Yucca Mountain

7 Pages 1643 Words

THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY
After much research and reading about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste and repository, I have gained much knowledge of the situation. I will share with you the facts and what I have learned researching this topic, as well as the pro’s and con’s and my favorite part, my personal opinion. One would hope that they would find this topic an interesting topic. The controversial issue that is occurring with the Yucca Mountain area is not weather its right or wrong, but more of what we should do with our nuclear waste and where to store it.
“In July 2002, president Bush signed a bill designating the Yucca Mountain site for development as a repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste” (http://www.orcwm.doe.gov). A valley not too far away from “Sin City” aka Las Vegas, Nevada, there is a remote desert where Yucca Mountain is in for consideration for storing nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy began to study in this area in 1978 to determine whether it would be a decent place to contain the nation’s first long-term geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Spent nuclear fuel is the radioactive by-product of making electricity commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste is by-product from production at defense facilities. However, back in 1982, Congress also established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. This policy is a federal law called the Nuclear Waste Policy congress based this policy on what most scientists worldwide agreed the better way that would work to dispose of the nuclear waste that has been accumulating over the years. Yucca Mountain was not the only place Congress had in mind where to store the nuclear waste; they also came up with six other states for consideration as potential repository sites. The researchers did not just p...