Casks Gain Favor as Method for Storing Nuclear Waste(first on Indian res.)

[DeepModem Mom]

Casks Gain Favor as Method for Storing Nuclear Waste
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: June 5, 2005


WASHINGTON, June 4 - As the Energy Department falters in its effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the nuclear industry and Congress are taking steps toward a radically different storage strategy: putting the waste in huge casks that could be parked in a handful of high-security lots around the country for decades.

That idea advanced on two fronts last month. A panel of judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended on May 24 that a private utility consortium be allowed to open a lot to store 4,000 casks of waste on an Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City. On the same day, the House voted to order the Energy Department to establish similar storage areas, providing $10 million for the project.

In the Senate, Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of the Energy Committee, has expressed interest in the concept. And the Energy Department itself has opened the door to considering an alternative to what has long been the favored strategy of deep burial of nuclear wastes.

But even if President Bush receives and signs legislation, it may be years before the Energy Department sets up any lots. The proposal has already encountered opposition from elected officials whose districts include potential storage lots.

Laying out the rationale for the new approach, Representative David L. Hobson, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Committee, said: "It is time to rethink our approach to dealing with spent fuel. If we want to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in this country, we need to demonstrate to Wall Street that the federal government will live up to its responsibilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to take title to commercial spent nuclear fuel."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/politics/05waste.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Zorra]

5. Wow. (Psssst......

....your racism is showing)

[Judi Lynn]

2. To show the way, and prove it's not dangerous for living things

why not blaze a trail, set a good example by putting the first round of casks somewhere on the ranch of the nation's First Cowboy?

The very idea they'd consider just shoving this material into the land where Native Americans live shows us more of what we already know about how morally collapsed people worm their way into our government.

Bad idea. Bury the stuff in the back yard of someone who "matters" to the _Bush administration.

[Robb]

3. What's the "sell" on these casks?

...Is the pitch that they can be moved around later? :shrug:

[DeepModem Mom]

4. From the article, I guess this is the "sell" --

....Since the act was passed in 1982, the Energy Department has focused on deep burial of nuclear waste and the government has signed contracts with reactor owners guaranteeing that it would take the waste. Congress later voted to make Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the prime storage site. The Energy Department was supposed to have the site ready by 1998, but the effort has stumbled, and it is now unclear whether it will open.

When it became obvious, more than a decade ago, that the government would not fulfill its obligations on time, reactor owners built steel casks to put the waste in, filled them with inert gas to inhibit rust and loaded them into concrete silos.

The Yucca project is now so far behind that some of the reactors have been retired and torn down, leaving nothing but a field of storage casks.

An Energy Department spokeswoman, Anne Womack Kolton, suggested this week that federal officials would consider the storage lots as an interim solution. "The administration believes that permanent storage at a geologic repository is the appropriate approach, Yucca Mountain is the place to accomplish that, and we are moving forward with that goal," Ms. Kolton said.

But she added, "Yucca Mountain's capacity is currently limited by statute, and therefore we are studying Chairman Hobson's proposal."....