Can it be true? President Obama has said he wants to close down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Sure enough, the 2010 budget cuts $90 million out of the project’s budget. Earlier, most of the workers were laid off, and there was talk of putting barriers in front of the tunnel entrance.
Now, as you may imagine, this makes me tremendously happy, since I have always been an opponent of nuclear energy. But if Yucca Mountain is forever closed to receive nuclear waste, we have two immediate issues.
The first issue is, will there be a search for another more suitable site?
The second issue begs for a more comprehensive background before the question can be asked.
I presume there will be no more suitable site found because no one in their right mind will ask to have a nuclear waste dump anywhere near their towns or homes. They’ll react similarly to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who has fought for the closing of Yucca Mountain for 20 years, and has threatened to lie down in the road to prevent trucks from other states to bring their waste to his state.
During the search for a new site, and after the search is abandoned, all the nuclear waste will continue to be stored at the site where it is generated. Here in Maine, the waste from the dismantled Maine Yankee plant is still in Wiscasset. I presume it will be there for many decades to come. Maine and other New England states have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government about the removal of all the nuclear waste now being stored at their nuclear plants.
Meanwhile, waste continues to be produced by the active nuclear power plants. I presume that those plants will begin to suffer from their overflowing barrels of nuclear waste.
And so the second issue: What do we do with the nuclear waste when there is no waste repository?
I am wondering if President Obama has tickets for himself and his family to flee to some other planet, since I presume he will be viciously attacked once the situation is allowed to grow to its fullest potential.
Sally Breen lives in Windham.
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