Yucca Mountain Disposal Site is Dead, Says Leading Nuclear Advocate. By Peter Behr, ClimateWire, December 2, 2009. "Former Sen. Pete Domenici, a longtime advocate of nuclear power, said yesterday that it is time to give up attempts to create a permanent disposal site for the nation's nuclear waste fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. He urged the Obama administration to move ahead with a planned blue-ribbon commission to find an alternative... The Energy Department agreed in 1982 to store spent civilian reactor fuel and high-level radioactive wastes beginning in 1998, and in 1983, utilities began paying into a fund to cover storage costs. The fund has a balance of $23 billion currently, based on annual payments by utilities of $750 million, plus interest earnings, minus design work on the Yucca Mountain facility and other costs... The federal government has paid utilities more than $565 million to cover the utilities' on-site fuel storage costs, and that number could rise to $12 billion by 2020, according to DOE... Domenici said the $23 billion in the waste fund should be used to fund a pilot project on recycling spent fuel, which could substantially reduce the amount of storage space required. Opponents of reprocessing say it would increase the risk that radioactive materials could fall into terrorists' hands."
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