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Nevada became politically important due to its Senator being the Majority Leader (Ie the leader of the US upper house, the Senate). With him gone (retired and r

by pm90 5y ago

Nevada became politically important due to its Senator being the Majority Leader (Ie the leader of the US upper house, the Senate). With him gone (retired and recently, rip) I think it might be much easier to convince them. It’s such (excuse my language) bullshit. The facility is incredibly safe. It would be so much safer than leaving spent nuclear fuel on site all across the country. It’s unbelievable that there is resistance to it.

datavirtue 5y ago
People resist everything. Just ask for forgiveness.
- egeozcan 5y ago
  > People resist everything Perhaps it causes a positive bias in the natural selection or is the side effect of something that causes a positive bias?
- reedjosh 5y ago
  I'd generally agree with this mentality when individuals are trying to get something done, but definitely not when it's my government doing it.
rurp 5y ago
Nevada is a swing state though, so it's going to have disproportionate national influence until that changes, which could be a long time. I'm not sure why the approach of giving the state piles of money in exchange for hosting the storage wasn't tried initially. Or maybe it was, but was downplayed enough that it never comes up. Nevada isn't a very populous state so billions of extra dollars would go pretty far. It has also been trying to diversify its economy for a while now, with pretty mediocre results.
- panzagl 5y ago
  Nevada could pay a dividend like Alaska or New Mexico.
  - rurp 5y ago
    That's not a bad idea! Sending people "free" money is a pretty easy sell.
downrightmike 5y ago
Nevada isn't largely populated outside of vegas, and then there's the fact that it has already been heavily irradiated from testing. No one is really going to want to build near there. That and it doesn't have sustainable water availability to build outside of vegas. It makes perfect sense to build the mine there.
- atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  I'm a Nevadan and would be totally fine with this (actually I'm an advocate) but it's politically more toxic than the waste for anyone of either party. You say it's already been irradiated like it's a pro, but for the locals there who feel lied to about the risks and that they didn't have a voice in whether nuke tests were done in the state, they'd say they've already done enough in service of the technology.
bxparks 5y ago
As long as Nevada is a 50/50 purple state, I don't think things will change much. The nuclear waste site is very unpopular there. Neither party wants to be blamed for imposing such an unpopular plan, and cause 2 Senate seats to become out of reach for them. With regards to them being "incredibly safe", how do we know? There are countless examples of chemical waste sites around the country which were promised to be leak proof and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying. Many of those sites are leaching poisons and carcinogens into the environment and we are spending billions of dollars to clean up those super fund sites, and will be spending billions of dollars into the foreseeable future. Does the nuclear industry have more credibility than the chemical industry? I don't trust people who are so sure of themselves when they forecast 100's or 1000's of years into the future. Lastly, it's not clear to me that spreading nuclear fuel across multiples sites across the country is actually less safe. It does increase the chance of something going wrong among all those sites, but the impact of one of those incidents will be far smaller than concentrating all the spent fuel in one place. After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all that material originally came from various mines on earth.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  Agreed, and to add to that, Nevada is quite seismically active. Of course, most locations with mountains usually are (or were).
- newsclues 5y ago
  Nuclear safety ought to be a bipartisan issue!
  - pm90 5y ago
    So should protecting the public from a virus…
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    It is bipartisan; both parties agree they do not want to be responsible for failures in the storage of nuclear waste
parineum 5y ago
A major thing to consider when talking about nuclear waste is the difference between waste and spent fuel. Spent fuel is relatively low quantity (but more dangerous and short lived) whereas "waste" is any material contaminated by the reactor. The waste is typically much safer but is radioactive for much longer. The perception of nuclear waste seems to be that it will melt your hand off if you touch it for the next 10,000 years but the reality is that the things that are that radioactive don't have that long of a half life. The waste, which has a much longer half life, is, by definition, much less radioactive. The longer it takes to decay, the less radioactive it is. I think this is a very big factor is the public perception of nuclear waste disposal. I found this[1] article that has a pretty solid breakdown of it. [1] https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-11-30/Key-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel.html https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-11-30/Key-facts-abou...
- dylan604 5y ago
  Your post seems to imply logical decisions can be made if people were better informed. Boy, I sure wish that were true. Society seems to have moved well past logic and reason for pretty much any topic. The FUD around nuclear power was one of the first social issue that has sound scientific data that was totally ignored because of the fearmongering.
- __turbobrew__ 5y ago
  When I toured the Hanford nuclear site I got the impression that the nuclear waste is much harder to handle in the short term (much higher reactivity, much of it is in a liquid state, much of it contains very reactive solvents used in the purification process) but as you say it will be inert in a much shorter time frame. They were talking about encasing this waste in a silica/glass blob for easier handling.
throwaway894345 5y ago
Isn't most of Nevada federal land anyway? Do we technically need Nevada's legislative permission?
- jfengel 5y ago
  Correct. But you do need to pass legislation to do it, and passing any nontrivial legislation is next to impossible. The Senate is balanced 50-50, and since the people of Nevada don't want nuclear waste in their back yard, they will always vote against it.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    It’s not clear to me that one side is dramatically more pro-nuclear than the other side? Is nuclear a partisan issue?
    - jfengel 5y ago
      Every issue is a partisan issue, which is why we have parties. Nevada doesn't want it and enlists their allies for support. It so happens that they are Democrats, and it's true that there is an anti nuclear wing of the Democratic party, but that's not really the issue here. They don't want to be forced to take nuclear waste and their allies support them. If the opposing party managed to force them, their candidates would get creamed (in Nevada) up and down the ballot. Right up to the top. That's democracy. You get votes by trading your top issues for other people's. It tends to settle into parties to formalize the arrangements.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > Every issue is a partisan issue, which is why we have parties. No, we have parties because some issues are partisan. If every issue was partisan, then "partisan" wouldn't have any meaning. Trivial counter proof: the PATRIOT Acts was a bipartisan issue. > Nevada doesn't want it and enlists their allies for support. It so happens that they are Democrats, and it's true that there is an anti nuclear wing of the Democratic party, but that's not really the issue here. They don't want to be forced to take nuclear waste and their allies support them. You referenced a 50/50 split in congress as an obstacle as though one party is opposes nuclear and one party favors it. I don't think that's the case--I think there's strong anti-nuclear representation on both sides. > That's democracy. You get votes by trading your top issues for other people's. It tends to settle into parties to formalize the arrangements. Right, but that doesn't imply that nuclear is a partisan issue, contra your claims.
MrYellowP 5y ago
> The facility is incredibly safe. That's such a ridiculous claim. One hundred thousand years, mate. Absolutely ridiculous!
- ch4s3 5y ago
  That's how long it would take for all of the material to fall below a very low threshold. Most of the actually dangerous stuff decays on the order of a few decades. The site is super remote, gets almost no rain, and is geologically stable. The casks are designed to be leak free for greater than 10k years, and even then they'd just drop some material onto a cement surface in the center of a mountain in a room sealed behind steel and concrete. The standards in place ensure that no detectable radiation from the site could possible ever enter water int he valley for more than 10k years and probably longer. At which point anything that leaked would be noise against the background radiation, and would be harmless even if you consumed it. You'd get more radiation standing in Denver than drinking that water.
rmbyrro 5y ago
It might be, but, honestly: would you happily agree to store it under your house for nothing?
tinus_hn 5y ago
Everyone that wants it probably just wants it not in my backyard.

by pm90 5y ago

datavirtue 5y ago

People resist everything. Just ask for forgiveness.

egeozcan 5y ago
> People resist everything Perhaps it causes a positive bias in the natural selection or is the side effect of something that causes a positive bias?
reedjosh 5y ago
I'd generally agree with this mentality when individuals are trying to get something done, but definitely not when it's my government doing it.

rurp 5y ago

Nevada is a swing state though, so it's going to have disproportionate national influence until that changes, which could be a long time. I'm not sure why the approach of giving the state piles of money in exchange for hosting the storage wasn't tried initially. Or maybe it was, but was downplayed enough that it never comes up. Nevada isn't a very populous state so billions of extra dollars would go pretty far. It has also been trying to diversify its economy for a while now, with pretty mediocre results.

panzagl 5y ago
Nevada could pay a dividend like Alaska or New Mexico.
- rurp 5y ago
  That's not a bad idea! Sending people "free" money is a pretty easy sell.

downrightmike 5y ago

Nevada isn't largely populated outside of vegas, and then there's the fact that it has already been heavily irradiated from testing. No one is really going to want to build near there. That and it doesn't have sustainable water availability to build outside of vegas. It makes perfect sense to build the mine there.

atlasunshrugged 5y ago
I'm a Nevadan and would be totally fine with this (actually I'm an advocate) but it's politically more toxic than the waste for anyone of either party. You say it's already been irradiated like it's a pro, but for the locals there who feel lied to about the risks and that they didn't have a voice in whether nuke tests were done in the state, they'd say they've already done enough in service of the technology.

bxparks 5y ago

As long as Nevada is a 50/50 purple state, I don't think things will change much. The nuclear waste site is very unpopular there. Neither party wants to be blamed for imposing such an unpopular plan, and cause 2 Senate seats to become out of reach for them. With regards to them being "incredibly safe", how do we know? There are countless examples of chemical waste sites around the country which were promised to be leak proof and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying. Many of those sites are leaching poisons and carcinogens into the environment and we are spending billions of dollars to clean up those super fund sites, and will be spending billions of dollars into the foreseeable future. Does the nuclear industry have more credibility than the chemical industry? I don't trust people who are so sure of themselves when they forecast 100's or 1000's of years into the future. Lastly, it's not clear to me that spreading nuclear fuel across multiples sites across the country is actually less safe. It does increase the chance of something going wrong among all those sites, but the impact of one of those incidents will be far smaller than concentrating all the spent fuel in one place. After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all that material originally came from various mines on earth.

gunapologist99 5y ago
Agreed, and to add to that, Nevada is quite seismically active. Of course, most locations with mountains usually are (or were).
newsclues 5y ago
Nuclear safety ought to be a bipartisan issue!
- pm90 5y ago
  So should protecting the public from a virus…
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  It is bipartisan; both parties agree they do not want to be responsible for failures in the storage of nuclear waste

parineum 5y ago

A major thing to consider when talking about nuclear waste is the difference between waste and spent fuel. Spent fuel is relatively low quantity (but more dangerous and short lived) whereas "waste" is any material contaminated by the reactor. The waste is typically much safer but is radioactive for much longer. The perception of nuclear waste seems to be that it will melt your hand off if you touch it for the next 10,000 years but the reality is that the things that are that radioactive don't have that long of a half life. The waste, which has a much longer half life, is, by definition, much less radioactive. The longer it takes to decay, the less radioactive it is. I think this is a very big factor is the public perception of nuclear waste disposal. I found this[1] article that has a pretty solid breakdown of it. [1] https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-11-30/Key-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel.html https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-11-30/Key-facts-abou...

dylan604 5y ago
Your post seems to imply logical decisions can be made if people were better informed. Boy, I sure wish that were true. Society seems to have moved well past logic and reason for pretty much any topic. The FUD around nuclear power was one of the first social issue that has sound scientific data that was totally ignored because of the fearmongering.
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
When I toured the Hanford nuclear site I got the impression that the nuclear waste is much harder to handle in the short term (much higher reactivity, much of it is in a liquid state, much of it contains very reactive solvents used in the purification process) but as you say it will be inert in a much shorter time frame. They were talking about encasing this waste in a silica/glass blob for easier handling.

throwaway894345 5y ago

Isn't most of Nevada federal land anyway? Do we technically need Nevada's legislative permission?

jfengel 5y ago
Correct. But you do need to pass legislation to do it, and passing any nontrivial legislation is next to impossible. The Senate is balanced 50-50, and since the people of Nevada don't want nuclear waste in their back yard, they will always vote against it.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  It’s not clear to me that one side is dramatically more pro-nuclear than the other side? Is nuclear a partisan issue?
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Every issue is a partisan issue, which is why we have parties. Nevada doesn't want it and enlists their allies for support. It so happens that they are Democrats, and it's true that there is an anti nuclear wing of the Democratic party, but that's not really the issue here. They don't want to be forced to take nuclear waste and their allies support them. If the opposing party managed to force them, their candidates would get creamed (in Nevada) up and down the ballot. Right up to the top. That's democracy. You get votes by trading your top issues for other people's. It tends to settle into parties to formalize the arrangements.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > Every issue is a partisan issue, which is why we have parties. No, we have parties because some issues are partisan. If every issue was partisan, then "partisan" wouldn't have any meaning. Trivial counter proof: the PATRIOT Acts was a bipartisan issue. > Nevada doesn't want it and enlists their allies for support. It so happens that they are Democrats, and it's true that there is an anti nuclear wing of the Democratic party, but that's not really the issue here. They don't want to be forced to take nuclear waste and their allies support them. You referenced a 50/50 split in congress as an obstacle as though one party is opposes nuclear and one party favors it. I don't think that's the case--I think there's strong anti-nuclear representation on both sides. > That's democracy. You get votes by trading your top issues for other people's. It tends to settle into parties to formalize the arrangements. Right, but that doesn't imply that nuclear is a partisan issue, contra your claims.

MrYellowP 5y ago

> The facility is incredibly safe. That's such a ridiculous claim. One hundred thousand years, mate. Absolutely ridiculous!

ch4s3 5y ago
That's how long it would take for all of the material to fall below a very low threshold. Most of the actually dangerous stuff decays on the order of a few decades. The site is super remote, gets almost no rain, and is geologically stable. The casks are designed to be leak free for greater than 10k years, and even then they'd just drop some material onto a cement surface in the center of a mountain in a room sealed behind steel and concrete. The standards in place ensure that no detectable radiation from the site could possible ever enter water int he valley for more than 10k years and probably longer. At which point anything that leaked would be noise against the background radiation, and would be harmless even if you consumed it. You'd get more radiation standing in Denver than drinking that water.

rmbyrro 5y ago

It might be, but, honestly: would you happily agree to store it under your house for nothing?

tinus_hn 5y ago

Everyone that wants it probably just wants it not in my backyard.