Sounds like Obama's Yucca Mtn. plan and Guantanamo Bay plan were cut by the same cookie cutter.

Close both facilities!!!

Um, sir? Now what do we do with the hot potatoes stored there?

We will have to think about that for a while. But we will let you know.

These aren't plans for solving problems. They are plans to sway voters.

The solution is simple. Re-concentrate the uranium so it can interact and generate heat. No it is not exactly the same process as when the fuel was originally concentrated, but it can and is being done in Germany, France, Russia, and Japan as many as 8 times. That means the waste is reduced by 88%. Much less storage required. Much less mining required. Much less environmental impact is created.

Isn't recycling the "green" thing to do?

I know this won't make it past the DN censors, but how about putting it between clown prince harry's ears? There's nothing there now!

The Obama administration has bought the Harry Reid misinformation that the nuclear waste stored in Yucca Mountain will some how pollute the water table of near by communities. Anyone who has read the Yucca Mountain design or visited their visitor center in Las Vegas knows that the waste is sealed in concrete casks and monitored for any leakage that would be corrected before getting into the water table.
Furthermore Yucca Mountain is adjacent to the US Nuclear Weapons Test site that really did put fission products in the soil that have not shown up in anyone's water supply to date.
Yucca Mountain is the best solution for both recycling the spend nuclear fuel and storing the unusable waste in retrievable casks to recover at some time in the future when an application may be discovered for some of the stored isotopes.
Obama should follow his own advise and leave the technical decisions up to the scientists and engineers, not the politicians that are more interested in being politically correct.

There are many problems with Yucca Mountain, but the biggest problem that Utahns have with it is that the transportation of the nuclear waste will be by railroad (a monopoly industry), all of which will have to cross through Salt Lake City within a mile of the LDS Temple and other high population/important districts on the Wasatch Front.

I know the federal government says we'll have swarms of military planes and security monitoring the waste at check points as it is transported from the East Coast through Utah, but imagine, just one mistake... one terrorist attack... one spillage in Utah, and the situation would create chaos and probably devistate the Utah economy.

Las Vegas opposes Yucca Mountain because the transportation of the waste would go within a mile of the strip, and one accident of a nuclear spill could devistate Nevada's economic center.

The other problem too is that all those nuclear trains will be the target of terror, and with many terrorist cells operating in the West, they'll know just one accident will send the entire nation into an economic crisis, even if only a few thousand Utahns are exposed to radiation or die.

What's the problem with transporting radioactive materials? How do you think it got to the power plants to begin with?

Transportation of nuclear materials has a better 50 year safety record than ANY other hazardous material.

You can't "spill" metal rods out of 16-inch thick nickel alloy steel containers. You can't penetrate them with surface-to-air missiles or any weapon available to terrorists. In short, you can't hurt the transportation casks.

Do your homework before reaching conclusions--sometimes "common sense" isn't correct.

Opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository is nothing short of idealogy-based obstructionism, including the Obama administration's actions via budget cuts. It's outrageous that they are attempting to block the nation's best clean energy option by blocking the repository.

Outrageous!

Paranoia. I suppose everyone who opposes transporting nuclear materials thru Utah were also opposed to the 2002 Olymics--another terrorist target! And radioactive materials with 1 mile of the LDS Salt Lake temple? Anyone anywhere near the temple gets far more radiation exposure from the granite rock in the temple.

BTW, Tooele county, with the chemical weapons project, etc, has better security and disaster preparedness than anywhere else in Utah. I like the idea of more security. Shopping malls, downtowns, airports; let's get rid of them too because they are terrorist targets.

Regarding the transportation paranoia... Highly radioactive materials are being transported by train every day. Besides the nuclear fuel being delivered to power plants, every nuclear plant that is decommissioned has the waste shipped to a storage facility. Remember TMI Unit 2? The so-called catastrophic meltdown was cleaned up and shipped to Idaho. And I bet you never even read about it in the newspaper.

It's very disappointing that Obama feels he "owes" Harry Reid the decision regarding Yucca Mountain. With no plan for a repository, there is no future for nuclear energy. And without nuclear power plants, this country can never truly go green.

Note regarding the "blue ribbon panel" -- Yucca Mountain has been studied to death for more than 20 years by scientific experts. What exactly can this panel expect to uncover that hasn't already been determined?

Obama paid Harry Reid for his support during the primary battle with Hillary. Pure and simple, he is cancelling work at Yucca Mt.where 30 years of scientific and engineering work was done with nuclear power ratepayers money. Politics over science.
Santa Cruz Surfer

Why not recycle the fuel? Do we dump used motor oil into drums only to bury it somewhere?

As for most of the waste coming through, it is not a threat. They design the casks to withstand being dumped off of their transportation vehicle at full speed without loss of containment.

Any liquid waste can be turned into glass, look at the Hanford site where they are doing that now. Since the waste is immobilized in glass, there is no way possible for it to pollute the nearby groundwater.

The waste problem could be totally solved using integral fast reactors. We could power the world for hundreds of years using our nuclear waste.