Former EPA Chief: Building 100 More Nuclear Reactors Is Doable

After years of exposure to the Yucca mtn arguments, I am left thinking its a way for Nevada politicians to generate revenue for NV.  The overdone testing, re-testing re-testing of the re-testing, legal battles over legal battles layered by more fights etc bring in millions of revenue for NV lawfirms and consultants.  Nobody in that business wants Yucca approved or flat out denied, they just want more fight so they can generate more revenue.

The term “Spent Nuclear Fuel” is a misnomer. It still contains large amounts of usable energy but not in its present form and state. There are 104 nuclear powered electric generating plants in the US. Each facility has been storing “spent” fuel rods since the inception of this technology. And the inventory is growing year by year. How long do we continue to store this material on-site?? And what do we do with this material when the facility is decommissioned??  Shall we continue to store it at the same site??
Some have suggested that we haul it all to Nevada and store it permanently at Yucca Mtn, which is part of the Nevada Test Site, located about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.  The NTS occupies approx 1300 square miles (about the size of Rhode Island).  The NTS is where we tested (detonated) about 900 “nuclear devices”, all but 30 underground.
For more than 10 years Bechtel Corp has been expending many billions of taxpayer dollars on the Nevada version of the “Big Dig”, i.e., drilling tunnels and “spent fuel” storage alcoves in Yucca Mtn.
However, the current plan for long-term, permanent burial of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mtn is almost dead for sound technical reasons.  Also, the people of Nevada and their elected representatives do not want this material brought into their state for burial.  By the way, there are no nuclear power reactors anywhere in the state of Nevada.
Then what shall we do with the 70+ thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel currently being stored at our nuclear power plants?? Regardless of your philosophy about nucear power (for or against), the storage problem is very real and it must be dealt with. Maintaining this huge volume of highly radioactive material in so many areas throughout the Country represents a clear and present danger. We don’t have to worry about terrorists importing nuclear materials into the US to make a “dirty bomb”.  All they have to do is tap into the nuclear material inventory already here in storage.  A well trained and well armed group of terrorists (foreign or domestic) might very well be able to overpower the security force at many of our commercial nuclear facilities, especially if they were not concerned about their own well being, i.e., suicidal.  And they would not have to steal the spent nuclear fuel stored primarily in pools. All they would have to do is bring enough explosives with them and the resulting detonation could spew radioactivity over a very wide geographic area. Note that the containment building housing the nuclear reactor itself would not even have to come into play.
My proposal is to set up reprocessing facilities at our existing government sites, such as the Savannah River Site, Nevada Test Site, Hanford Washington Site, Idaho National Laboratory, and some of our relatively large, under-utilized military bases.  Clusters of reactors could be built at these reprocessing facilities which would produce huge amounts of electricity to feed into the national grid.  By using our existing government owned facilities, we take advantage of their existing infrastructure, including well trained and experienced security forces.  And these sites occupy large geographic areas which for the most part are not within or near high density population areas.  This proposal would also expand upon the existing technological base of nuclear reprocessing.  Technical universities and the technical community near these facilties would see substantial growth and advancement.  Furthermore, we would be spreading the solution to an existing serious problem throughout the country rather than dumping the entire problem in a single area for someone else to deal with years later.
Perhaps the people of Nevada would be willing to participate in such a multi-state recycling program at the NTS where the re-processed nuclear material would be used to fuel clusters of next-generation power reactors that would go a long way towards weening us off fossil fuel plants with their resulting carbon dioxide emissions.  Note that my proposal includes “clusters” of reactors.  Such an arrangement allows for permanent staffing of operations, maintenance, refueling and testing personnel which could eliminate the need for temps, travellers and contractors.
This nationwide situation we are in, calls for a national solution. And the solution I propose calls for a rather straight forward, yet intense engineering and scientic effort.  Some of the positive attributes of the Nevada Test Site, Hanford Washington, Savannah River and the INL being involved in this solution is that they encompass large geographic areas, they have already been involved in “nuclear matters”, they have some of the technical and scientic resources already in place, they have Department of Energy and State oversight, and they have large, well-trained security forces in place.

Whitman has a point.  The Obama administration is apparently more concerned about he the inner depths of one mountain in Nevada than they are about 40 mountain tops in West Virginia.  When will Obama step up to the plate and stop playing politics with global warming?