The federal government is being blocked by judges and state officials from building a
nuclear waste storage site in Nevada. While the legal fight goes on, nuclear power
generators store their radioactive waste at their plants. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The federal government is being blocked by judges and state officials from building a
nuclear waste storage site in Nevada. While the legal fight goes on, nuclear power
generators store their radioactive waste at their plants. Lester Graham reports:
The Department of Energy has been stumbling through legal hurdles and political
setbacks for 20 years now. It’s been trying to establish Yucca Mountain in Nevada
as the nation’s storage site for spent nuclear fuel and other highly-radioactive
material.
The Los Angeles Times reports the most recent challenge was a judge’s
ruling that makes it difficult for the Energy Department to drill test holes at the site. It
will likely cause a domino effect of delays.
Many environmentalists and others don’t want Yucca Mountain to ever receive the
nuclear waste. But, in the meantime thousands of tons of spent nuclear power rods
are being stored at the nuclear power plants… and many of those power plants are
located near rivers, lakes and towns. Some of the storage is in buildings, some of it
in casks, sitting outside.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.