Yucca’s second life

President Obama provided no funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in his fiscal year 2011 budget request and announced that the license application for it will be withdrawn. So what might become of the facility?

Sen. Harry Reid wrote a letter dated Feb. 2 to the Government Accountability Office, requesting that they work with Nevada and federal agencies to outline some alternative options for the site. He wrote that the site could be considered for the following activities: development and testing of renewable energy technologies, as a military training grounds and for national security activities, for arms control and weapons detection, as a science or engineering laboratory for underground experiments, or a place government can continue its operations in case of an emergency.

Reid said in a statement, “Now that forward progress on making Yucca Mountain the dumpsite for the nation’s nuclear waste has ended, we now need to keep this from being a total loss to the taxpayers and find a responsible way to use the Yucca facility.”