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They can't even get people to put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain which just so happens to be adjacent to the Nevada Test Site. That's one of the most contamina

They can't even get people to put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain which just so happens to be adjacent to the Nevada Test Site. That's one of the most contaminated locations in the entire United States. The US government detonated 928 nuclear weapons there between 1951 and present.

dylan604 4y ago
There's a difference of dropping a bomb in the desert vs hauling nuclear waste across federal highways through people's "land" to get to Yucca Mountain. It's not exactly apples to apples of a comparison you're making here. While it is definitely full of NIMBYism, there is a bit more complexity to the Yucca Mountain decision.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I don't know to what extent the public is aware of it but another problem with Yucca Mountain is that used LWR fuel is by no means waste and it doesn't make sense at all to dispose of it in its current form. At best the LWR gets 2% of the energy out of natural uranium. A fuel cycle that removes the small fraction of fission products and feeds plutonium and uranium can extract vast amounts of energy from today's "nuclear waste". It is the plutonium that is radioactive for tens of thousands of years, if you use it as fuel the remaining fission products decay quickly and are less radioactive than the original ore in less than 1000 years. So Yucca Mountain makes no sense from the viewpoint of the nuclear industry (it isn't going to fight for it) so if some people don't like it there is no point in pursuing it.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Yucca Mountain is irrelevant to the nuclear industry the US government has already agreed to deal with the fuel it’s quite literally not a problem for the industry. The Act established a Nuclear Waste Fund composed of fees levied against electric utilities to pay for the costs of constructing and operating a permanent repository, and set the fee at one mill per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity generated. Utilities were charged a one-time fee for storage of spent fuel created before enactment of the law. … The Nuclear Waste Fund previously received $750 million in fee revenues each year and had an unspent balance of $44.5 billion as of the end of FY2017. … In late 2013, a federal court ruled that the Department of Energy must stop collecting fees for nuclear waste disposal until provisions are made to collect nuclear waste.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act Anyway, LWR can extract more than 2% of the energy in the fuel it mostly comes down to how enriched the uranium you feed them is because the ratio of U235:U238 in reactor grade fuel is different than the ratio LWR are burning. They can extract far more energy from weapons grade uranium, but using it would be a bad idea.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Agreed - in one case you're irradiating the land and air. In the other case you're safely trucking low-risk spent fuel in safe, secure enclosures and likely retaining the ability to reprocess and re-use that fuel in the future.

dylan604 4y ago

There's a difference of dropping a bomb in the desert vs hauling nuclear waste across federal highways through people's "land" to get to Yucca Mountain. It's not exactly apples to apples of a comparison you're making here. While it is definitely full of NIMBYism, there is a bit more complexity to the Yucca Mountain decision.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I don't know to what extent the public is aware of it but another problem with Yucca Mountain is that used LWR fuel is by no means waste and it doesn't make sense at all to dispose of it in its current form. At best the LWR gets 2% of the energy out of natural uranium. A fuel cycle that removes the small fraction of fission products and feeds plutonium and uranium can extract vast amounts of energy from today's "nuclear waste". It is the plutonium that is radioactive for tens of thousands of years, if you use it as fuel the remaining fission products decay quickly and are less radioactive than the original ore in less than 1000 years. So Yucca Mountain makes no sense from the viewpoint of the nuclear industry (it isn't going to fight for it) so if some people don't like it there is no point in pursuing it.
- Retric 4y ago
  Yucca Mountain is irrelevant to the nuclear industry the US government has already agreed to deal with the fuel it’s quite literally not a problem for the industry. The Act established a Nuclear Waste Fund composed of fees levied against electric utilities to pay for the costs of constructing and operating a permanent repository, and set the fee at one mill per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity generated. Utilities were charged a one-time fee for storage of spent fuel created before enactment of the law. … The Nuclear Waste Fund previously received $750 million in fee revenues each year and had an unspent balance of $44.5 billion as of the end of FY2017. … In late 2013, a federal court ruled that the Department of Energy must stop collecting fees for nuclear waste disposal until provisions are made to collect nuclear waste.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act Anyway, LWR can extract more than 2% of the energy in the fuel it mostly comes down to how enriched the uranium you feed them is because the ratio of U235:U238 in reactor grade fuel is different than the ratio LWR are burning. They can extract far more energy from weapons grade uranium, but using it would be a bad idea.
arcticbull 4y ago
Agreed - in one case you're irradiating the land and air. In the other case you're safely trucking low-risk spent fuel in safe, secure enclosures and likely retaining the ability to reprocess and re-use that fuel in the future.