Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain, the Nevada-based, scientifically flawed and politically unjust proposed high-level radioactive waste repository has now been canceled. However, pro-nuclear forces in Congress have not abandoned Yucca and funding is still allocated to the project.
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Entries from April 1, 2019 - April 30, 2019
April 30, 2019Democratic presidential hopeful Castro says country needs Yucca alternative, must re-commit to Paris climate deal during Las Vegas roundtable
As reported by the Nevada Independent on Chernobyl Day (April 26), 2019:
Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro told a panel of conservationists and political activists Friday that he wouldn’t seek to reopen the shuttered nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, adding to a growing list of Democratic contenders who have turned away from the project as a means to store high-level nuclear waste.
“I’m sure many of the other candidates are opposed to restarting that conversation,” Castro said. “Of course, we’re going to have to deal with the issue, the underlying issue of what you’re going to do with that nuclear waste, but I do think that there are better ways to approach it.”
The Trump Administration has tried multiple times to kickstart the facility through proposed budgets, though to no avail. There is, however, a contingent in Congress who have sought to reopen Yucca, and court filings revealed in January revealed the Department of Energy had secretly shipped plutonium to Nevada without first informing the state’s representatives.
Speaking to The Nevada Independent, Castro said he would like to see a process that accounts for communities that “may be interested in taking on that challenge.”.
“I know that there have been different processes that have been proposed, and I’m open to those different processes, but I don’t believe that we should restart the Yucca mountain conversation,” he said.
...He has also vocally supported the so-called Green New Deal, which provides a series of wide-ranging policy goals meant to deal with climate change.
[The Green New Deal, by the way, excludes nuclear power. So explicitly stated the youth-led Sunrise Movement in May 2019.]
