Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Killed by Senate

2 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Woman Up Editor

Fulfilling Barack Obama's campaign promise to close Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada, the Senate has passed a measure that will prevent further construction.

The long-planned Department of Energy storage repository to hold 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and radioactive waste is located about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain has been the subject of legal challenges and concerns over transporting dangerous waste to the facility practically since the DOE began studying the site as a potential repository in 1977. Political pressures from Nevada's congressional delegation have repeatedly delayed completion of the project, since being approved as a nuclear dump site by Ronald Reagan in 1987. When Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, a longtime opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, Yucca's eventual derailing seemed likely. Roughly $13.5 billion has been spent on Yucca to date. The House has passed a similar bill. Once reconciled with the Senate version, it will go to President Obama for his signature.

Filed Under: Senate, Barack Obama, Energy

Tagged: harry reid, HarryReid, nuclear waste, NuclearWaste, top stories, TopStories, yucca mountain, YuccaMountain

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.