Political cartoon by Jim Day of the Las Vegas Review Journal (be sure to count the toes!). President Obama and his DOE defunded and walked away from the Yucca Mountain dump project in 2009-2010, declaring it "unworkable."As reported by Steve Tetrault at the Las Vegas Review Journal, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued the last two installments in a five-part "Safety Evaluation Report" on the proposed high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) dump at Yucca Mountain. The NRC coffers for licensing the Yucca dump are now largely empty, with no replinishment in sight on Capitol Hill, due to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) adamant opposition.
Despite congressional Republican and nuclear power industry spin to the contrary, the completion of the NRC SER does not represent the resurrection of the Yucca dump. The State of Nevada, its bipartisan congressional delegation, and the Obama White House and Department of Energy remain opposed to the project. Even the industry rubberstamp NRC has not endorsed the project, pointing out significant shortcomings, with lack of land title and water rights at the top of that list. There is also no guarantee that the essential titanium drip shields, needed to protect HLRW burial containers against dripping water from the fractured and saturated geology forevermore, would ever actually be installed.