Saturday, June 17, 2006
Tucker on Yucca
William Tucker has a highly informative short article on Yucca Mountain in the latest American Enterprise. [The article isn't online yet.]
Tucker's core point:
The discouraging news is that the real work at Yucca Mountain hasn't even begun. Right now the DOE is still seeking a construction license from the NRC, of which the EPA's million-year emissions satndard is only a small part. If and when the license is ever granted, the DOE must bore six more miles of passage ways ... take another four years. Then DOE must secure an operating license - an opportunity for more environmental intervention that could stretch out a decade. At best, the entombment of the nation's spent fuel will not be complete for 28 years.
What makes this effort so bizarre is that 95% of the material ... could be recycled as fuel. ... The fatal turn came in 1976 when Jimmy Carter cancelled the nation's fuel reprocessing under the quaint notion that burying the small amounts of plutonuium produced in commercial reactors would prevent other nations from developing nuclear weapons. Somehow North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, and Iran all missed this point.
Needless to say, France shows us the way. France has been running a breeder reactor, the Phenix, since 1984. So we don't need to do any significant research and development, which is fortunate since we couldn't do it anyway.
So, what is our current alleged president, Jimmy II, doing about all of this? The only step he's taken in the entire realm of energy lately is to LOCK UP EVEN MORE OF THE OCEAN FLOOR.
WHEN DO WE GET A FUCKING GOVERNMENT???????????????????????????
After the next major Mohammedan attack, that's when. If there's anything left to govern. ¶ 12:03 PM
Tucker's core point:
The discouraging news is that the real work at Yucca Mountain hasn't even begun. Right now the DOE is still seeking a construction license from the NRC, of which the EPA's million-year emissions satndard is only a small part. If and when the license is ever granted, the DOE must bore six more miles of passage ways ... take another four years. Then DOE must secure an operating license - an opportunity for more environmental intervention that could stretch out a decade. At best, the entombment of the nation's spent fuel will not be complete for 28 years.
What makes this effort so bizarre is that 95% of the material ... could be recycled as fuel. ... The fatal turn came in 1976 when Jimmy Carter cancelled the nation's fuel reprocessing under the quaint notion that burying the small amounts of plutonuium produced in commercial reactors would prevent other nations from developing nuclear weapons. Somehow North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, and Iran all missed this point.
Needless to say, France shows us the way. France has been running a breeder reactor, the Phenix, since 1984. So we don't need to do any significant research and development, which is fortunate since we couldn't do it anyway.
So, what is our current alleged president, Jimmy II, doing about all of this? The only step he's taken in the entire realm of energy lately is to LOCK UP EVEN MORE OF THE OCEAN FLOOR.
WHEN DO WE GET A FUCKING GOVERNMENT???????????????????????????
After the next major Mohammedan attack, that's when. If there's anything left to govern. ¶ 12:03 PM
