Out of the ashes - The Yucca Mountain Debacle By Robert R. Loux January marked the 25th Aniversary of President Reagan’s signing of the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), the landmark piece of federal legislation that was supposed to guide the nation in identifying and developing repositories - final resting places - for the tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste that had accumulated from years of commercial nuclear power generation and Cold War nuclear weapons production activities. Today the ill-begotten and last remaining legacy of that once-promising Act, the Yucca Mountain program, is on the brink of almost certain demise. One can only wonder what might have been if Congress had had the courage in 1987 to insist that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the federal agency charged with implementing the nuclear waste program, follow the objective and scientifically-based site selection and site evaluation process that was so carefully crafted and set forth in the original Act. Instead, Congress allowed itself to manipulated by a highly political federal agency into abandoning the scientific process prescribed in the NWPA and the system of carefully devised and purposely interrelated compromises that formed the fabric of the original legislation. Instead, Congress arbitrarily selected a fundamentally flawed and unsuitable site in Nevada solely for expedient political reasons. As a result, Yucca Mountain today is spiraling towards inevitable demise, weighted down by the insurmountable burden of accumulated site and program defects, escalating costs, debilitating budget problems, inept program management, major health and safety issues, pervasive quality assurance and licensing problems, the albatross of a massive spent fuel shipping campaign waiting to break into the national consciousness, and rapidly diminishing support in Congress and even within the commercial nuclear industry. What began in the 1980s as a trickle of evidence suggesting that Yucca Mountain was incapable of isolating deadly radioactive waste has became a deluge. Instead of acknowledging what its own scientists and research were showing - that the geology at Yucca Mountain was so seriously flawed that the site should be disqualified, DOE turned the concept of geologic isolation on its head. DOE was forced to conjure up ever more exotic and unrealistic engineering “fixes” in a desperate attempt to mask these inherently irremediable site flaws. The Department also set about changing rules, regulations and guidelines so as to cover up site deficiencies and permit the program to go forward in spite of overwhelming evidence that Yucca Mountain is an unacceptable place for disposing deadly spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Read the rest by subscribing to NWW! © 2008 joyce communications