hopefully, Obama will stop this idiotic plan

DOE wants Yucca Mountain repository enlarged

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain could hold at least three times more nuclear waste than currently allowed, the Department of Energy said today in a report that asks Congress for permission to expand the storage site it wants to build in Nevada.

Years before the proposed repository would be built, it would be considered "filled" to a 70,000-metric ton capacity that Congress set in a 1982 law. Rather than initiate a politically complex search for a second repository, DOE recommended lawmakers remove the cap and allow the Yucca site to be enlarged.

The 15-page report, which had been ordered by Congress, contained few surprises as Yucca Mountain managers had previewed it in presentations to congressional committees and science boards in recent months.

It drew little immediate attention on Capitol Hill, apart from criticism from Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who said DOE was trying to "supersize" the amount of nuclear waste that could be buried in the state.

"I fear the Bush administration has gone delusional in its final throes," Berkley said.

The Energy Department said the limits at Yucca Mountain are nowhere near sufficient to handle the growing stockpile of nuclear waste being generated at power plants, plus high-level nuclear waste from defense programs now being stored at government sites in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina.

The department has not set a new opening date for the much-delayed repository, with delays expecting to last beyond 2020.

The report does not specify a new capacity, but it notes that various studies have concluded Yucca Mountain could technically triple its storage space at least. One study by the utility-funded Electric Power Research Institute said that with additional site characterization, the repository could be expanded nine times over.

DOE in an environmental impact statement last fall analyzed the effects of building the site to hold 135,000 metric tons, which is expected to be all the waste that will be generated by currently operating nuclear plants if they all run for the maximum allowed 60 years.

Currently more than 58,000 metric tons of waste is stored at commercial plants across the nation, while an additional 2,000 metric tons is generated each year. Commercial waste has been allocated 63,000 metric tons of storage at Yucca Mountain, a level that would be reached by 2010, the department said.

In addition there already is more government nuclear waste than will be allowed at the repository, DOE said. About 12,800 metric tons of defense waste is being processed for storage, already more than the 7,000 metric tons allocated for its storage at Yucca Mountain.

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