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Nuclear Policy Information
Center
On July 23, 2002, following
Congressional action, President Bush officially approved Yucca
Mountain as a safe repository for nation's nuclear waste.
America has nearly one hundred
million gallons of high-level nuclear waste and over 40,000 metric
tons of spent nuclear fuel. It presently is scattered in 131
aging temporary surface storage sites located in 39 states. Soon
it will be secured in a single, deeply underground secure site
in a geographically stable area further from any metropolitan
area than any of the temporary storage sites.
The Yucca Mountain site has
been studied since 1978 -- more than twice the time it took to
plan and complete the moon landing -- at an $8 billion cost.
It has been 13 years since the National Academy of Sciences,
in 2001, called Yucca the best option for disposal of high-level
nuclear waste.
The average American home operates
five hours per day on nuclear-generated energy. Forty percent
of our nation's warships operate on nuclear power. Twenty percent
of our nation's electricity comes from nuclear power.
Nuclear energy is here to stay.
It is time to build a safe spent fuel repository. |