Feb 25 2010
Sanford Threatens to Sue Over Yucca Mountain
COLUMBIA — Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a decades-old plan for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain could cost South Carolina $1.2 billion and leave the permanent storage of thousands of tons of nuclear waste in question, and the governor is prepared to sue over it.
Sanford urged Obama to back off his Feb. 1 decision and stick to the 23-year bipartisan compact to use the Nevada facility as a resting ground for the country’s nuclear waste, including 4,000 metric tons temporarily housed at the Savannah River Site and elsewhere in South Carolina.
The two-term Republican governor said Obama was motivated to reverse course as a way to ensure U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s re-election in Nevada.
The president decided to eliminate all funding for the facility and withdraw its license application with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Yucca Mountain nuclear storage containment site is something that I happen to know a bit about. My father lived back in Las Vegas during the 1990s and worked on this project for a government contractor. There is absolutely nothing unsafe about this containment facility nor does it pose any threat to the people of Nevada. The Yucca Mountain is over an hour away from Vegas and in the middle of friggin nowhere.
I agree with Sanford that this all a political ploy by Obama. He’s willing to cost our state over a billion dollars and throw billions more away to try and save Harry Reid’s political carcass which has already started rotting and sticking up the place. Of course people in Nevada have protested against it. Nobody wants to have nuclear waste in their backyard, but that isn’t happening in Nevada nor would it if the Yucca Mountain project were to commence again. The bulk of the outcry is based on ignorance.
That move by Obama contradicts his claim that he is suddenly supportive of nuclear power. How can he says he wants to see more nuclear power plants built while simultaneously shutting down one of the major nuclear storage projects in the country? He can’t have it both ways.
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The problem with Yucca Mountain is that ‘long term’ storage is impossible. Given the amount of time that would be needed to render the rods and waste harmless to humans assumes that Yucca Mountain is stable over a VERY long period of time and that the storage containers will never leak. That the geological record indicates that groundwater (not surface water) has saturated Yucca Mountain in the past would give pause to the use of the area for long-term storage.
That is the problem with nuclear energy. It is dirty. VERY dirty. For a long time.
As with many things humans do without thinking about the long-term consequences there are costs that are overlooked; the price is inevitably pushed off on tomorrow’s generation. Folks: You pay now or you pay later. There’s no cheap or free lunch.
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