Thread: Obama wants to cancel Yucca Mountain funding

Looks like the Obama administration has made a decision that the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada is no longer a project that they want to fund, and has proposed that it be basically dropped from next years Department of Energy budget.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...030303638.html

My own feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand, the Yucca Mountain site is really a waste of money, because the "nuclear waste" that would have been stored there (which is only labeled as "waste" because stupid Cold War political decisions prevent it from being reprocessed into useful reactor fuel) is perfectly fine being stored as it currently is, in sealed casks at the various nuclear power plants where it is being produced. So the loss of the Yucca Mountain site really doesn't take away a facility that we needed.

On the other hand, this decision seems to have gone through under heavy political pressure from anti-nuclear groups and Nevadan NIMBYism (Harry Reid obviously pushed for this), and on the political level, it isn't good for the American nuclear power industry. The last thing that industry needs right now is for people's unreasonable fears to be reinforced by political decisions that pander to them, especially coming from a popular president; it sets a bad trend.

What do you fine folks think of this issue?