– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nevada (Reuters) - Will this barren mountain rising up to 4,950 feet from the Mojave desert look roughly the same in the year 1,002,008? That’s a million years into the future.
The question may sound bizarre but its answer is key to the future of a decades-old, controversial project to store America’s nuclear waste in the belly of Yucca Mountain, on the edge of a nuclear test site and 95 miles from Las Vegas. The narrow road from there winds through a desolate landscape of sparse vegetation — creosote scrub, cactus and gnarled Joshua trees.
“This is probably the world’s most intensely studied mountain,” says Michael Voegele, one of the senior engineers on the project, standing beside the “Yucca Mucker”, a 720-ton cylinder-shaped machine that has drilled a five-mile tunnel into the mountain. “And yet, there will be even more study.”
Indeed. In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revised its original safety standards for what would be the world’s first deep underground nuclear mausoleum. Those standards were meant to protect the health of people living near Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years from the time the mountain is filled with 70,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste.
Ten thousand years is roughly twice mankind’s recorded history. But a court in Washington ruled in 2004 that protection should reach farther into the future. The new standards “will protect public health and the environment for 1 million years,” according to the EPA. “The Yucca Mountain facility will open only if it meets EPA’s standards…”
The standards specify that for the first 10,000 years, future residents should not be exposed to more than 15 millirem of radioactivity per year. From year 10,001 to one million, the dose limit is now set at 100 millirem a year.
To put those limits into context: Princeton University estimates that the average American is exposed to 350 millirems per year, from sources that range from X-rays to food. Bananas, for example. (They contain potassium and a radioactive potassium isotope. Eating one or two a day adds up to the radioactivity of a chest x-ray a year).
So is a U.S. government agency engaging in scientific fantasy that sets impossible hurdles to building up nuclear power?
“Our fundamental problem is our strict adherence to this number which is given to us by the EPA,” Allison Macfarlane, one of America’s leading experts on the Yucca Mountain project told a panel on nuclear waste in Washington a few days after the U.S. election. (America’s energy mix and the country’s dependence on foreign oil were major campaign topics.)
MEANINGLESS COMPUTER SIMULATIONS
“This…number created these huge machinations of making incredibly complex computer models, simulations of what will happen at Yucca Mountain over time. And you know what? Those models are meaningless. We’ve set up this process where we want to say a million years from now we know that Yucca Mountain won’t give anyone a dose of more than 100 millirems a year. And we can’t know that. So we need to rethink that whole process of how we re-evaluate that site.”
Like many other experts, Macfarlane does not consider Yucca Mountain an ideal site for a nuclear cemetery. It is in a seismically active zone, complete with extinct volcanoes. Critics say an earthquake could damage the canisters in which nuclear waste will be kept and release highly toxic radioactive emissions.
Up on the mountain, that prospect is not rated probable. Says Voegele, pointing to large boulders that look as if they are balancing on the ridge: “There’s been no quake strong enough in the past 500,000 years to topple them over. Difficult to see how a quake could shake the mountain.”
At the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists discussed a range of options for the storage of the nuclear waste that began piling up from the military — much of the U.S. naval fleet is powered by nuclear reactors — and civilian power plants. They included burying the material in the ocean floor, placing it in polar ice sheets, and even blasting it into space.
No country has completely solved the problem but there is consensus that “deep geological disposal” is a better option than the present system of storing the waste in above-the-ground containers. In the U.S., radioactive waste is kept at 121 sites in 39 states, all awaiting eventual storage inside the mountain here.
Whether that will ever happen is not clear. Apart from technical considerations, Yucca Mountain faces fierce political opposition, not least from president-elect Barack Obama who has described the project as a multi-billion-dollar mistake and said no U.S. state should be “unfairly burdened with waste from other states.”
That came during the election campaign in a letter to a newspaper in Nevada, a fiercely contested state whose people are almost uniformly opposed to Yucca Mountain.
Obama’s encouragement of an attitude also known as Nimbyism (from Not in My Backyard) helped him beat his pro-Yucca, pro-nuclear energy Republican rival John McCain.
But the project, based on legislation dating back to 1982, can’t be stopped by presidential fiat. The U.S. Department of Energy submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September to license Yucca Mountain. That process is expected to last three to four years and includes passing judgment on the one-million-year safety standard.
If all goes well, the facility will open in 2020 at the earliest, more than 20 years behind schedule — a blink of an eye on the geological time scale.
You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com.
(Do you have an idea for the Great Debate? Please send your submissions to debate@thomsonreuters.com.)
The new "Euro" reactor comes on line soon. It has been designed to burn waste plutonium along with depleted uranium. We as a nation would be wise to learn from the Europeans as to how this promising new technology develops. As with most matters of public policy, careful consideration rather than hasty action should prevail. The one topic that does however seem absent in most public discussion is conservation. It is evident that falling crude prices and other commodities are in indication of conservation. Unfortunately this is due in no small part to the pain of the current economic crisis.
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With nearly 7 billion people exploding on the planet, the majority under 15, to hear of improved recycling of current nuclear waste or wind energy generation etc. I would hope would fall on very deaf ears.
It might make sense if there were an organized international process going on. Certainly it is clear that soon enough, nuclear power is necessary for billions, wind and so on might be good for millions. One (high sulfur) coal fired plant produced per day in China.
Simple nuclear science made mystical, this waste, decommissioning, half-life responsibility (we may be walking on our hands by the time this stuff is background, much less will we be able to read warning signs in one hundred years, mushroom cloud hieroglyphics).
No answer yet to 20k year half-lives suddenly down to a three hundred year question.
Energy is recognized as a US and world security issue.
Colossal ignorance of basic science? Zero emission? My local nuke plant emits, ‘vents’, safe radioactive steam, and has killed the seabed around it with its cooling water and high volume ‘filters’, and that is just the beginning.
An American fusion research company next door to my toxic Chemistry drug development company closed its doors, and I guess, handed Europe the fusion mandate. Has anyone heard this year of sustainable temperatures necessary for non cold fusion? The time frame is greater than 100 years, time frames for cures for many types of cancer, money better spent.
“Inactivation of the waste”, why can’t there be an answer in the commentary here. We would like to inactivate the waste! Population control might be more effective. ‘Zap It’! Yes, that is the solution.
It is not witchcraft. I believe if there were really an answer here, not French, plants would be sprouting up in the US. Every drop of oil is going to be burnt, and all coal. Humans are ants grabbing the drop of sugar on the tongue of the sleeping anteater. One hundred years from now, when humanity is civilized, point out that pool of oil or coal seam that was not used because it was carbon based.
Such long term planning for the disposal of nuclear waste presupposes that human society will be in any condition to deal with it safely or otherwise for a very long time.
And article I read years ago The Waterbury Republican, mentioned that not only the spent fuel but also thousands of gallons of water and even tons of fabric and equipment become contaminated beyond safe levels during the life of the plant.
If the plant itself must be decommissioned and demolished - there is all the material of the structure of the containment vessels and the miles of piping that must also be disposed of. The article suggested that the cost of decommissioning an obsolete nuclear plant could well exceed - I think we can assume it will be guaranteed that it will exceed the income produced by that energy production many times over.
Nuclear energy sounds like a wonderfully sophisticated technological albatross that creates more problems than it can solve.
It is possible for the US to create much more energy efficient products of all kinds and to redesign our built environment now that would use the power we have I hope we do that. That seems like less of a tour de force than trying to contain some thing we may not be around to insure it is safely handled.
The computer is a marvel that illustrates how small amounts of energy can do amazing things. It is not a machine for doing work - in the classical senses of the machine but a little goes a very long way and the computer industry seems always to be making it do more. I am quite sure we can do the same to every artifact industry makes.
No one ever mentions ocean waves. WE should be building ocean-floating cities. They are being discussed in several sites on line and nowhere are there any actual construction. They are very easy to do. I don’t know why there isn’t more activity in that area except for the fact that few people think they could be a real possibility. Water born transport is the easiest way to more massive loads.
The modern world is used to making entire industries obsolete and fit only for the junkyard - literally - practically overnight. But none of the industries that have gone obsolete have created the long term problem that nuclear creates when it is due for replacement.
If fusion is ever perfected and made economical - that may also prove to be the death of the old fission plants. That will mean millions of tons of radioactive material will have to be buried as well.
Many of the comments have posed legitimate questions but an unsettling number have displayed a colossal ignorance about nuclear energy, radiation, and basic science. Since nuclear power would appear to be the only zero emission source of energy that is scalable, the public discourse certainly benefits from a better understanding of the facts. The following are four books that should help:
Power to Save the World
Gwyneth Cravens and Richard Rhodes
Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century
Ian Hore-Lacy
Nuclear Energy Now
Alan M. Herbst and George W. Hopley
Terrestrial Energy
William Tucker
Full disclosure: I am definitely pro-nuclear energy. But one of the books is written by an environmental activist, another by a very neutral journalist, and the other two by scientists so I believe they present a balanced view. Their treatment of the subject is fair and they address all the fears and concerns about nuclear energy even if they ultimately conclude that nuclear is the best choice.
Recycle the waste would be a better answer.
I am pretty sure our scientist will have the answer or can find the answer.
The European new technology, as mentioned in the best comment, is already one of the answer. There should be others which can be studied rather than like the present one in Yucca mountain or being dumped into our deep seas or oceans troughs which may be brought up in a new undersea volcano raises the trough up to pollute our seas and oceans. Then what? An environmental disaster!
Inactivation of the waste and then recycle for safer uses should be an answer which must be looked into.
I thought these times were about nuclear proliferation & not pro-eficientcy. I suppose you have “Bush” with all the answers & an imaginary man called god too.
Bernd,
I updated the description of Quantum Unified Theory of Lattice Quantum Dynamics at http://www.genusi.com/main.aspx in describing for the general public how Absolute Mass works in the New Standard Model and is in Agreement with the Relativity Model. The update is on the summary page under understanding the concept of absolute mass.
I think its showtime but have yet to hear back from CERN, NSF and LANL.
A thank you note is in order, though I would much prefer a check.
Regards,
Jimmy/James
One million years is an inconceivable length of time when compared with recorded history, but from what I remember of my university studies, it is in line with the astronomical periods required for man-made radioactive elements to decompose.
My recollection is that a rule of thumb in the nuclear industry is that radioactive waste needs to be stored for 10 half-lives, which is the time taken for the material to decompose to about 1,000th of its original mass. An important by-product of most reactors is plutonium-239, which is very toxic indeed. It has a half-life of 24,000 years, which implies it needs to be contained for 240,000 years.
This also begs the question as to whether our descendents will even know how to read any warning signs to be placed on Yucca Mountain within even a fraction of that time, or whether they will seem much more mysterious than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs do today.
The problem with nuclear waste is that, unlike chemical or biological toxins, no chemical process can get rid of it.
The problem of how to contain materials like Pu-239 is without precedent when compared with the history of our planet as it did not exist until 1942, when it was made at University of Chicago research lab.
At first it was little more than a scientific curiosity, but its potential for use in nuclear warheads was soon realised, as in the one famously dropped on Nagasaki. This also explains the concern over so-called nuclear proliferation.
I found it very interessting, that france is mentioned so often. I wounder why it is so well know in the US. Have you heard about the fact, that you can’t take home some sand from the beach? You will get stopped at the airport, because you try to smuggle radioactive materials. Your children might have had a good time playing at the beach.
The situation is Sellafield, UK, seems to be very similar. I’m not quite sure if this is a responsible way of reprocessing nuclear waste.
In my point of view there is no need for nuclear power. We run only about 460 plants on the planet. They produce as little as 16 percent of the Energy we need. We have for to many trouble with this tiny amount of energy.
Of course, there is this fossil fuel issue, which needs to be solved as well. But why should we choose the most dangerous technologie to replace the fossils?
I spent 10 years in the US Navy and was qualifed to operate submarine nuclear propulsion plants. I also earned a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and spent several years working on nuclear waste storage and transportation engineering projects. So, I have some knowledge on this subject.
Here’s some additional context to help guide the discussion:
- Nuclear waste volume and radioactivity can be significantly reduced by re-processing spent fuel, extracting useful Plutonium isotopes which can be re-used in power reactors, and separating out the smaller volume of unstable fission products which give off high levels of radioactivity.
- During the Carter administration in the late 1970’s, all federal programs on re-processing were ended as the administration did not want to commit the nation to a “Plutonium economy” with attendant proliferation risks, etc. At the time, the USA had the most advanced programs and knowledge experts in the world.
- At the time this momentous decision was made to abondon the nuclear fuel re-processing cycle, no one had ever heard of “Global Warming” or understood the effects of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases on the environment. At that time, scientists were more worried about the advent of a new Ice Age.
- France has continued its nuclear program–much of it based on technology invented in the USA–and generates about 87% of its electricity from 58 nuclear power plants.
- Nuclear fuel re-processing is a key part of the French program, and it’s fleet of Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) operate on the so-called mixed oxide fuel cycle (MOX) using re-processed fisionable material (Plutonium) and slightly enriched Uranium.
- Final disposal of high-level nuclear waste in France is planned for a deep geological disposal site.
- Public approval of nuclear power in France is very high, in the 60-70% range.
So, this begs the question, since recent economic events have caused ourthe US federal government to take actions that make the USA seem a lot more like France (i.e. national stake in banking and insurance industries), why not adopt the French approach to energy production as well and re-start the nuclear fuel re-processing cycle once again?
We have new information on the environment that Jimmy Carter never knew about, and there is no other technology out there that can generate the amount of energy nuclear power can in the near term future. I love solar, even have photo-voltaic panels on the roof of my home, but it’s expensive and not for everybody. We need nuclear for the foreseeable future. Let’s start up re-processing and the amount of waste going into Yucca Mountain will be MUCH smaller and more manageable.
The EPA’s rule is, to say the least, malicious! Have a question for them: How long they think that the human race will exist in order to be exposed to “unhealthy” levels of nuclear radiation and contamination, given the unavoidable socio-economic and political-military (nuclear?) upheavals that, as the history teaches us, will ensue within a much shorter time than even the three hundred years. To mention natural disasters such as, very probable, asteroid impact, a few Krakatau-size volcanic eruptions and/or melting of the polar ice sheets due to green gases effect, at this juncture, is supefluous.
Wow, it would be great to get a quick reference to even the rough process of transformation of the various long half-life gamma radiating isotopes produced as waste by the nuclear industry (and apparently weapons grade Plutonium and enriched Uranium) to: it is relatively safe in 300 years.
Cool stuff. Background and common sources of radiation, and its relative ‘bioavailability’ are age-old industry talk, like natural cycles of climate change, blah, yah, certain levels of Strontium-90 are acceptable in milk.
The ‘300 year’ research should advertised and be on TV as often as very recent natural gas ads by mega-millionaires, or even cancer or ED research. From 20k year, whatever, half-lives down to 300 years! “Burning” the waste. Is this top secret research? The French won’t let us have it? Why drill on the North Shore?
A centralized storage site is ancient news (tough for the locals, but get the science right or the ‘waste unions’ on your side and it will be as welcome as prisons in rural California, big money).
Minimization of the waste has progressed. What role has the economics of not only waste, but plant shutdown and decontamination played in the long stoppage of US nuclear power plant production. Green psychological paranoia would seem to be an excuse, if the science were good enough. My impression was from decades back, was that the overall cost, including decommissioning, was the reason for this temporary stoppage of plant production, and it seems that waste, TMI, etc. were a sideshow to the basic economics.
Hurrah, that the costs are under control, and waste storage is becoming a universally accepted non-issue, now that toxicity and realistic (100 year) time frames for control of the waste are now commonly accepted by the scientific community.
Gotta say though, that if this is true, the nuclear industry better get on the horn. Perhaps we will get our technology from France, via Iran.
Anyway, references would be cool, and even a source of discussion on this topic. These issues seem so old. The ice will melt before fusion, will it melt before this waste issue is resolved?
Hello Rod, fancy meeting you here.
“The level at which no risk can be found is roughly 10 REM over a short period of time. That is 1/666 times the EPA standard of 15 MREM.”
Actually “federal occupational limit of exposure per year for an adult not to exceed 5,000 millirems” 5REM PER YEAR, not “a short period of time”. The natural background radiation is generally 300 millirems. Increasing a sites average level by 15 millirems is equivalent to 5 percent. That is more than enough considering that an increase of 28% of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing global climate change. (Better safe than sorry.)
“We know how to handle radioactive materials safely, we will teach our children how to handle them safely and they will teach their children how to handle them safely.”
You know this cannot go on forever. We can’t even get a story straight that happened 2000 years ago in the Middle East. We cannot expect our successors to relay not only the story correctly, but also the process of handling (or not handling rather) the radioactive material. Not to mention the simple act of inhabiting the land directly above the disposal site.
“thousands of worthless threads of rules that do not save any lives or even prevent any illnesses.”
Any thought about genetic mutilation? Undesired mutations within the generations and generations of a sustained population.
————–
After reading several of these comments it seems as though many of the authors are in the scientific community or related industries.I am not a scientist. The amount of disagreement amongst you, demonstrates to me exactly why we should not continue with nuclear energy. As a species I don’t believe we have the discipline and humility to manage such a volatile resource. It is the very arrogance of man , and indeed much of the scientific community, that has brought our poor planet to the brink of catastrophic change, and threatens to destroy our species and most others along with it.
Most “ordinary” citizens have an innate distrust of the scientific community for very good reasons. Scientists have outright lied, twisted research to prove false hypothesis to benefit their employers, ( Tobacco Companies…. anyone?) or sponsors.
I certainly don’t condemn all scientists, and the tremendous discoveries we all benefit from are obvious, but so long as the scientific and research communities are are so segmented and constantly in competition with each other, rather than working together for a goal that benefits all mankind, then they must remain suspect.
All the current technologies that have served to help deface and pollute our planet and ourselves, have at one time been touted by scientists as viable and safe.
Why should we trust them now?
Other energy sources may not be able to immediately provide for all of our needs, but I believe that in combination they will in the future. New advances in all of these alternative areas will provide all the energy we need, if given the chance to develop. They will never develop if we give in to the economic, political, and arrogant assertions of people who think that Nuclear energy is a viable alternative despite it’s obvious pitfalls.
And NO, I’m not a tree hugger or activist of any kind.I’m a concerned human, praying that the right decisions are made for our mutual survival at this critical crossroads.
This is a curious debate. Reprocessing of nuclear “waste” reduces its volume by 97%. In the end you have weapons grade material that decays very quickly -it is safe to handle in about 300 years. France reprocesses its nuclear waste. There is no need to forecast a million years into the future or even 10,000 years. Deep shaft mines in the Canadian (pre-cambrian) shield have been studied for years by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) which has a major research facility on the shield. The shield is incredibly stable. It is solid granite. Read up on it. It has been stable for millions of years. The formation is over 3 billion years old and was the first part of North America to emerge from the seas. AECL has demonstrated that storing spent nuclear waste there is perfectly safe. The region does not suffer from earthquakes or volcanos and is guarded by clouds of voracious mosquitos when it is not -35 degrees. It is the answer. Meanwhile the US government is rapidly developing reprocessing technology -at Lawrence Livermore labs I think.
[...] The Great Debate» Nuclear planning to the year 1,002,008 | The Great Debate | Will this barren mountain rising up to 4,950 feet from the Mojave desert look roughly the same in the year 1,002,008? That’s a million years into the future. [...]
I always chuckle when the nuke proponents consistently quote the radioactive emissions of nuclear waste and compare it with the natural background sources completely ignoring the very different radiobiological properties of nuclides unique to the nuclear industry. They ignore the tendency of nuclear industry nuclides to bioaccumulate in a different manner than any natural radioactive source, like srontium 90 for example being treated like calcium in the body, radio caesium like iron etc. etc. These then accumulate near critical organs giving localized doses that are up to two orders of magnitude greater than generalized radio accumulation per unit whole body exposure from natural sources. Until these doses are properly accounted for, any statement from the nuke industry should be treated with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately, the author of this article carps on just one detail. There is so much more to consider in specifying any such project.
For instance, roads. The author described the one road to the site as:
“The narrow road from there winds through a desolate landscape of sparse vegetation…”
So they are going to build a new road, of course, aren’t they?
Or are they?
They should build a modern, safe, 4-lane freeway to carry 70,000 TONS of very dangerous radioactive waste. But will they?
Those huge trucks with the gigantic cylinders on the back require far more space than half of one 2-lane country road. And how do they get by each other on a narrow road?
So where will they build the new road from, and how long will this new freeway be? How will they get the waste to the start of the new freeway?
The government powers that be aren’t building any new road in New Mexico. WIPP — the “Waste Isolation Pilot Project” in New Mexcio will truck its radioactive waste right through downtown Santa Fe, because that’s where the only highway goes.
I would like to hear much more about this, and we need to hear a lot more details than just one specification for radioactive releases 10,000 years into the future.
Many years ago I was responsible for writing our regulations for using a radium based x-ray room. It had been submitted many many times to the government for approval, and every year it came back with requirements for further changes that some government employee insisted were essential. My boss finally set me straight that there was nothing wrong with my submission, just that no one in the government had the balls to give us anything other than temporary approval - it was just a game.
Likewise this is just a game of delay, and avoidance. I had the chance to discuss this with a Dept of Energy official once in an airport. I am a Metallurgical engineer and he asked me what kind of metal container I would suggest. I told him to look at the history of science, and go for something with a life span of a few hundred years. By that time, our science will have advanced so much that this dump will be worth reprocessing. Right now our best bet is that some other country with balls will offer to process and store it. I believe France is the leader in Nuclear power, and probability has the best handle on it. If we decide to build nuclear power plants we will need to go to France for the technical expertise that we have lost in the last 20 years due to these head-in-the-sand EPA people.
[...] Nuclear planning to the year 1,002,008 YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nevada (Reuters) - Will this barren mountain rising up to 4,950 feet from the Mojave desert look roughly the same in the year 1,002,008? That’s a million years into the future. The question may sound bizarre but its answer is key to the future of a decades-old, controversial project to store America’s nuclear waste in the belly of Yucca Mountain, on the edge of a nuclear test site and 95 miles from Las Vegas. The narrow road from there winds through a desolate landscape of sparse vegetation — creosote scrub, cactus and gnarled Joshua trees. [...]
It is rare to find an article on the web with 40 comments that all seem composed by reasonable people with decent educations. (Well, almost all). Many have pointed out the political nature of the challenge, some have pointed to some technical challenges, and some have demonstrated a good understanding of economics by pointing out the relationship between anti-nuclear activity and a continued love of the money that pours in to the coffers of the pushers for our fossil fuel addiction.
I cannot add much more to that part of the conversation that would not be repetitive, but I do have an interesting sidelight to share with regards to Atri’s following comment:
“I will argue that blaming the simulations is not the answer. Challenging the “think-tanks” who came up with this, almost stupid, thresholds is a start-point.”
I have a good friend who is a career health physicist who once introduced me to one of the tiny group of career government employees - now number two in active service - who have been primarily responsible for the EPA’s insistence on a ridiculous radiation dose standard that is well below the “noise” of natural variation from one location to another around the world.
These few bureaucrats decided long ago that their career path lay in ensuring that the Linear No Threshold ASSUMPTION of radiation dose risk remained the rule of the land. They have been in position to fund scientists, to select members of the BEIR (the review committees) and to organize conferences and other events that establish a “consensus” in the field. Because of America’s clout in the scientific world - mainly because we used to be the world’s richest country - that ASSUMPTION has been spread around the globe and become the officially accepted rule.
The LNT is what drives the really silly expenditures of time, money and human resources to try to solve a non problem like where do we put used nuclear fuel. (My answer to that question is almost anyplace where you can put a well designed container and provide adequate security and monitoring.)
Of course, there is not really a consensus; people like Sohei Kondo, Dr. Lauriston Taylor, Jim Muckerheide, Ted Rockwell, Philip Abelson, Myron Pollycove, Zbigniew Jaworowski, Rosalyn Yalow and organizations like Radiation, Science and Health, the Health Physics Society, and the French Academy of Sciences have all produced sound, scientific evidence that radiation below a certain level is not a human health hazard and may even be good for us.
As Dr. MacFarlane has pointed out, there is NO WAY to prove that Yucca Mountain can meet the standard established by the EPA. Any models or simulations can always be questioned and can provide the grounds for controversy. There will always be people willing to argue and delay - there are tremendous quantities of money associated with the endeavor.
The only real answer to the problem is to recognize radiation is a natural part of our earthly environment and that humans have evolved the ability to handle small amounts without health risk. The level at which no risk can be found is roughly 10 REM over a short period of time. That is 1/666 times the EPA standard of 15 MREM. Even at significantly higher lifetime exposures - as demonstrated by many population studies in areas of high natural background - the health risk is very low compared to that from other environmental influences.
Even the people who work directly with used fuel have been adequately protected from exposure during the past 50 years. We know how to handle radioactive materials safely, we will teach our children how to handle them safely and they will teach their children how to handle them safely. Why bother to spent tens of billions moving valuable material from conveniently distributed locations to a remote, isolated desert location that would be a terrible place to build a recycling plant? Would you want to live there and work at that plant?
Fossil fuel interests, contractors desiring a piece of the Yucca construction pie, geologists that like someone to pay for their rock habit, radiation protection careerists, nuclear specialists who like to think their profession is dangerous, and professional anti-nuclear activists have built a strong coalition to support our present state of affairs.
What we energy consumers need to do is to rise up and demand reasonable rules and a more level competitive playing field so that nuclear power - a Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians - is not tied down by thousands of worthless threads of rules that do not save any lives or even prevent any illnesses.