Nuclear Waste

The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3-billion energy spending bill that backs up President Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers water transfers to help farmers in California and hundreds of water projects by the Army Corps of Engineers. The House passed a similar bill two weeks ago. Once the measures are reconciled, the bill will go to the president for his signature.

In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station are waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years. The wait just got longer. A lot longer. President Obama's proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial Nevada site where the U.S. nuclear industry's spent fuel rods were to spend eternity.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the proposed Yucca Mountain site is no longer an option for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste, brushing aside criticism from several Republican lawmakers. Instead, Chu said at a hearing in Washington, D.C., that the Obama administration thinks the nearly 60,000 tons of waste in the form of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama's rival for president last year, asked whether it was true that Obama and Chu viewed Yucca Mountain as no longer an option.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it doesn't have the authority to prevent foreign radioactive waste from being imported into the United States. The NRC wrote in an April 9 letter to Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) that the Atomic Energy Act doesn't distinguish between domestic and foreign waste. The NRC says that as long as the material can be imported safely and someone is willing to accept it, the commission can't keep it waste out.

Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills. The spent fuel, vitrified into blocks of black glass that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, is in "interim storage."

The federal government applied for a license Tuesday to build a long-planned dump for the nation's radioactive waste in Nevada, but state officials vowed a renewed effort to block it, saying Washington has "lost track of reality." After a quarter-century of scientific dispute and legal wrangling, the Energy Department officially launched what could be one of the most complex and costly engineering efforts in history.

French authorities made headlines last month when they said as many as 500 sets of radioactive buttons had been installed in elevators throughout France. It wasn't an isolated case. Improper disposal of industrial equipment and medical scanners containing radioactive materials is allowing nuclear waste to trickle into scrap smelters, contaminating consumer goods, threatening the $140-billion trade in recycled metal and spurring the United Nations to call for increased screening. Last year, U.S.

A nuclear waste dump in the Russian Arctic may be in danger of exploding because of salt water corrosion in its three enormous storage tanks, the Norwegian environmental group said. The group Bellona, citing a report from the Russian nuclear authority Rosatom, said the tanks near the Norwegian border long had been believed to be dry inside, but recent studies show salt water is inside.

Corbin Harney, 87, a spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone who challenged the federal government by opposing nuclear weapons on aboriginal land, died Tuesday of complications from cancer near Santa Rosa, Calif., according to his family. Harney, a medicine man who lived in Owyhee, Nev., near the Idaho border, was often a participant at anti-nuclear rallies and traveled around the world as a speaker and environmentalist.

The Energy Department's controversial plan to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada was trumped by Western water law Tuesday, when a federal judge rejected the agency's demand for 8 million gallons of water that state officials have refused to release. Energy officials said they needed the water to drill test holes at Yucca Mountain, the site about 90 miles north of Las Vegas where the government wants to store about 70,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste from across the nation.