Waste_Inbox

There are a lot of reasons why people don´t like government. For me, the difficulty government has in making a decision ranks up there pretty high.

And the poster child for that indecisiveness is Yucca Mountain.

The debate over what to do with nuclear waste hit another roadblock last week when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission´s licensing board rejected the Obama Administration´s plan to abandon the Nevada site as a repository for that material. The board´s reason was basically legal, saying the Department of Energy didn´t have the power to change policy established by Congress. It puts the issue back where it´s been for years, being hotly debated with no resolution and therefore, inaction.

Yes, it´s a critical issue to determine the environmental impact of dealing with nuclear waste. But Yucca Mountain was approved as the nation´s nuclear waste repository eight years ago after more than 20 years of consideration prior to that. Well over $9 billion already has been spent on the project.

Part of it in essence is a really high profile NIMBY situation. As with just about every landfill and material recovery facility, local residents in Nevada don´t want a nuclear dump in their backyard.

Nuclear waste continues to be stored at individual nuclear power facilities, which is generally considered a safe temporary solution for a while. So we have time to make a decision, the thinking goes. What, 30 years hasn´t been enough time? Won´t continued changes in government, which we can consider a lock, mean that the concept will continue to bounce in and out of favor depending on the administration?

Yes, what´s most important is getting the decision right. Unfortunately, on most issues what´s right is not beyond argument, and as a result, politics usually rules the day.

Analyze all the knowledge that exists on nuclear waste and come to a decision that seems the most practical. That most certainly will mean not pleasing everyone.

This is an important problem to solve. But there are lot of other important problems as well that need solving. Let´s find a solution to nuclear waste and move on to the next problem already.

Allan Gerlat is editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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