Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of units
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The problem
- Part II The mountain
- 12 The search for a geologic repository
- 13 Nevada wins the lottery
- 14 The Nevada Test Site
- 15 Yucca Mountain
- 16 How long is long?
- 17 Leaving almost no stone unturned
- 18 Surprise
- 19 Shake & bake
- 20 The project gets into hot water
- Part III No solution in sight
- Appendix Discussion questions
- References
- Index
12 - The search for a geologic repository
from Part II - The mountain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of units
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The problem
- Part II The mountain
- 12 The search for a geologic repository
- 13 Nevada wins the lottery
- 14 The Nevada Test Site
- 15 Yucca Mountain
- 16 How long is long?
- 17 Leaving almost no stone unturned
- 18 Surprise
- 19 Shake & bake
- 20 The project gets into hot water
- Part III No solution in sight
- Appendix Discussion questions
- References
- Index
Summary
I wonder how one finds the words to talk about a man who has achieved so much,
who has served with such distinction and who has touched the lives of so many.
Only two words keep coming back to me, over and over again – thank you.
Senator John McCain, in a tribute to Congressman Morris UdallFollowing the Atomic Energy Commission’s public embarrassment at Lyons, Kansas in 1972, the search for a geologic repository took many twists and turns until the field was narrowed, in 1987, to a single candidate – Yucca Mountain. In the intervening decade and a half, the federal government searched in vain for what Daniel A. Dreyfus quipped was a “technically appropriate subsurface with a politically compliant Governor on top.” Dreyfus, then staff director for the Senate energy committee, was later to take charge of the Yucca Mountain project – where a politically compliant Governor was certainly not to be found.
In 1970, nuclear power plants provided the Nation with less energy than it derived from firewood. Only a dozen or so reactors of modest size were operating. This would soon change. During the middle and late 1960s, the AEC had authorized the building of nearly a hundred large reactors. Practically overnight, a major construction boom had begun.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Too Hot to TouchThe Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste, pp. 173 - 191Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012