As Yucca gives up the ghost, specter of reprocessing rears its ugly head

While the court ruling on July 1st against the Yucca dump is a major environmental justice victory for the Western Shoshone Indian Nation, President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission for America's Nuclear Future is advocating "centralized interim storage" for commercial high-level radioactive waste -- de facto permanent parking lot dumps. But consolidating irradiated nuclear fuel would make it a short step to reviving reprocessing in the U.S. for the first time since 1972. DOE's Savannah River Site, South Carolina is a top contender for a parking lot dump that could then lead to a reprocessing facility. And a number of sites in Illinois, including the Dresden nuclear power plant and adjacent, aborted General Electric reprocessing facility in Morris, were also in the running, just a few years ago, to host "centralized interim storage" and even a plutonium-extraction facility under the George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Sam Bodman "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership" attempt to revive commercial reprocessing in the U.S.