Nuclear waste has to be dealt with, and we've already thrown
billions at the problem. As Citizens Against Government Waste
notes, "DOE (Department of Energy) has spent $15 billion to
evaluate various possible sites, to develop Yucca Mountain and
to submit the licensing application, but the national inventory
of spent nuclear fuel stands at 65,000 metric tons, and not one
spent fuel rod has been moved to the Yucca Mountain facility."
The spent fuel rods are stored at 75 sites in 33 states. They're
stored in cooling pools or, when the pools have reached
capacity, in expensive dry cask storage facilities adjacent to
operational reactor sites. About 161 million Americans live
within 75 miles of these sites. About 1,800 tons of these rods,
for example, are stored at the Zion nuclear plant north of
Chicago, a football field away from Lake Michigan. Yet Reid and
President Obama consider leaving them where they are safer than
storing them at Yucca Mountain. The DOE spent two decades
studying Yucca and found the site