capacity to mine uranium and facilities to process it," he said.


http://tinyurl.com/2xelp6

[NNadir]

9. Reuters thinks a lot of things that are nonsensical.

Remember when they thought there was a "war on terror?"

[hunter]

8. Yucca Mountain is an irrational response to an irrational perception.

It won't ever be anything more than a money pit.

[NNadir]

10. You're right on one level, but it may be a reasonable place to store cannisters

for a decade or so, until demand increases.

I have a feeling that spent nuclear fuel is about to become an item of hot commerce. The new Japanese recycling plant is already trying to put together contracts for the reuse of spent uranium. This was the outcome for which I've always hoped.