No to Nuclear Waste Dump at Yucca Mountain Says Nevada Officials

Southern Nevada will not likely be home for a high-level nuclear waste dump for the nation according to Bob Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

With President Barack Obama’s re-election and with now more Democrats in Congress, it becomes less likely that the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project will be resurrected. The project was approved in 2002 by the US Congress to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste until it was defunded by Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010. Obama’s budgets since then have zeroed out funding, and Reid has successfully blocked efforts in Congress to restore money for the project.

 Halstead told said, “Looking at the election results overall nationally and in Nevada, the outcome is about as good for the state’s opposition to Yucca Mountain as we could have asked for.” Newly elected Republican U.S. Senator Dean Heller and Democratic Representative-elect Dina Titus have both opposed high-level nuclear waste storage in Nevada. Republican Representatives Joe Heck and Mark Amodei have said they are open to alternative uses for the site but not necessarily involving nuclear waste or appreciable amounts of it.  Democrat Representative-elect Steven Horsford is expected to follow Reid’s lead and oppose any shipments of high-level nuclear waste to the site.