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
13 - Nevada wins the lottery
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
Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms
Winston ChurchillAfter nearly 30 years of scientific, congressional, and public debate about what to do with the Nation's high-level radioactive waste, the Department of Energy was suddenly under the gun. A daunting schedule was now written into law under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) to get a geologic repository up and running in a few short years. If DOE failed in this mandate, they could find themselves besieged with lawsuits.
The aggressive schedule established by the NWPA meant that the nine sites already under consideration when the Act was passed, automatically formed the basis of site screening for the first repository. By 1984, these were narrowed to five sites – three in salt formations in Mississippi, Texas, and Utah; one in basalt at Hanford; and one in the volcanic tuff of Yucca Mountain at the Nevada Test Site. The process of selecting the first repository from among these candidates became known as the First Round.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Too Hot to TouchThe Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste, pp. 192 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012