TW: Our government (which is to say ourselves) has been working for over fifty years to find a viable disposal site for the nuclear waste generated by our nuclear power and weapons plants. Twenty years ago a site in Nevada was chosen as the site. Apparently no one considered that trying to put the site in a swing state ultimately would doom the initiative to failure. No Nevada politician can run on "lets build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada!". Once Reid became Senate majority leader it was almost over and to Obama's shame he is pandering as well.
We have spent over $10 billion on the NV site and we are paying billions in damages as we go along since the government obligated itself to utilities to deal with the waste. The only thing keeping the NV site on life support is collective dread of non-NV politicians of having to re-open the can of worms or in other words. In other words creating the horrific possibility of their states becoming the chosen new option. I vote for Wyoming, the closer to Dick Cheney's ranch the better, in fact underneath it would be best.
ps- for what is worth the Europeans do not have a site either
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"President Barack Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2010 cuts off most money for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada, a decision that fulfills a campaign promise and wins the president political points in Nevada...
...The decision could cost the U.S. government additional billions in payments to the utility industry, and if it holds up, it would mean that most of the $10.4 billion spent since 1983 to find a place to put nuclear waste was wasted. A final decision to abandon the repository would leave the nation with no solution to a problem it has struggled with for half a century.
Lawyers are predicting tens of billions of dollars in damage suits from utilities that must pay to store their wastes instead of having the government bury them, with the figure rising by about a half-billion dollars for each year of additional delay.
The courts have already awarded the companies about $1 billion, because the government signed contracts obligating it to begin taking the waste in 1998, but seems unlikely to do so for years. The nuclear industry says it may demand the return of the $22 billion that it has paid to the Energy Department to establish a repository, but that the government has not yet spent.
The spent fuel that emerges from nuclear power plants has been accumulating for decades in steel-lined pools or giant steel-and-concrete casks near the reactors.
...Nevada has fought the project bitterly in court and in Congress. The site's suitability is supposed to be established in hearings by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must decide whether to license the repository.
...Opponents of nuclear power contend that the nation's failure to find a permanent repository for the waste is a reason to shut down nuclear reactors and forget about building more."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/06/healthscience/06yucca.php
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