One-fifth of the nation's electricity is generated by nuclear power. Were that share substantially increased, that would reduce dependence on fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) that have large environmental and geopolitical drawbacks. Also, 40 percent of the Navy's fleet is nuclear-powered. Nuclear power plants have created almost 50,000 metric tons of spent fuel, with more produced daily. Once solidified, today's 100 million gallons of nuclear waste from past reprocessing activities will also be placed in the repository . . .
The dueling is about whether safe storage of the waste can be guaranteed for 10,000 years, or perhaps a million years -- the span of projected geological stability for the mountain area. That is quite a while: 10,000 years ago, agriculture was just being born as humans, moving beyond a hunter-gatherer economy, were learning to domesticate plants.
Part II appears in syndication around the country on Sunday.
NEI has wide variety of materials concerning the Yucca project -- with our Yucca Mountain Resource Book being a good place to start. For a complete overview on used nuclear fuel, click here.
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