Free Essays on Yucca Mountain

History For more than two decades, the Shoshone tribe, scientists, environmentalists, the federal government, Nevada citizens and politicians have wrestled over the fate of Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is located within the Western Shoshone Nation and has long been a place of powerful spiritual energy for the Shoshone tribe. The water in the area is also sacred, as it is with many desert peoples. Yucca Mountain, and the surrounding area, was never actually deemed government land. According to the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty that the Shoshone signed with the U.S. government, most of the area now used by the U.S. military for nuclear weapons testing and the proposed waste storage site was recognized as Shoshone land. However, the Shoshone are unable to control what happens on their ancestral land. Instead, legislators continue to try to persuade the Shoshone to accept financial compensation for their land, which most view as a way to overshadow native title and prohibit future land claims. In the late 1970s government scientists began to study Yucca Mountain as a possible repository for nuclear waste, and since 1987 it has been the only site considered for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. 98% of all the radioactive waste generated by U.S. nuclear reactors may soon be headed for the mountain. There is already more nuclear waste than the repository can hold, unless the 77,000 ton limit is raised. Though the facility will not open until 2010 at the earliest, reactor waste now sitting in pools of water around the country will fill Yucca Mountain’s tunnels and leave room for less than one third of the government’s nuclear defense waste, leaving 7,500 tons with no place to go. Commercial nuclear power plants produce 2,000 tons of high level waste per year, and by the time Yucca Mountain would be full in 2035, there would be 42,000 tons of newly generated civilian waste at reactors around the country. Th... Free Essays on Yucca Mountain Free Essays on Yucca Mountain THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY After much research and reading about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste and repository, I have gained much knowledge of the situation. I will share with you the facts and what I have learned researching this topic, as well as the pro’s and con’s and my favorite part, my personal opinion. One would hope that they would find this topic an interesting topic. The controversial issue that is occurring with the Yucca Mountain area is not weather its right or wrong, but more of what we should do with our nuclear waste and where to store it. â€Å"In July 2002, president Bush signed a bill designating the Yucca Mountain site for development as a repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste† (orcwm.doe.gov). A valley not too far away from â€Å"Sin City† aka Las Vegas, Nevada, there is a remote desert where Yucca Mountain is in for consideration for storing nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy began to study in this area in 1978 to determine whether it would be a decent place to contain the nation’s first long-term geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Spent nuclear fuel is the radioactive by-product of making electricity commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste is by-product from production at defense facilities. However, back in 1982, Congress also established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. This policy is a federal law called the Nuclear Waste Policy c ongress based this policy on what most scientists worldwide agreed the better way that would work to dispose of the nuclear waste that has been accumulating over the years. Yucca Mountain was not the only place Congress had in mind where to store the nuclear waste; they also came up with six other states for consideration as potential repository sites. The researchers did not just p... Free Essays on Yucca Mountain INTRODUCTION: Yucca Mountain is the possible site of a nuclear repository designed to store and dispose of spent nuclear fuel. It is located in Nye County, Nevada, which is about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas (this can be seen on Figure #1). This land is federally owned, and located on the edge of the Department of Energy’s Test Site. The repository would be located in the mountain and be approximately 1000 feet below the top of the mountain and 1000 feet above the groundwater level. The repository will be designed to hold well over the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste already accumulated. If the project receives approval, it would be the nations first geological repository for disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The Yucca Mountain site was chosen for several reasons. First of all, water is the main means of transporting waste out of a nuclear repository and into the environment. The Yucca Mountain site is located in one of the driest and remote places in the United States. The area receives less than 7.5 inches of rain per year, and 95 percent of that does not even reach the mountain. The site also has many natural barriers, which prevent what little water is available from entering the site. The possible site is also located on federally owned land, which eliminates the lengthy task of acquiring land from the state. There is also no risk that groundwater that serves any of the nearby cities will be contaminated by the site. This is not possible, because the groundwater system that encompasses Yucca Mountain is not connected to groundwater of the Las Vegas Valley. The groundwater system at Yucca Mountain is an isolated hydraulic basin; that is; it does not connect to any other water sources. Isolated hydraulic basins are a very rare feature, and it is very well suited for the site. For these reasons, Yucca Mountain was chosen as the possible site of the geological nuclear repository. COST: The Yucca Mountain p... Free Essays on Yucca Mountain History For more than two decades, the Shoshone tribe, scientists, environmentalists, the federal government, Nevada citizens and politicians have wrestled over the fate of Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is located within the Western Shoshone Nation and has long been a place of powerful spiritual energy for the Shoshone tribe. The water in the area is also sacred, as it is with many desert peoples. Yucca Mountain, and the surrounding area, was never actually deemed government land. According to the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty that the Shoshone signed with the U.S. government, most of the area now used by the U.S. military for nuclear weapons testing and the proposed waste storage site was recognized as Shoshone land. However, the Shoshone are unable to control what happens on their ancestral land. Instead, legislators continue to try to persuade the Shoshone to accept financial compensation for their land, which most view as a way to overshadow native title and prohibit future land claims. In the late 1970s government scientists began to study Yucca Mountain as a possible repository for nuclear waste, and since 1987 it has been the only site considered for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. 98% of all the radioactive waste generated by U.S. nuclear reactors may soon be headed for the mountain. There is already more nuclear waste than the repository can hold, unless the 77,000 ton limit is raised. Though the facility will not open until 2010 at the earliest, reactor waste now sitting in pools of water around the country will fill Yucca Mountain’s tunnels and leave room for less than one third of the government’s nuclear defense waste, leaving 7,500 tons with no place to go. Commercial nuclear power plants produce 2,000 tons of high level waste per year, and by the time Yucca Mountain would be full in 2035, there would be 42,000 tons of newly generated civilian waste at reactors around the country. Th...