Plans for a Southern Nevada national nuclear waste repository are all but kaput. The U.S. Energy Dept. said Feb. 1 it will withdraw its Nuclear Regulatory Commission application within 30 days. The move comes after DOE spent nearly three decades and $38 billion on waste repository tests and studies at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The agency planned to store up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste there from 80 sites in 35 states. Spent utility fuel and high-level defense waste would be placed in specially engineered containers housed inside a network of tunnels built deep within Yucca Mountain. Government estimates put the construction price-tag at about $100-billion.
The license withdrawal coincides with President Obama's campaign pledge to find an alternate storage site. The 2011 Presidential budget eliminates Yucca project funding; yet it seeks to triple the size of the DOE�s loan guarantee program to $54 billion, possibly leading to the construction of seven to 10 new nuclear reactors. It still leaves the waste problem unresolved; temporary storage could run between $10 billion and $26 billion if a permanent repository isn't opened within the next century, reports a Government Accounting Office study in December. By 2055, the amount of waste is expected to increase to 153,000 tons.