If you’re okay with leaving it where it is, why not put more there? Plenty of room, yanno.
Of course it is; just like the rest of Nevada. 85% of that state is federal property.
What we would like to do is give Clark County to California.
-Nevadan for Yucca Mountain
Though a good chunk of that 85% is managed by the BLM, which makes it more our land than other Federal holdings, including other holdings in other parts of the Department of the Interior. Though of course that means it tends to fall prey to the tragedy of the commons.
Yes, handling of radioactive material has a mixed record. But I’d still rather have it concentrated in a few isolated, well-engineered sites than spread throughout the country.
They know exactly what to do with it. Put it in the middle of nowhere, out of everybody’s way for the forseeable future.
Well, they’re lying because you’re an idiot, and the courts are supporting idiots like you. You are precisely why democracy is failing, you are exactly as stupid as anyone who voted for Trump. Nuclear power will, if allowed, save the fucking human race, and even if your story about your friend’s limbs is true (which it isn’t), it would be a reasonable price to pay.
Actually, I’m wrong. You’re worse than the Trump supporters, at least the coal mining they support will help them. What you are proposing will make absolutely no difference to you whatsoever.
Well, this is the crazy nuclear thread in the pit, right? I think I’m in the right thread. As for owing the money, certainly the government isn’t going to ask you for a check. Shame, really, as it was pretty much your state (or a minority of people in that state) that caused this ‘waste’…and after benefiting from that money being poured in, since you not only got the jobs and business but also some other federal benefits for accepting the site in the first place. If it was any thing else though, I think folks would be asking for some compensation. If Trump promised to allow something to be build on one of his pieces of property, got benefit out of building it, but decided just before it went live to shut it down, I’m fairly sure some folks (you most likely) would sing a different tune about wastes and back payment. You are lucky your state isn’t in France, where they wouldn’t have asked at all…just told you that your state was selected as the best place for the repository and shut the fuck up 'cause the facility WILL be built there.
I’m not sure what the ‘lie’ you are talking about here. I haven’t dug into this, but it was the Federal government that disclosed the shipment of the weapons grade nuclear material too the state. They did so after the fact because, you know, it’s weapons grade nuclear material used for making those bomb thingies and they didn’t want everyone to know about it. I’m not seeing anything that forbids the Federal government from shipping this class of material to storage facilities in Nevada. What part is the ‘lie’? The Nevada governor seems to be ranting about safety (as if these shipments are in the back of a chicken truck with some goats and pigs nestled in with the nuclear material), but I am not seeing the ‘lie’, but I admit maybe I’m missing something.
As to the Wests outrage, well, I live in The West (well, the South West, which is the same thing), I even lived in Nevada for 10 years, and I’m not outraged or think that the Federal government lies to us any more than it lies to everyone else. I think the Federal government is an equal opportunity liar. 
Well, both do need regulation, and need to be made to be as safe as possible. There are ways to do nuclear that are safer, and there are ways to do nuclear that are not so safe, let’s go with the former.
Just as vaccines can actually pose a heightened risk if they are done improperly, we should not stop giving vaccines, we should just make sure they are done properly.
Personally, I think we should get moving on the next generation of nuclear reactors, ones that can use up this “waste”, then we don’t need to worry about what to do with the waste, as it is instead, very valuable and useful material.
Nevada should be chomping at the bit to take the stuff, then bill us when we want it back. I don’t see Yucca Mountain as being any better or worse than any other site, except that billions have been spent on the study and development of it, which would have to be spent again on any other site that is chosen.
It has been said by anti-nukes that if you are pro-nuke, then you should have a shipment of waste show up at your house. You know, I can accept that. The amount of waste generated by my needs over a lifetime would be a few kilograms in weight, and a cube only a few centimeters on a side in volume. I’ll take that if the anti-nukes will have the coal fired power plants vent into their living room.
It’s fucking bomb grade plutonium. It belongs in a place that scientists and the defense department think is the safest, most defensible place for it to be.
For non bomb grade nuclear waste, it belongs where scientists think is the safest long term solution.
I don’t give a rat fuck about your NIBMYism trying to delay or prevent these materials from going to the place they belong. Nor am I interested in your “I don’t know where it should go as long as it isn’t here.” brand of nonsense.
IT’S NOT NUCLEAR WASTE.
It’s weapons-grade plutonium. The risk with it isn’t radioactivity, but rather theft, since all the hard work to separate and purify it has been done already.
If the NNSS/NTS is the safest place for it, then that’s where it should be. The Nevada governor is ignorant and acting like a twit.
I’ll take mine, too. Properly shielded, it could be used as a hand-warmer!
And it makes a great conversation piece!
Regards,
Shodan
Dump all of it in Bunkerville and kill two birds with one stone.
FWIW, I am moving to Nevada in the coming weeks (planning to close on a house any day now) and I am in favor of storing high-level radioactive waste in Snowboarder Bo’s living room.
The OP is dense, use him!
It’s dominantly in nuclear warheads. That’s the root source of weapons grade plutonium stockpiles in the US. It has been for a couple decades. We’ve got safe and secure storage for those warheads. We’ve just been dismantling them pretty consistently since the end of the Cold War. We still had about 2,800 retired warheads awaiting dismantlement in 2017. Once we tear them apart we need to store that material in a facility set up to safely and securely store it in bulk instead of as part of warheads. That place is in Nevada.
Would you be happier if we stopped dismantling nuclear warheads? That’s the easiest option if we just want to “leave it where it is.”
Of course, not dismantling the warheads would put us in violation of various arms limitations treaties with Russia, unless we pulled out of the treaties. I’m sure Snowboarder Bo wouldn’t want that.
My father ran a nuclear safety division at a national lab for ~30 years. His division did a huge amount of work on the storage of nuclear material and the transport casks (tests like this). He also worked at the test site all the time and has had no adverse affects. He IS an expert on the transport and storage of nuclear material.
Wanna guess A) what he thinks about this and B) where he lives? A) it is fine and B) …wait for it… Las Vegas.
Of course, the word NUCLEAR is scary so fuck science because *NUCLEAR!!!?!
Slee
Are there any current plans for what to do with all that perfectly good plutonium? MOX fuel?
That’d be ideal, but we don’t have any MOX reactors, which is why the stuff was being held at Savannah to begin with (possible conversion to MOX). We’ve got allies that could use it, but I can’t imagine it being let out of the country. Maybe we can bring back Plowshares?
Yea, no sympathy from this east-coaster. If I have to stomach this shit (an abbreviated list), you can eat my toxic waste, beeyotch!