USA's radioactive waste problem

Last week I spoke about how managing nuclear waste, both above and below ground is a key economic, social and safety challenge. A country which epitomises this challenge is the USA, a country which I will focus on in more detail. Most striking is the fact that 1 out of 3 Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear waste site and this figure is set to increase as more waste is produced. Finding space for this nuclear waste is also a problem and this is compounded by the fact that there are risks that terrorist might try and target nuclear reactors and disposal sites in the aftermath of 9/11. This poses a key problem for the US government and especially the Department of Energy who have so far failed to create a comprehensive strategy to deal with nuclear waste disposal according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Rising nuclear waste in America 

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository: a failed project

The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project is a typical example of how politicised nuclear waste can actually become. Through the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1987), the Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as a deep geological storage facility where around 70,000 metric tons could be stored. In 2002, President George Bush recommended the site to be constructed however problems started to emerge straight afterwards. Many of the governments own reports, one from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, reported that there was 'limited confidence in current performance estimates'. There were many other conflicting reports that were published by the government, some supporting the proposal and some suggesting that the site was not geologically safe to be built upon. Funding has since stopped for the project as the Obama administration reported that it was not a attractive solution for storing nuclear waste according to the New York Times in 2011. Amid these political difficulties, Ewing and Macfarlane (2002) effectively summarise that long term implications for the project were not looked at in terms of it's cost and long term maintenance. However, I would like to argue that the main reason why this project failed was because of the behind the scenes lobbying work carried out by the local Western Shoshone people who opposed the project - academic literature has largely ignored their efforts. Have a look at this short documentary called 'An Act of Genocide: The Fight to Save Yucca Mountain' which shows how the local people fought against these proposals through their demonstrations and political lobbying: