Yucca Mtn not safe for nuc dump - truth being ignored..

www.nytimes.com...

Looks like another case of the govt having a great plan that is doomed to fail, and everyone knows it but they do it anyway...

Such is politics..... more on site...

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the University of California-Davis, said he quit the panel last month so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's dangers.

Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. Some 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal canisters underground in tunnels.

``The science is very clear,'' Craig told the AP in an interview before his first public speech about the Energy Department's design for the canisters.

``If we get high-temperature liquids, the metal would corrode and that would eventually lead to leakage of nuclear waste,'' Craig said.

Where are we supposed to put it?

I have read that by the time we can store nuclear waste in Yucca mountain it will already be filled. This is one of the reasons why they did not want to bury nuclear waste under Yucca mountain.

They have come up with several ideas on storing this stuff. One of them is storing them underwater. The idea is rather sound. There is this huge mud flat underwater somewhere off the coast of California, where there is no plant or animal life. They would make huge concrete-metal canisters, dump them and they would sink into the mud like an anchor.

Originally posted by MrJingles
I have read that by the time we can store nuclear waste in Yucca mountain it will already be filled. This is one of the reasons why they did not want to bury nuclear waste under Yucca mountain.

They have come up with several ideas on storing this stuff. One of them is storing them underwater. The idea is rather sound. There is this huge mud flat underwater somewhere off the coast of California, where there is no plant or animal life. They would make huge concrete-metal canisters, dump them and they would sink into the mud like an anchor.

That is insane.


Don't forget about WIPP in Carslbad, NM. It has been recieving waste since 1999

Originally posted by mig12
Where are we supposed to put it?

The moon.

The argument is this. They think it's safe to store nuclear waste in Yucca mountain because they tunneled into salt and the salt over time would crush the material and encapsulate the waste, not allowing it to seep into the water table. However some argue that it would be safer to leave the waste locked up at the nuclear power plants than to haul it over every highway in the United States on it's way to a permanent waste site.