While the Trump Administration has been a major proponent of coal, it also plans to increase America’s nuclear power capabilities.  Nuclear reactors provide roughly 20% of America’s power supply–the percentage is considerably higher in New York, which relies on nuclear energy for just over 30% of its power needs).  Currently, most of the nation’s spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste is held on-site at individual reactor sites around the country, but this cannot continue indefinitely.

Spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, and most agree that the safest way to store it over the long-term is in an underground repository.  In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which directed the Department of Energy (DOE) to find locations for underground repositories that could hold all of America’s spent fuel and high-level waste, safely, for the next 10,000 years.  Five years after NWPA’s enactment, Congress designated Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only spot where DOE could conduct geological surveys.  This decision was not without controversy.

Nevada, unenthusiastic at the prospect of being the nation’s garbage bin for nuclear waste, has doggedly opposed the project since its inception.  It has joined forces with environmental and business groups in challenging the wisdom and safety of the Yucca Mountain site.  They emphasize that the site is within a seismically active zone, threatening the long-term stability of a structure meant to last 10,000 years.  Any seismically-induced radioactive leakage could seep into the ground and eventually into an aquifer that lies below the Yucca Mountain site.  DOE and other proponents have stated that the area is safe, and that the earthquakes, which are not as violent there as in, say, along the San Andreas Fault, pose minimal threat to the structure’s stability.

In any event, the project was mothballed by the Obama Administration in 2009.  Since then, little concrete progress has been made towards a long-term solution to America’s nuclear waste problem.  Nuclear waste continues to accumulate, and the government’s failure to provide a repository has its own costs.  Although the Federal government intended to start accepting waste in 1998, it has failed to do so.  As of 2015, DOE has paid over $5 billion in judgements to energy providers who expected to have their waste taken but now must store it on-site.  DOE estimated in 2015 that if it could get things up and running by 2025, it would still be on the hook for about $23.7 billion.  Liability will continue to grow as the project stalls.

Nevada businesses, residents, and politicians of both parties remain firmly opposed to the Yucca Repository, with few exceptions.  Everyone agrees that the nation needs a place to safely store its nuclear waste – but must it be Yucca Mountain?  Without an amendment to the NWPA, the answer is, for now, yes.

By Cameron Kummer