Could be worse, could be a casino. Social nuclear waste that has its troubles walking your streets.

The Germans store what they can’t reprocess in salt mines in country. Utah is a prime spot, say the Sevier desert. They may well yet close Yucca Mountain, it is a federal facility, and they don’t want to run it..

Of course it is political Leo, and that is where politics come in. If Utah had a financial pot to piss in, it wouldn’t be the choice. As it is, read this The Yucca site is Federal, and the feds have gone on to license private storage companies, a long time ago. I’m surprised energy solutions is so late to the party frankly.

What is most important is dry, non permeable, there are such places in Nevada but they were on the ball long ago, and threw the hot potato to Utah, which is seemingly wearing gloves, or is just asleep. Utah fits the bill perfectly for so many reasons, but no doubt politics is the primary driver.

You do have to have basically uninhabitable federal lands, gifted, or under license, far away from an objecting population. No one in Utah objected enough, nor do they have any leverage. You have to pay the man, to make him go away.

Hanford made no sense geologically, Yucca is too close to Vegas. Anyplace in Utah that fits the geologic bill…is just right. Besides it is patriotic to take the waste, and if you are a greeny, the problem is ongoing, and someone must do their part and sacrifice to make the world safe from radioactive waste. The country has picked Utah for this honor, embrace it.

California has plenty of sites with “geologic efficacy,” but the real issue is political clout. The number of Congressmen a state has is more relevant than the number of federal acres.

Downwind pollution from coal is a serious issue. The states have had to reach compacts over river water. The air is the next logical step.

The Federal jurisdiction supersedes the state, and then of course the residents of the geographic area known as Utah.

Pretty sure that “hot” rods will be sitting in a pool for a number of years before they are vitrified Leo. The better part is reprocessing, vitrification is what is done after that is no longer feasible.

The nations you mentioned store the waste in country as they have few choices. Just like us. Size is irrelevant, what happened in France and Germany is what should happen here. The province with the most geologic efficacy is where the waste gets stored in those countries. No ifs, ands, or buts. The place where those factors join becomes the central storage facility.

Looks like that is Utahs’ story. As all power travels the grid, it is beyond question that electricity produced by nuclear power generated somewhere has been utilized in Utah.

I guess if what you believe is true Leo, you would have to make plans to control the effluent from coal plants in Utah from pluming their toxic clouds to the east, onto Colorado and points downwind. Should we force you sequester that smoke and carbon, which by the way contains radioactive elements? There is no “clean up” for that.

Utah can’t pay its own way now, I don’t imagine you have any money for coal waste sequestration systems, though it may have it in the future when the nuclear waste gets stored there from all over the US, maybe even from other countries.

It’s a happening industry, embrace it.

If the waste is vitrified, it doesn’t need to be in a pool.

The rub is when you have a solution, and place to store it, then you move forward. It would seem that the choice has been made that “this is the place”.

A far better choice than Hanford, which lies on sedimentary substrate 2o miles from the Columbia River. It was the first choice until Washpirg, and some education campaigns made it politically impossible. I worked for them during that time(1985) and went door to door educating and collecting donations.

Nevada has also made it politically difficult, if not impossible, it was the other top candidate.

What do these 2 states have in common? Answer: They pay their own way, and are not beholden to Federal monies, i.e. they get negative returns on the tax dollars they send to Washington D.C. while Utah gets a positive return, hence the “no load” moniker.

States such as these, and there are 2o of 50 in the US, typically become the target of programs that wealthier states and peoples don’t want.

Washington has the history of the Federal facility in WA. as does Nevada, at the nuclear test sites, so they have good reasons to not want any more. I suppose that Utahpirg (Public interest research group) has either not done its job, or has discovered that the people of Utah are not so much concerned with having the waste in their state. I am not sure, you tell me how your state ended up the candidate.

It likely has to do with general attitudes in the State, and the inability of activists to find a way to convince the public, one way or another.

Add it all up, and you get the waste dump. I suggest that the U of U start investing and researching storage and reprocessing technology, as well as solar. If it is coming, and you cannot stop it, it would seem most logical to set up the way it is done, and evolve technologies for it.

One of the consultants they hired was given the job of designing a marking system and signage to warn the people of the far future. They gave it their best shot, making some stick-figure hieroglyphics. But the Canyonlands area is full of petroglyph panels that we can’t read even though they were written just 1200 years ago.

It would lend itself to a better corporate image and acknowledge the fact that nuclear power is not forever.