New Life for Yucca?

[okie52]

Appeals Court Rebuffs Obama Decision to Shutter Yucca Mountain

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/yucca-mountain-appeals-court/2013/08/14/id/520280#ixzz2bxQly2lJ


The party of science....

[KantoSooner]

The problem is that post Fukushima, the odds of getting a new nuclear plant approved and financed are next to nil. No one pays attention to the fact that Fukushima was in the last year of its scheduled service when it was hit by a massive earthquake AND a tsunami.
We still need Yucca Flats, but I"ve become very downbeat on the hopes of increased nuclear power in this country.

[okie52]

The odds were never good about getting a new nuke plant even before Fukushima...its been 30 plus years since we saw the last "new" nuke plant.

But Yucca is a different animal for the dems. It shows "the party of science" is anything but.

Yucca was approved by 4 different presidents, 12 congresses, the National Academy of Sciences (for 10,000 years), 9 US science labs, and Obama's own energy secretary Chu. Obama basically defunded Yucca in his first few months in office with no explanation as to why it was being defunded...an obvious political payoff to Reid.

Back to Fukushima, I think it shows the safety of Nuclear power. A 9+ earthquake followed by a huge sunami and yet the damage was reasonably contained under the circumstances. I do think it shows that nukes shouldn't be built near coastlines as Japan did and certainly fault lines should be avoided but Japan is just one huge fault line so they had little choice if they were going to have nuclear power. The US has much better options and should be embracing nuclear power.

Another "non science" approach by Obama is that US nuclear waste could be reduced by as much as 90-95% if reprocessing nuke waste was allowed as is being done in France. The reprocessed waste would be used to fuel existing nukes while at the same time reducing waste storage requirements. Obama has stated he was against reprocessing as it would be easier for "terrorists" to make a nuke from the reprocessed waste and therefore he is against it. I guess we can't measure up to France which derives 80% of its energy from nuclear power.

[KantoSooner]

Side note to Fukushima, it was run by TEPCO which has to rank as one of, if not the most corrupt, ill run companies on earth. It was, and hilariously, remains, simply a dumping ground for retired public infrastructure bureaucrats. Absolutely zero competence at anything other than making governmental regulators dance like marionets.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

It would be nice to find something to do with all the spent fuel sitting in pools around the country... That, or we could melt it into glass and shoot it into the sun with a rail gun...

[okie52]

Well Obama was going to put together a "blue ribbon" panel to discuss the issue 4 years ago....

[TheHumanAlphabet]

Yea, I bet he gets right on that...

[okie52]

It's only been 4 years...I'm sure he will have a plan by the end of his 2nd term.